2026-01 January | SunNeverSetsOnMusic

Chapter 1

SAULT

Released 9 January 2026

Ever Living Originals

*****

A masterful soul recalibration, uniting London’s avant-garde collective with Minneapolis legends to create a shimmering, intimate, and disciplined funk-pop landscape.

Emerging in 2019, SAULT, the elusive UK collective led by producer Inflo (Dean Cover) alongside Cleo Sol (Cleopatra Zvezdana Nikolic) and Jack Peñate, refreshed, if not redefined, modern British music. Their output seamlessly weaves funk, hip-hop and gospel into urgent social commentary. Landmark releases like Untitled (Black Is) (2020) and Untitled (Rise) (2020) soundtracked global movements, while later works explored choral textures and spiritual meditation. For Chapter 1, the collective bridges generations by collaborating with legendary producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. Known for their era-defining work with Janet Jