2025-10 October | SunNeverSetsOnMusic

2025 October Best New Albums

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Through The Open Window:

The Bootleg Series Vol. 18

1956 - 1963

BOB DYLAN

Released 31 October 2025

Columbia Records

*****

The latest release from the Dylan archive is remarkable, not only for four dozen "new" recordings, but for the sheer energy captured in these record of the emerging, era-defining artist.

For over three decades, The Bootleg Series has illuminated the hidden corridors of Bob Dylan’s vast career — from the mid-’60s electric upheaval (Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge) to his spiritual period (Trouble No More), and on to the Time Out of Mind years. Volume 18 – Through The Open Window turns its lens back to the early-mid 1960s, assembling demos, live performances, radio tapes and studio outtakes that trace Dylan’s transformation from folk troubadour to restless visionary. Restored and mixed with remarkable clarity by Steve Berkowitz and Jeff Rosen, the collection feels less like an archival excavation than a rediscovery.

What astonishes about Through The Open Window is not just the quantity but the vitality of its contents. Here Dylan’s voice - youthful, cracked, conspiratorial - carries a kinetic urgency that studio albums of the time only hinted at. Early versions of “Chimes of Freedom,” “Mr. Tambourine Man,” and “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” reveal the songwriter testing tone and phrasing with almost scientific precision, while a suite of never-circulated songs (“Come See the Window,” “Jimmy Reed’s Shoes”) shows how swiftly he was expanding beyond folk orthodoxy. The sound restoration preserves every intake of breath and guitar scrape, capturing an artist brimming with conviction and curiosity. This isn’t a museum piece but a living document - the sound of Dylan peering through the open window of possibility and stepping, unafraid, into history.

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Cookin' The Books

COOKIN' ON 3 BURNERS

Released 31 October 2025

Soul Messin' Records

****-

A joyful, groove-laden return for Melbourne’s deep-funk maestros - an album that reaffirms their standing as one of the city’s most resilient and musically generous exports.

Formed in the late ’90s, Cookin’ On 3 Burners helped shape the sound and reputation of Melbourne’s live music culture. Their Hammond-organ-driven funk, gritty guitar licks and propulsive rhythm section have powered everything from tiny Fitzroy clubs to international tours. Across 25 years they’ve become synonymous with soulful, high-energy collaboration and deep-in-the-pocket grooves in a scene that also birthed The Bamboos, Saskwatch, Kylie Auldist and the Soul Messin’ collective.

Cookin’ The Books finds the trio - Jake Mason (Hammond Organ), Dan West (Guitar) and Ivan Khatchoyan (Drums) - in peak form, drawing on decades of shared intuition and community spirit to deliver an album brimming with fire, warmth and authenticity. More than just a band, the Burners represent the city’s communal, DIY ethos, where sharp musicianship, deep respect for the roots, and open collaboration continue to keep the groove alive.

Cookin’ The Books opens with “The Runner,” a muscular, syncopated blast of Hammond funk that instantly reminds listeners how tight and expressive this trio remains. “Only Words” (with Natalie Slade) deepens the mood, marrying vintage soul phrasing to a luminous vocal performance that reveals emotional depth beneath the band’s rhythmic drive. Later, “Give a Little Bit More” (featuring Stella Angelico) pushes into gospel-soul territory, Angelico’s powerhouse vocal perfectly matched to the Burners’ confident restraint. Angelico features on four of the album's 14 tracks.

What makes the record compelling is the cohesion of a band that has developed a living language of groove and interplay honed over years together. Every track feels alive in the room, captured with the immediacy and humanity - proof that the Burners are still writing, and rewriting, their own rulebook.

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Tremor

DANIEL AVERY

Released 31 October 2025

Domino

****-

A master of atmosphere returns with his darkest and most immersive work yet — Tremor pulses with physical intensity and emotional unease.

Since his breakthrough with Drone Logic (2013), British producer Daniel Avery has built a reputation for crafting electronic music that blurs the line between techno, ambient, and experimental sound design. Across albums such as Song for Alpha (2018) and Ultra Truth (2022), he has steadily stripped away club tropes to reveal something more cinematic and introspective. Tremor continues that evolution: it is a record less about rhythm than resonance, where distortion, silence, and texture are used to express emotion.

Tremor feels like the logical culmination of Avery’s decade-long development of a sound world in which beauty and brutality coexist. The opening tracks rumble with subterranean bass and half-erased drum patterns, evoking a physical unease that never quite resolves. Yet within the noise are moments of startling grace: shimmering synth choirs and spectral melodies that hover above collapsing beats. Where earlier records flirted with the dancefloor, Tremor seems to challenge it building tension over rhythmic percussion, through density, space, and sheer sonic pressure.

Avery’s gift lies in his ability to arrange chaos into precise sound structures, letting distortion breathe and melody fracture without losing coherence. It’s an album to be felt as much as understood. It is immersive and unsettling, like standing too close to the edge of a tube platform. In its restraint and power, Tremor confirms Avery as one of electronic music’s true auteurs.

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Heroina

SEVDALIZA

Released 31 October 2025

broke / Create Music Group

Sevdaliza

****-

A fearless act of rebirth - her most emotionally raw and sonically immersive album yet.

Iranian-Dutch artist Sevdaliza has built a career on merging avant-pop sensuality with existential inquiry. Across albums like ISON (2017) and Shabrang (2020), she has explored gender, identity, and power through striking visual and sonic design. With Heroina, her most conceptually cohesive work to date, Sevdaliza reframes vulnerability as divinity — fusing Persian mysticism, industrial pop, and orchestral electronica into a single sweeping vision. Co-produced with Mucky and Loris Rizzo, the album expands her palette while retaining her signature tension between intimacy and grandeur.

Heroina feels like an awakening after a long, interior night. Sevdaliza sings as both confessor and prophet, her voice trembling between whispered confession and operatic declaration. Tracks such as “Her Mind,” “No Angels,” and “Eden” layer trip-hop beats, dissonant strings, and spectral choirs into a sound world both physical and metaphysical. While her earlier albums often held listeners at arm’s length through meticulous control, here the edges blur — distortion bleeds into cello, electronics dissolve into silence. Lyrically, she wrestles with rebirth and self-possession, the “heroina” not as saviour but survivor. The production, thick with reverb and unresolved harmonies, invites comparison with FKA twigs or Björk, yet remains unmistakably Sevdaliza — devotional, cinematic, and deeply human. If her past work was about constructing an identity, Heroina is about inhabiting one. It’s her boldest, most compassionate statement yet.

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Returning To Myself

BRANDI CARLILE

Released 24 October 2025

Interscope Records / Lost Highway

****-

An introspective and revealing solo return identity and voice through elegant production and raw honesty.

Brandi Carlile has spent two decades growing from her Americana roots into a multi-genre storyteller, working with legends like Elton John and Joni Mitchell while still retaining her voice’s urgency. With multiple Grammy wins behind her, she’s now at a point where she can pause, reflect and deliver an album not burdened by proving anything, but simply saying what needs to be said. Returning To Myself marks her first solo work in four years and highlights her capacity to evolve without losing her core: storytelling rooted in empathy, sharp detail and vocal power.

This is Carlile’s most mature and in it's quiet way, daring album. The tone is soulful rather than soaring, the production expansive and warm. She confronts themes of identity (“Returning To Myself”), mortality and human connection (“Human”), power and vulnerability (“A Woman Oversees”), and time’s passage (“A War With Time”). Throughout, her voice shifts from comforting to confrontational, intimate to majestic, always honest. Production by Aaron Dessner, Justin Vernon and Andrew Watt expands her sound palette - synths, choirs, electric guitar atmospheres - giving the record a contemporary sheen without edging into over-polish.

Some moments, like “Church & State,” lean into protest rock while others retreat into melancholy and introspection. The arc moves from searching and fragmentation toward acceptance and renewal: the album isn’t flashy, but it is undiminished in ambition.

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Detour

BOZ SCAGGS

SETH ASARNOW, JASON LEWIS, JIM COX

Released 17 October 2025

Concord Records

****-

A perennial favourite returns with this soulful collection of classics, sustaining a late-night mood from end to end, graced with nuanced vocals and elegant instrumental restraint.

Boz Scaggs has remained a quietly assured stylist across a career that began in bands with the Steve Miller in the 1960's before "going solo" in 1966 and producing classic albums including the blues-rock of Boz Scaggs (1969), the silky sophistication of Silk Degrees (1976) and the mature soul explorations of Out of the Blues (2018). His cool phrasing, elegant diction, and gift for inhabiting a song without overstatement have earned him a place among the most distinctive blue-eyed soul voices of his generation. Now in his late seventies, Scaggs continues to refine rather than reinvent, drawing on the deep reservoirs of R&B, blues and jazz that have always driven his sound, a commitment to craft, more than nostalgia.

Detour finds Boz Scaggs inhabiting a repertoire of timeless ballads with the grace of a singer who knows the power of understatement. The opening quartet of songs sets the tone: the rain-soaked melancholy of “It’s Raining” (Alan Toussaint); the brushed-velvet phrasing of deep-cut jazz standard “Angel Eyes” (Earl K. Brent, Matt Dennis) and the Brazilian panache of “Once I Loved” (Jobim/Gilbert/De Moreas). Scaggs shapes familiar material into something personal. His treatment of “I Could Have Told You” and “The Meaning of the Blues” recalls Chet Baker's weary elegance - the delivery conversational, close to a whisper shared across a small room.

The title track, “Detour Ahead,” becomes the album’s quiet heart - measured, patient, and deeply human, while “Tomorrow Night” and “Too Late Now” and "We'll Be Together Again" close the set in wistful twilight.

The album is subdued in tone and tempo compared even with the previous three releases and nothing here breaks new ground, yet every phrase breathes intention and measure.

Detour is a masterclass in late-career restraint: deeply felt, elegantly played, and utterly unhurried.

Read more... Boz Scaggs, Concord Records, Bandcamp

Duets Special

CHRISSIE HYNDE & PALS

Released 17 October 2025

Parlophone Records

****-

Such promise in the anticipation - Hynde’s voice, the songs she'd choose and a baker's dozen of iconic voices. A quietly luminous collection of duets that glows with late-night melancholy.

Since forming The Pretenders in 1978, Chrissie Hynde has remained one of rock’s most distinctive vocalists - sharp, soulful, and slyly romantic. Across decades she’s balanced swaggering new-wave anthems with spare acoustic albums and country duets, sustaining a career that bridges punk, pop, and Americana.

Duets Special finds her revisiting beloved songs with a cross-generational roster of guest that includes Rufus Wainwright, k.d. Lang, Cat Power, Debbie Harry, Julian Lennon, Lucinda Williams, the late Mark Lanegan, Alan Sparhawj (Low), Shirley Manson and others

The project aims to celebrate shared musical lineage and mutual admiration, offering reinterpretations of standards and modern classics filtered through Hynde’s unmistakably smoky phrasing. She recasts familiar songs as subdued conversations. Rather than chasing the excitement of reinvention, Hynde seeks connection, grace, and emotional equilibrium, offering her most unguarded and quietly sophisticated record in years.

The album’s cohesion comes not from tempo shifts or genre excursions, but from the unbroken thread of its tone - smoky, slow, and gently luminous. The trio of Elvis Presley covers “Can’t Help Falling in Love” (Lanegan), “Always on My Mind” (Wainwright) and “Love Letters Straight From Your Heart,” (Manson) are tender dialogues on love, loss and endurance. “Me and Mrs Jones” (lang) balances sultry tension and empathy, while “Try to Sleep,” (Harry), captures two icons aging into calm defiance. The only track that misses the mark is the remake of the 10cc classic "I'm Not In Love" featy. Brandon Flowers, (which is stripped of the two iconic secondary elements - the soaring background synth line and the repeated lyric "big boys don't cry").

The performances rarely strive to eclipse the originals — that’s not the point. Instead, Hynde curates a suite of emotional afterimages: love reimagined as endurance, desire as reflection. What at first may sound dour soon feels deliberate - a graceful act of preservation and repose.

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Mondo Freaks

MONDO FREAKS

Released 17 October 2025

Every Star Records

****-

A polished and spirited of modern funk, delivering big grooves, lively instrumentation and vocal flair, but low in innovation and variation in songwriting.

Formed around West End session bassist Luke Hodgson and drummer Graeme Pogson, Mondo Freaks gather some of Melbourne’s finest soul and funk musicians, including vocalists Jade MacRae, Susie Goble, Francisco Tavares, Aaron Mendoza and Jason Heerah. Born from concept-band roots riffing on late ‘70s to early ‘80s funk and boogie, the ten-member ensemble evolved into original material creators, bringing live instrumentation, layered vocals and groove-heavy production to the fore. Their debut album expands on their Bells Are Ringing (EP), (2025), tapping into Melbourne’s resurgent soul scene and the international attention that comes with it.
On their self-titled debut, Mondo Freaks wear their influences openly - from the slick funk of Earth, Wind & Fire, Gloria Gaynor, and Chaka Khan, Was (Not Was) to the big-choral R&B of the early ‘80s (Luther Vandross, Ashford and Simpson, Pointer Sisters) but they do so with natural warmth - more homage than parody. Tracks such as “Turn This Love Around” and “Bells Are Ringing” open the set with confident hooks and bright arrangements, while “Pumped!” channels a tight Cameo-style groove with vocal push and horn stabs. The live-band feel is genuine, and the mix by multi-Grammy winner Michael Brauer shines in the clarity of bass, vocals and rhythm.

However, while the execution is strong, the album’s larger ambition falls a little short. Many songs occupy the same mid-tempo groove zone; vocal leads are strong but backing textures and transitions feel safe rather than daring. The songwriting rarely pushes beyond “solid funk revival” into genuinely unexpected territory. And though the 10-piece lineup delivers fullness, the overall pacing and selection lack standout moments that linger. For listeners craving groove and craftsmanship, there's much to like. For those seeking innovation or dramatic shape, the album settles for comfort over risk.

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Cellular Songs

MEREDITH MONK

& VOCAL ENSEMBLE

Released 17 October 2025

ECM

****-

A transcendent meditation on life’s smallest structures, that playfully transforms the human voice into a living organism - replicating, dividing, and harmonizing in patterns as organic as breath itself.

Composer, vocalist, choreographer, and interdisciplinary pioneer Meredith Monk has spent six decades redefining how the voice can function as an instrument. Emerging from New York’s downtown avant-garde scene of the 1960s, she developed an entirely personal idiom that merges ritual, minimalism, and the primal expressiveness of non-verbal sound. Monk’s work - honoured by the 2017 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize and a 2015 National Medal of Arts - often explores the meeting point between body, spirit, and environment. On ECM since the 1980s, she’s used the label’s pristine acoustic to frame her vocal ensembles like sacred spaces, each project a reflection on continuity, community, and the fragile beauty of human sound.

First performed in 2018, Cellular Songs is the second part of a trilogy of music-theater works created by Meredith Monk that explore our interdependent relationship with nature while seeking to evoke the ineffable, following the celebrated On Behalf of Nature (2016), which offered a liminal space questioning the precarious state of our global ecology.

Inspired by the microscopic world of cells, Monk builds compositions from repetitive vocal motifs that seem to “divide” and “mutate,” revealing how complexity can arise from the simplest forms. Not for the feint-hearted, impatient or traditionalists among us, this may be Monk’s purest expression of vocal ecology - a work that models life through sound.

Joined by her ensemble - vocalists Ellen Fisher and Katie Geissinger, violinist & pianist Allison Sniffin and vibraphonist and crotalist (tuned cymbals) Jo Stewart - Monk layers voices in intricate polyphony, producing textures that feel at both ancient and futuristic.

The music’s uniqueness lies in its structure: no words, no traditional harmony, yet an emotional logic that’s unmistakable. Phrases emerge like DNA sequences - imitative, self-replicating, unpredictable in their beauty and tonality. Piano and minimal percussion appears sparingly, but effectively, broadening the scope and allowing greater dynamic expression than would have been achievable with voice alone. Softening the overall minimalism, Monk endearingly vocalises nonsense syllables, infantile lyrics and child-like mouth-sounds of the kind that usually remain locked within the privacy of the imagination.

The result is both meditative, biological and intimate: a sonic organism unfolding in real time.

With Cellular Songs, Monk reminds us that music, like life itself, begins in vibration, repetition, and connection. It’s a masterpiece of living minimalism.

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Kawakawa

HUIA

Released 10 October 2025

KOG

****-

A bold electro-Māori journey that merges te reo and indigenous knowledge with global soundscapes - 12 waiata of affirmation, healing and sonic depth.

HUIA (Ngāpuhi/Ngāti Whātua) is an award-winning Māori artist and producer from Aotearoa New Zealand whose work fuses electronic beats, traditional taonga pūoro and bilingual lyricism. Over a decade she has built an international presence through her activism, bilingual artistry and boundary-crossing music. Kawakawa draws its name and inspiration from the native kawakawa plant—used in Māori rongoā (medicine)—and positions HUIA as both healer and cultural conduit. With six tracks she produced herself and others co-produced by Baitercell, Rei and Devin Abrams, the album operates at the intersection of cultural heritage, electronic innovation and global indigenous connectivity.
Kawakawa unfolds as a layered sound-landscape where traditional Māori concepts meet contemporary production. Opening tracks like “Waka Huia” and “Tīaho Aho” introduce swaying beats and shimmering synths beneath HUIA’s voice in te reo Māori, grounding the album in identity and place. The title track, “Kawakawa (Medicine)”, balances steady drum-and-bass rhythms with plaintive vocal melodies and symphonic layers—evoking the plant’s restorative role in Māori culture. Later tracks such as “Wero Wero (Challenge)” and “Ao Pō, Day Night” shift toward experimental textures—digital sub-bass, processed percussion, wide spatial treatment—while staying rooted in kaupapa (purpose). What stands out is the album’s ability to feel both intimate and vast: the language, the references and the production mix to create a sense of ancestral presence in the present moment. Some listeners may find its electro-ambience less immediate than overt hooks, but for those open to depth, Kawakawa offers a powerful intersection of culture, emotion and rhythm.

Verdict:
HUIA’s Kawakawa is a significant statement: confidently executing a bilingual, electro-Māori vision with compositional ambition and emotional integrity.

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Saha Gnawa

SAHA GNAWA

Released 10 October 2025

Pique-nique Recordings

****-

A revelatory debut that honours the deep roots of Gnawa while opening it into new atmospheres - spiritual, rhythmic, and alive in cross-cultural dialogue.

Saha Gnawa is co-led by Maâlem Hassan Ben Jaafer, the son of esteemed Maâlem Abdullah Benjaafar of Fes, hence steeped in decades of Gnawa heritage, and Daniel Freedman, drummer/composer based in New York collaborating with artists like David Byrne and Angelique Kidjo and deep ties into African, jazz and ritual music. The ensemble emerged from Brooklyn jam sessions, gradually finding shape around preserving the ceremonial soul of the Gnawa tradition while softly inflecting it with jazz, groove, electronics and guest improvisers. Other core members include Amino Belyamani (Innov Gnawa, Dawn of Midi), and collaborators like Gilad Hekselman, Nels Cline, Jason Lindner, Donny McCaslin, among others. Their mission: to extend Gnawa’s trance roots without diluting its power, letting its healing, communal energy carry forward in new forms.
The eight tracks of Saha Gnawa move like an evening ritual, building from low hums of guembri and qraqeb to ecstatic peaks where drums, guitar, synths and voices converge in trance. Opener “Soudani Manayou" (feat. Nels Cline) establishes the album’s tone, devoted to invocation, layering electronics, subtly bending timbres without overwhelming the ancestral core. In “Tbal”, Afro-Latin vocal invocations and percussion join the traditional pulse, with Saha Gnawa joined by Abraham Rodreiguez Jr. and Gilmar Gomes; “Negshah” (with Donny McCaslin) stretches into expansive saxophone flights over rich congas, pushing the groove outward into jazz dimensions. The electric guitar guests (Cline, Hekselman) add color & texture - sometimes shimmering, sometimes distorted - but never so in service of showmanship as to detract from the essence of the music.

What distinguishes this debut is its respect for the happenstance, capturing the essence of live performance: moments of trance brought on by repetition and slight imperfections (in timing, fade-ins, call-and-response), which contribute to the collective authenticity. Occasional electronic washes or synth undercurrents elevate the traditional with enticing seeds of future possibilities. As the musical dynamics of gnawa are relatively narrow, some tracks feel similar to others in mood and pacing, and the shift between them isn’t always dramatic. This is consistent with the music's tradition, as this music accompanies ritual that extends for many hours, as ancient spirits are summoned, and participants are guided through the night. Now, Saha Gnawa reveals the music to Western audiences in a hybridised form, without losing its heartbeat.

Exile

CHRONIXX

Released 10 October 2025

Forever Living Originals

****-

A deeply rooted and expansively realised reggae album that blends vintage foundations with modern consciousness.

The Jamaican son of reggae artist Chronicle, Chronixx (Jamar McNaughton) got his start under the name Little Chronicle but soon emerged as one of the leading voices of the Reggae Revival movement, making major waves with his 2017 album Chronology. Fusing roots reggae, conscious lyricism and a modern sensibility, he has become a standard-bearer of a generation of artists fusing legacy and innovation. With his calm authority and radiant stage presence, Chronixx has collaborated with artists across reggae, hip-hop, and soul, redefining the genre’s boundaries while keeping its essence intact. With Exile, he continues to merge legacy and innovation, reaffirming his role as custodian and reformer of contemporary reggae’s evolving soundscape.

Exile finds Chronixx breaking free from the smooth, international polish of his debut and reaching deeper into reggae’s meditative core. Working largely with producer Inflo (responsible for production for SAULT, Cleo Sol, Michael Kiwanuka, and Adele) he swaps the familiar, clean sheen of Chris Blackwell’s Island Label's rock-influenced recordings for a looser, more spiritual palette - warmly analog, rhythmically fluid, and rich with open space. In addition, three tracks in this set - “Hurricane”, “Genesis” and “Resilient” - draw upon folk, blues, soul and jazz sensibilities, setting aside the familiar one-drop reggae groove.

Chronixx’s vocals - soft yet commanding -anchor the music’s inward focus. Deeply conscious, subtly radical and sonically transporting, Exile confirms his quiet mastery.

Read more... Bandcamp

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Legacy!

RUBY RUSHTON

Released 10 October 2025

22a

****-

A tighter, deeper and more album groove, intuition and studio craft fuse into a radiant statement of modern UK jazz maturity.

Founded by flautist, multi-instrumentalist and producer Tenderlonious (Ed Cawthorne), Ruby Rushton rose up in London’s fertile jazz underground of the 2010s combining 1970s spiritual jazz, Afro-Latin rhythms, hip-hop sensibilities and the spontaneous fire of small-club improvisation. Across four previous albums ( Two for Joy (2015), Trudi’s Songbook Vol. 1 & 2 (2018) and Ironside (2019), the group - Tenderlonius, Nick Walters (trumpet), Aidan Shepherd (keys) and Tim Carnegie (drums) - established a uniquely warm, conversational sound, capured in the hot-house environment of single-take recordings. Legacy!, their first post-pandemic album, finds them evolving - marrying their one-take energy with Tenderlonius’s increasingly confident studio production, embracing post-production as an instrument and extending their reach without losing their essential intimacy.

Tenderlonious’s saxophones and flutes weave lyrical lines above Nick Walters’ burnished brass; Aidan Shepherd’s Fender Rhodes and synth textures cushion the horns in gauzy warmth, while Tim Carnegie’s drumming keeps the groove elastic and alive.

The band sounds both freer and more sculpted, as if discovering new dimensions of their collective sound.

The three-part suite “Theme for Legacy!” provides the album’s emotional and structural core, a unifying arc that threads through the record like a meditation on continuity and renewal. Each section revisits a central melodic motif, reshaping it through different rhythmic and harmonic settings: Part 1 introduces it with stately lyricism, Part 2 expands it into modal exploration driven by rhythmic urgency, and Part 3 dissolves it into reflective, almost spiritual ambience. Together they embody the album’s concept of inheritance and evolution, honouring the lineage of past masters while asserting the band's own creative identity

Legacy! captures a group redefining its voice—still grounded in live jazz dialogue, now illuminated by the painterly possibilities of the studio.

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Keys To The City Volume One

ROBERT GLASPER

Released 10 October 2025

Concord / Loma Vista

****-

In live performance setting, from jazz roots to hip-hop and reinterpretations of familiar songs, Glasper creates space for improvisation and shared moments that are rare in his studio albums.

Robert Glasper has long built his career at the intersection of jazz, R&B, hip-hop and soul. Albums like Black Radio (2012), Black Radio II (2013), Black Radio 3 (2022) and more recently Let Go (2025) and Code Derivation (2025) show him embracing collaboration with vocalists, rappers and producers, mixing genres, and bringing jazz sensibility into popular forms. Late last year, he even released an album full of carols - "In December" (2024).

Glasper is an artist who values live music - in residencies, stage moments and improvisation. His philosophy seems to be about fluidity - letting jazz inform soul/R&B/hip-hop rather than being constrained by genre, and allowing spontaneity, groove and emotional connection to guide his musical choices more than strict compositional structure.

Keys To The City: Volume One draws from Glasper’s “ROBTOBER” residency at the Blue Note in NYC, in October 2024. It’s a collection of nine live performances featuring many collaborations: Black Thought (lead MC for The Roots) features on opening track "Step Into The Realm"; LA maestro Thundercat on "Paint The World"; Norah Jones singing "Prototype", singer-songwriter / poet / bassist Ndegeocello appears on "Love You Down". “Didn’t Find Nothing in My Blues Song Blues”, Esperanza Spalding's impromptu blues improvisation (on improvisation itself), is an astonishing highlight.

Compared to his recent studio efforts like Code Derivation, this album leans more heavily into the energy of live performance, reinterpretation, and interplay. Don't expect anything resembling the original when Glasper and co. tackles Radiohead's "Packt Like Sardines In A Crushed Tin": they replace the haunting drums and electronica with a jazz-funk treatment that expands into a hip-hop infused, Hamond organ led jam.

Deep into the set, "One for Grew" appears as an enigmatic, quiet solo, comprising little more than organ, bass and a metronomic click. The track adds a period of solitude in advance of the final pair of tracks - a hip-hop treatment of the Dusty Springfield classic "The Look Of Love", featuring spoken content by T3 and high register vocals by Bilal.

Finally, the set closes out with live version of "Over" a Glasper original from "Black Radio III, sung by Memphis singer songwriter Yebba.

Rather than pushing new compositions, Glasper here re-works existing material and brings out moments of improvisational looseness. The line-ups shift, the moments feel unfiltered, less polished in production but richer in presence. It fits his philosophy of jazz as living, communal, adaptive: not a genre cage, but a platform for shared experience and invention. The result is stylistically uneven, but artistically satisfying

Read more... Bandcamp

Figure In Blue

CHARLES LLOYD

JASON MORAN, MARVIN SEWELL

Released 10 October 2025

Blue Note

****-

Another reflective, late-period masterpiece, where the saxophonist turns his many influences into elegiac songs, blending meditative space and blues fire with supreme lyrical clarity.

Charles Lloyd, now in his late 80s, remains one of jazz’s vital voices. Over decades, his career has evolved from the free-spirited electric era, through collaborations in spiritual jazz, to deeply personal recent albums. Here he is joined by pianist Jason Moran, who has been a frequent creative partner, and the addition of guitarist Marvin Sewell, who brings fresh texture to the trio.

Drawing on his roots in the South, his love for Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington, his Choctaw heritage, and friendships with figures like the great tabla master Zakir Hussain, Lloyd continues his habit of repeatedly investigating the songs of his past, revealing a fascination with finding the new in each moment. “The sun rises every morning and sets every night,” says Lloyd. “It repeats itself but is never the same.”

Figure In Blue is a double-album project that moves effortlessly between ballads, blues, revisited classics and new compositions. It’s bookended by liturgical or hymn-like pieces (the traditional “Abide With Me" and the Sondheim & Bernstein's "Somewhere" from West Side Story) and includes homages to Duke Ellington (“Figure In Blue", "Memories of Duke”, “Heaven”, “Black Butterfly”) and Billie Holiday (“The Ghost of Lady Day”).

The trio format (sax/flute/tarogato; piano; guitar) gives space. Moran’s touch is both supportive and propulsive; Sewell’s bottleneck and slide guitar work adds grit and voice. The pulse of the delta blues underpins tracks like “Chulahoma” and “Blues for Langston,” while quieter pieces such as “Ancient Rain” and “Hymn to the Mother, for Zakir” offer meditative reflection.

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for me, for you x (EP)

KEE'AHN

Released 9 October 2025

Kee'ahn Bindol

****-

Songs of love, heartbreak, and self-determination in a debut of lush neo-soul and intimacy.

Kee’ahn is a Kuku Yalanji, Jirrbal and Torres Strait Islander singer-songwriter based in Naarm (Melbourne). Their name, derived from the Wik word kee’an, means “to dance and to play,” and these impulses underpin their work. Previously known for singles like Better Things, Kee’ahn has been building a reputation for richly melodic vocals, soulful storytelling, and grounding in culture, community, Country and self.

for me, for you x is their debut EP, draws on five years of personal change, love, loss and growth. The production collaborators - Pataphysics, Jake Amy, Anthony Liddell, Sensible J - help Kee’ahn shape a sound that is both contemporary and rooted, intimate yet expansive.

The EP’s five tracks are diary entries made music: Heavy opens with gravity and warmth, anchored by choir harmonies, Rhodes and gentle drums; it sets the tone — longing, closeness, community. This Is Not The End and At Least For Now dwell in the tension between holding on and letting go, Kee’ahn’s voice often quiet, emotionally precise.

The Way I Love, with organ, trumpet and soft backing vocals, leans into a nostalgia for clarity in love; Better Things closes, a hopeful bloom that gestures toward healing, with lyricism about renewing self, planting new seeds, growing past hurts.

Musically, the EP blends classic soul and jazz-soul elements (flute, strings, choir, Rhodes) with understated modern R&B production. Kee’ahn’s voice is the centre: tender, expressive, often layered, but never overwhelmed.

Lyrically, the EP avoids maximal confession for moments of real honesty: in heartbreak, hope, boundary-setting. Sometimes the pacing and mood stay in similar emotional registers, which means some songs blend together rather than stand apart.

In the now crowded field of Australian soul and neo-Soul singers, Kee'ahn has yet to develop a truly distinctive voice, but as a debut, for me, for you x is deeply promising - an invitation into her world and a statement of purpose.

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Melon on the Vine

ON DIAMOND

Released 9 October 2025

On Diamond

***--

A quietly serious record that aims for art-pop depth but never quite escapes its own restraint and feels too cautious to truly engage the heart or the imagination.

On Diamond, led by Melbourne songwriter Lisa Salvo, is an experimental pop collective whose music merges art-rock textures with chamber-pop instrumentation. Their 2019 self-titled debut established a reputation for thoughtful lyricism and layered soundscapes, positioning the band within Australia’s creative art-pop scene.

With their sophomore release, Melon on the Vine, Salvo and her collaborators - including Scott McConnachie (Guitar and Synths), Duré Dara (Percussion), and Jules Pascoe (Bass), Myka Wallace (Drums) and Genevieve Fry (Harp) - pursue more reflective territory, with songs about memory, love, and disconnection.

Rendered with a sparse palette of guitars, synths, harp, and percussion, the result feels less like reinvention than continuation, a steady extension of "On Diamond's" aesthetic restraint, but lacking it's vocal warmth and instrumental vitality.

Melon on the Vine presents itself as an introspective, avant-pop statement, yet rarely develops beyond mood and texture. Lisa Salvo’s semi-spoken vocal delivery, expressive but tonally narrow, anchors each track in a similar emotional register, while the band’s instrumental approach- gentle synths, pulsing percussion, atmospheric guitars - remains largely unchanged and unchallenging throughout. Despite its careful layering, the album lacks the invention and tension that animate artists who successfully bridge pop and experiment: there are no dynamic shifts, no hooks, no memorable refrains to balance the conceptual weight.

Tracks such as “Letting the Wheel Go By” and “Not On Your Own” gesture toward intimacy, but their repetitive phrasing and unvaried pacing leave them feeling unfinished.

As a result, Melon on the Vine struggles to satisfy as either pop or progressive music. Where the great avant-pop records fuse risk and immediacy, this one feels static - well-intentioned but ultimately underpowered.

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Cut & Rewind

SAY SHE SHE

Released 3 October 2025

drink sum wtr

****-

A dazzling return from the neo-disco soul trio, where heartbreak, joy, and female solidarity meet in a mirror-ball dream of lush grooves and luminous harmonies.

Brooklyn trio Say She She — Piya Malik, Nya Gazelle Brown, and Sabrina Cunningham — have built a reputation for blending disco shimmer with a sharp social and emotional edge. Following their acclaimed Silver (2023), the group refines their sound once again: lush strings, wah-guitar, and crystalline harmonies meeting a rhythm section steeped in funk and psychedelia. With roots in both protest and pleasure, Say She She have become standard-bearers for a new generation of women-led soul ensembles. Cut & Rewind marks their most mature release yet — confident, bittersweet, and irresistibly danceable.
Cut & Rewind plays like a time capsule cracked open and rewired for now. The trio’s seamless vocal interplay evokes vintage sister acts, yet their lyrics cut with contemporary urgency — desire, disillusionment, and resilience intertwined. Tracks like “Don’t Look Back” and “Outta Control” glide on analog warmth, their grooves built from live drums and elastic basslines that nod to Nile Rodgers and Curtis Mayfield alike. Elsewhere, “Spinnin’ Round” layers phased guitars and tape-echo vocals in a dreamlike haze. What keeps the record vital is its balance of intimacy and spectacle: retro-inspired yet emotionally direct, polished but never slick.

Say She She continue to expand the boundaries of modern soul, crafting songs that sparkle on the surface but pulse with substance beneath.

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Roulette

ALPHA MIST

Released 3 October 2025

Sekito

****-

A patient, reflective record where jazz, hip-hop, and soul intersect - tracing life’s unpredictability with quiet confidence and cinematic grace

London pianist, producer, and composer Alfa Mist has become a defining voice of the UK’s contemporary jazz scene - a connector between genres, communities, and moods. Since his breakout Antiphon (2017), he’s developed a signature sound of introspective harmonies, loose rhythmic flow, and emotionally raw ensemble playing. Roulette finds Alfa expanding that vocabulary: his piano meditations framed by warm horns, textured drums, and subtle electronic layers. A master collaborator, he continues to explore improvisation as conversation — balancing structure and spontaneity while grounding every composition in soul and reflection.

On Roulette, Alfa Mist refines rather than reinvents, deepening the conversational intimacy that defines his work. The album’s title becomes metaphor — for chance, risk, and the cycles of growth that underpin his music. Songs unfold like inner monologues: spacious, layered, and quietly propulsive. His touch on piano remains unmistakable — restrained but resonant — guiding the band through shifts between smoky jazz vamps, woozy neo-soul, and occasional breakbeat flickers. There’s a sense of lived experience behind every phrase: melancholy giving way to acceptance, tension resolving into groove. Unlike some of his earlier, sample-heavy work, Roulette feels more organic, with live instrumentation taking centre stage. Alfa’s playing is understated yet emotional, his compositional voice assured. It’s another step in his ongoing dialogue between jazz’s history and hip-hop’s modern sensibility — a record that hums with purpose and quiet strength.

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Sincerely: P.S.

KALI UCHIS

Released 3 October 2025

Capitol Records

****-

Four new songs extend her May '25 album - a collection of languid, ethereal songs that explore deep emotions - without quite enriching its emotional palette.

Colombian-American singer Kali Uchis has carved out her own sensual, trilingual space between R&B, reggaeton, neo-soul and psych-pop. From Isolation to Red Moon in Venus and Orquídeas, she’s evolved from alt-R&B curiosity to global pop auteur, equally fluent in English, Spanish and the language of desire. Her albums double as manifestos of self-possession and cultural pride, their worldbuilding vivid and seductive. The "Sincerely," era marks her most immersive to date, a lush statement of emotional fluency and spiritual grounding, now revisited with "Sincerely: P.S.", a four-track extension that gestures toward completion rather than reinvention.

When Sincerely first arrived in May, it felt cohesive and complete - a collection of languid, ethereal songs that explore deep emotions. The expanded edition, Sincerely: P.S., offers four additions that maintain the set's lush musical atmosphere but seldom surprise or extend. Closing track “All of the Good” is the most striking of these, its old-school warmth complementing the set’s gauzy textures. The others, while polished and heartfelt, extend the atmosphere without reshaping it.

Across the album, Uchis remains the model of a contemporary mood-builder. Her soft, closely recorded vocals are folded seamlessly in the production like another instrument, creating an enveloping sense of calm. However, the constancy of that restraint also flattens the album's dynamic range - all that beauty might have benefited from a touch of abrasion or a change of pace from these additions.

The album's most enduring moments - “Heaven Is Home,” “Sugar Honey Love,” and “All I Can Say,” - still come from the original set.

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More Acoustic Junk

COWBOY JUNKIES

Released 24 October 2025

Cowboy Junnkies / Cooking Vinyl Records

****-

A haunting return to understated intimacy: five remixed gems alongside five new acoustic tracks.

Formed in Toronto in 1985, the Cowboy Junkies (Margo Timmins, Michael Timmins, Alan Anton, Peter Timmins) became cult legends with their landmark album The Trinity Session (1988), recorded around a single microphone in a church and defined by its hushed tones and dream-like presentation. Over decades they’ve sustained a quietly fierce reputation for melancholy, minimalism and emotional precision; alt-country pioneers and alternative rock oddities.

More Acoustic Junk revisits their 2009 acoustic collection Acoustic Junk by blending five freshly recorded acoustic songs with five tracks from the original, three of which are subtly remixed.
The new acoustic recordings bring renewed clarity to Margo Timmins’ whispery vocals and Michael Timmins’ muted guitar and mandolin interplay, reminding listeners of their gift for atmosphere and space. Production is clean yet warm.
The playing is subtle, grooves minimal, but the emotional pull remains strong. The acoustic format highlights the lyrical weight without distraction and lets each note, silence and breath carry meaning. There's not much here to surprise longtime fans, but More Acoustic Junk still stands as a moving addition to the band's catalogue: deeply introspective, beautifully executed, and proof that even familiar sonic terrain can feel new when listened to again.

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Maldito Animal

THE POINT

Released 26 September 2025

Spaceflight Records

***--

A wildly ambitious psych-rock jam steeped in global roots grooves from Africa, Latin America, Italy - fused with Austin rock sensibilities

The Point is a trio from Austin, Texas — Jack Montesinos (guitar/vocals), Joe Seth Roddy (organ, bass, vocals) and French drummer Nico Léophonte - whose youth belies their cross-cultural breadth. Raised in Austin’s music scene, with early exposure to jazz, blues, hip hop, and regional roots, they’ve steadily built a reputation for fearlessness in style-blending. Their previous records, like Berto’s Banquet (2022) already signalled restlessness; Maldito Animal expands that restlessness into global reach. Influences from West African rhythms, cumbia, chicha, dub, Latin funk show up alongside psychedelic rock, all held together by a sense of communal energy, self-deprecatory humor and live-jam fervor.

Maldito Animal is less an album than a latitude-charting expedition that trades tight pop structures for wide, jam-friendly forms. Opener “Wede Harer Guzo” (a cover of Ethiopian funk) settles into trance-like groove, while “Máquina Pura” rides surf-psychedelic guitar over driving bass. "Mrs Kind Eyes" is tender while "Cumbia de Medianoche" explodes into dance chaos as closer. Sparse vocals, often no more than refrains or single lines, allow instrumentation to carry much of the emotive work: organ, guitar, punchy bass, rolling drums all interlock.

The album is strongest where grooves stretch out until they're about to collapse - close to live-band, bar-room intensity - then resolve into melody. The album is lyrically and musically under-developed, and songs often lack memorable hooks or lyrical surprises. Some tracks feel like variations on the same mood, so pacing suffers. Yet its sincerity, its willingness to explore without over-polishing, means it hits as a psych-rock blessing rather than a polished retro pastiche.

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Daybreak

SVEN WUNDER

Released 26 September 2025

Piano Piano

****-

A lush cinematic tone poem in which melody and orchestration combine, conveying warmth rather than nostalgia.

Since his two 2020 debut albums with Wabi Sabi and Eastern Flowers, Swedish composer-producer Sven Wunder has built an improbable career out of re-imagining the grandeur of 1970s library music, jazz-funk and global exotica through a modern, emotionally direct lens. Blurring the lines between arranger, beat-maker and conceptual composer, he’s created a self-contained world where analog strings, vibraphones, flutes and vintage drum tones coexist with cinematic sweep. Across five albums in as many years, Wunder has moved from the crate-digger aesthetic toward full orchestral writing, without losing the groove or curiosity that made him a cult favourite among both hip-hop samplers and audiophile traditionalists.

"At daybreak, as sunlight travels through the atmosphere and begins to reach Earth’s surface, daylight gradually emerges..."

Daybreak opens with gentle brass and rippling harps, suggesting a tranquil pastoral scene, but as the record unfolds, Wunder’s writing reveals harmonic daring and rhythmic elasticity that lift it far above “easy listening.” The palette recalls Burt Bacharach’s sophistication and Michel Legrand’s impressionism, yet Wunder’s phrasing and tempo shifts show a producer’s instinct for momentum and space. Strings swell like a tide; percussion flickers with funk undercurrents; woodwinds sketch sunlight and shadow.

Where earlier albums toyed with stylistic pastiche, Daybreak feels fully integrated, its transitions seamless, its orchestrations alive with modern tension. Pieces such as “Morning Star” and “Silver Horizon” balance melodic clarity with harmonic twists worthy of David Axelrod or Eumir Deodato. The result is neither retro nor ironic but a continuation of a lost art: lush, orchestrated instrumental music that breathes. Far from conservative, Daybreak reclaims sophistication itself as a radical gesture of beauty and craft.

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Tropical Desert

BABON

Released 26 September 2025

Wonderwheel Recordings

****-

An intoxicating collision of heat and haze — where Afro-Caribbean rhythms, desert blues, and dub psychedelia merge into a sound both sun-baked and dream-drenched..

Melbourne-based collective BABON sit at the crossroads of continents and climates, crafting music that draws equally from West African highlife, Jamaican dub, Tuareg desert rock, and Australian experimentalism. Led by percussionist-producer Tom Bamford (aka Babon), the group thrives on groove-based improvisation and live-to-tape recording, conjuring earthy textures with hypnotic rhythm guitars, bubbling basslines, and rolling percussion. Their debut Tropical Desert captures the feel of a communal jam under an endless sky — a melting pot of traditions where heat, rhythm, and atmosphere fuse into something distinctly their own.

Tropical Desert feels both ancient and futuristic — its grooves built from elemental rhythm and its ambience shaped by reverb, space, and repetition. BABON’s approach is tactile: hand percussion rustles like dry grass, while the bass anchors deep, dub-wise foundations. Guitars snake in modal cycles reminiscent of Tinariwen or Bombino, but filtered through a humid, coastal lens. Tracks like “Mirage Caravan” and “Golden Reef” pulse with trance-like insistence, while the title track unspools into a cinematic drift, its delay-drenched horns floating like heat mirages. Though the band’s influences are global, their interplay is organic and grounded — less collage than communion. Tropical Desert succeeds not through fusion for its own sake, but through its patient sense of place: a record that evokes the meeting point of rhythm and mirage, where groove becomes geography.

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Living Being IV - Time Reflections

VINCENT PEIRANI

LIVING BEING QUINTET

Released 26 September 2025

ACT Music + Vision

****-

From the dynamic French accordionist, composer and bandleader, a suite of jazz chamber music of rare balance - innovative, alive with rhythm, shimmered by restraint and energized with quiet daring.

French accordionist and composer Vincent Peirani has built a reputation over many years for pushing his instrument beyond its familiar borders =- into jazz, chamber music, world sounds and improvisation. His “Living Being” project, with long-standing conspirators Émile Parisien (soprano sax), Tony Paeleman (piano/keys), Julien Herné (bass) and Yoann Serra (drums), has become a forum for collective exploration, where each musician’s voice matters but always in service to the whole. Forced stillness during the early Covid-19 pandemic seems to have sharpened Peirani’s sensitivity to how time shapes music and Time Reflections is the latest result: his seventh release since 2020 reflects, refracts, and reimagines time through melody, rhythm and texture.
From the opening Le Cabinet des Énigmes, the album signals its intent: mystery, space, interplay. Peirani and his quintet draw from a wide range of sources - contemporary grooves, traditional dance echoes, baroque gesture, layering them into pieces that feel both deliberate and alive. The album has as its centrepiece "Time Reflections", a suite in three movements, "Clessidra", "Better Days" and "Inner Pulse", each of which is also a suite (in 3, 3, and 4 parts, respectively). Preceding it in the running order "Physical Attraction" pulses with an infectious energy and after, "Nach E Vlado" reveals Peirani’s affinity for Balkan traditions. Later "Bremain Suite" reimagines a selection of familiar pop songs (Freddie Mercury / David Bowie's "Under Pressure", Adrian Utley / Beth Gibbons / Portishead's "Glory Box", and Isacc Hayes / Lennon & McCartney's "I Want You") as woven refrains in a jazz canvas. Rounding out the album is a surprising and successful dub with an irresistible beat - "Physical Attraction", inspired by vogueing - the highly stylized, modern house dance born from the Black and Latino LGBTQ+ ballroom scene in Harlem, New York.

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Michelangelo Dying

CATE LE BON

Released 26 September 2025

Mexican Summer

****-

A beautiful, texturally rich record that shimmers with art-pop sophistication, though its emotional distance and lyrical abstraction make it harder to love than to admire.

Welsh musician Cate Le Bon has built a singular reputation for fusing art pop, post-punk and avant-folk into surreal yet elegant soundscapes. Emerging in the late 2000s, she has gradually expanded her role as producer and arranger, refining a distinctive balance between austerity and color. Her acclaimed albums Reward (2019) and Pompeii (2022) deepened that aesthetic, pairing emotional restraint with sonic invention.

On Michelangelo Dying, Le Bon continues this evolution, turning inward toward themes of fragility and transformation. Recorded largely in California, it captures her as both meticulous craftsperson and detached observer, sculpting melancholy into luminous, shifting form.

Opening with "Jerome", Le Bon sets an atmosphere of suspended motion - clean guitars, vaporous synths, and her understated voice circling elusive melodies. The influence of fellow Welsh artist John Cale runs through the record, from harmonic density to the cool precision of its arrangements. Glimpses of Laurie Anderson, Roxy Music, and David Bowie surface in its textures and poise, though the record’s heart lies in its restraint.

Lyrically, Michelangelo Dying resists easy connection. Le Bon’s free-form phrasing and buried vocals invite intrigue but limit intimacy. Without recurring hooks or rhythmic anchors, the songs tend to drift into abstraction. While the production is gorgeous, every tone immaculately placed, the absence of an arresting phrase, eccentric spark or emotional release, qualities that unfailingly animate her influences, leads the listener to distraction and leaves the album feeling remote.

Still, its beauty is undeniable: a work of exquisite surfaces and quiet, unresolved emotion.

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Tokyo

WOLFGANG MUTHSPIEL, SCOTT COLLEY, BRIAN BLADE

Released 26 September 2025

ECM

****-

A luminous conversation between three master improvisers, where melody, rhythm, and intuition intertwine to produce an album that breathes with living musical empathy.

Austrian guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel has long been a leading ECM voice, bridging classical lyricism and jazz invention with rare grace. Joined by Scott Colley (bass) and Brian Blade (drums), Muthspiel forms a trio celebrated for telepathic interplay and emotional depth. Since their debut Angular Blues (2020), the group has evolved through touring and recording, developing a collective language defined by delicacy, restraint, and harmonic freedom. Tokyo, their third album together, finds the trio refining that language further—an ensemble that values conversation over display, and balance over brilliance.

Opening with a graceful take on Keith Jarrett’s “Lisbon Stomp,” the album quickly turns to Muthspiel’s own compositions: tender ballads (“Pradela,” “Traversia”), folk-infused sketches (“Strumming,” “Flight”), chamber-like dialogues (“Weill You Wait”) and the playful, groove-driven “Roll.” Colley’s bowed bass and Blade’s rhythmic subtlety shape each piece with elasticity, while Muthspiel alternates between acoustic warmth and electric clarity. Throughout, structure gives way to dialogue—the sound of musicians thinking, feeling, and inventing together. Tokyo reaffirms this trio’s quiet authority: a study in connection, grace, and shared breath.

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It's Always About Love

ANCIENT INFINITY ORCHESTRA

Released 26 September 2025

Gondwana Records

****-

A large-ensemble jazz celebration of connection and melody, in which communal improvisation and spiritual drive converge in beautifully orchestrated joy.

Led by double-bassist and composer Ozzy Moysey, the UK-based 15-piece Ancient Infinity Orchestra bring together saxophones, clarinets, harp, strings, congas and more in a collective rooted in shared performance and melodic exploration. Based in Leeds, this ensemble grew from long rehearsal residencies into a band committed to large-scale improvisation, composition and community. With It’s Always About Love, they channel their egalitarian ethos into music that draws from folk, jazz, classical and global traditions— eschewing genre constraints to create something simultaneously grounded and expansive. Juno Records+2gondwanarecords.com+2

Review (150 words):
It’s Always About Love opens gently with “All I Can Say of the Blossoms,” establishing a tone of serene uplift: two double basses, soft harp plucks, flute and clarinet weaving around Moysey’s theme. The album blossoms from there: “Golden Meadow” adds strings and a light jazz swing; “Chant for Don Cherry” imbues the ensemble with meditative intensity and subtle world-music inflection; while “The Seeker” builds toward ecstatic joy with full ensemble collision. The instrumentation is luminous—voices, harp, woodwinds and rhythm combine in furling patterns that feel authored yet freed. Despite the size of the group, the interplay remains intimate: each musician’s gesture is audible and meaningful.

While the album speaks largely in moods rather than hooks, its sincerity and melodic clarity make it deeply rewarding. It’s Always About Love is less a showcase of virtuosity than a communal breath, and in its warmth and sophistication it stands confident among 2025’s finest ensemble jazz outings.

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6 Days In Leysin

GREG FOAT

Released26 September 2025

Ameritz Music

****-

A crisp, high-altitude jazz postcard—Foat conjures Alpine air, ambient texture and spiritual groove across a mountain-born quartet session.

London-based pianist, composer and producer Greg Foat has forged a reputation for melding jazz, ambient and electronic influences into elegant, expansive soundscapes. Across previous releases on Jazzman and Strut, Foat has balanced soul-jazz, cinematic minimalism and groove-driven improvisation. On 6 Days in Leysin, he captures a creative session in Switzerland’s Leysin mountains, featuring Moses Boyd on drums, Elie Ghersinu on bass and Alex Burke on guitar.

Written and recorded over six days high in the Alps, the album blends spiritual jazz, Italian library funk, new-age synthesiser and pastoral improvisation into a cohesive statement of place and texture.
The set opens with “Oxygene des Alps,” its tremulous keys, spacious groove and crisp drums establishing a tone of contemplation. "Source de Bryon" follows (perhaps a reference to a fountain "Source de Byron" on the shore of Lake Geneva, in nearby Villeneuve) - in which steps up the momentum. The quartet glides through nine tracks that subtly shift the mood between dreamy (“Les Airelles” and "Morning Coat"), calming (“Forest Walk”, "Leo and Marina") and groove-laden (“Mountain Cat”).

Foat’s piano leads with lyricism, but the ensemble interplay between Burke’s guitar, Ghersinu’s bass and Boyd’s rhythms, gives the album its living momentum.

There’s also recognisable sense of geography: the Alps seem to be more than inspiration, as the airy production (complete with discreet bird sounds on closing track "Rainy Day in Leysin") captures their presence as an acoustic collaborator. Production is clean without being clinical, and arrangements favour atmosphere as much as melody. If there’s a caveat, it’s that the sonic range stays within the serene and reflective - those seeking fiery solos or club punch may find the pace restrained. But as an immersive musical journey, 6 Days in Leysin succeeds beautifully: ambient, grounded, and resonant with altitude, clarity and subtle groove.

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Handling (EP)

F.S.BLUMM & NILS FRAHM

Released 19 September 2025

LEITER

****-

Three meditative movements that unfold over 40 minutes, merging improvisation and editing into a luminous terrain of silence, detail and slow-burn emotional flow.

Longtime collaborators F.S. Blumm and Nils Frahm first joined forces in the early 2000s; Blumm a stalwart of Germany’s underground experimental scene, Frahm a pianist/composer whose work bridges electronic, classical, and ambient forms. Each brings different strengths: Frahm’s structural intuition and sensitivity to space; Blumm’s exploratory, often chaotic impulse. Their previous joint work, especially 2X1=4 (2021), explored dub rhythms, overlapping textures and loose formal structures.

On Handling, they pare back toward quieter, improvisational textures, letting restraint and acoustic detail carry the weight, and relying on trust born of decades of shared musical dialogue. The album consists of three long pieces, all titled “Leuchter” (German for “candlestick”), that move with deep patience. Instruments like piano, celesta, cristal baschet, glockenspiel, guitar and varied percussion are used with care; silence is treated as a compositional element. The arrangements emerge slowly - initially just a note here, then another, building until small convergences become hauntingly beautiful.

The editing is as important as the playing: improvisations are de- and re-constructed so that texture and color matter more than melody or rhythm. One piece may float above muffled strings, another may pull you into the resonance of struck metal or plucked string, always with lightness, always with attention. It’s music that rewards focused listening but occasionally skirts the line of ambient wallpaper — moments of real intimacy alternate with stretches that feel too diffused. Still, Handling is a high-water mark in this duo’s catalog: deeply felt, richly detailed, quietly compelling.

Read more... Bandcamp, Nils Frahm, F.S.Blumm

IBUKA

INEZA

Released 12 September 2025

Ineza Music

****-

A deeply personal and musically rich debut that maps the journey of a Rwandan-born, Belgium-raised vocalist to London and beyond—with lyric, jazz sensibility and soulful reflection woven into one.

Born in Rwanda and adopted by a Belgian family as an infant, Ineza (Ineza Kerschkamp) uses her debut full-length to confront memory, loss and identity. The eight songs on IBUKA are all her compositions, marking her step from interpreter to songwriter and leader.
Her voice - warm, expressive and clear - is framed by a sympathetic quartet (alto sax, piano, double bass, drums) that gives her space to lead yet responds with improvisational agility. The album is dedicated to her adoptive mother Francine, whose passing becomes the emotional core around which the work turns.
From the gentle but firm opening “Another Time”, which introduces her compositional voice via jazz-tinged harmony and lyricism, to the closing “Kwibuka”, a tribute to both memory and hope, IBUKA unfolds as a journey inward and outward. “Waking Up Hungry” and “Silence” balance neo-soul groove with jazz improvisation, while “Song For My Mother” anchors the album in gratitude and elegy.

The quartet backing her creates lean, shimmering textures: saxophone lines intertwine with vocals, piano supports without dominating, and rhythm section remains quietly present. What sets the album apart is its emotional honesty, the sense that music is both therapy and transmission for Ineza. At times the pacing is contemplative to the point of stillness, and listeners expecting high drama may find themselves waiting—but the reward lies in its unforced beauty and structural restraint. IBUKA declares Ineza as a distinct composer-vocalist, not simply a promising voice.

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Calima

BALIMAYA PROJECT MEETS

DISCOS PACIFICO ALL STARS

Released 5 September 2025

Jazz re:freshed

****-

An album rooted in the diasporic soil of two continents produces a vibrant cross-Atlantic conversation, filled with shared ritual, rhythm, and joy.

Facilitated by UK jazz tastemakers Jazz re:freshed and the prolific Colombia-based label Llorona Records, Balimaya Project and Discos Pacifico All Stars bring together 15 musicians connecting the Atlantic and Pacific coasts exploring experimental Afro-diasporic soundscapes. Blending Mandé jazz with Afro-Colombian folkloric music, the collaboration explores the deep rhythmic and cultural ties between African and Latin American traditions.

Balimaya Project, known for their powerful fusion of Mandé rhythms and contemporary jazz, brings a strong foundation in West African musical heritage, incorporating instruments like the djembe and balafon to craft complex, emotive compositions rooted in community and storytelling.

Joining them from Colombia’s Pacific coast, the Discos Pacifico All Stars—featuring members of Bejuco, Semblanzas del Rio Guapi, and former members of Agrupación Changó—focus on marimba music and Afro-Colombian rhythms, channelling the energy of their ancestral sound into something fresh and globally resonant.

'Calima' centres on an international exchange, shaping a new musical narrative in real time. Together, the artists will bridge continents and generations—drawing on deep-rooted traditions while forging new sounds through collaboration, composition, and live experimentation. Reflecting on the significance of the album’s title; “Calima” is a natural phenomenon where Sahara Desert dust travels across the Atlantic, bringing nutrients that fertilise the Amazon and tropical rainforests in Latin America and the Caribbean. Like this dust, the African diaspora crossed oceans by force, but through cultural resistance kept their heritage alive – recognising each other, sharing traditions, rooting themselves, and creating new forms of expression that transform dispersal into fertile encounters of memory, beauty, and renewal.

Read more... Bandcamp, jazz:refreshed, Balimaya Project

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THE WORLD'S BEST NEW ALBUMS: UPDATED DAILY

2025 October Best New Albums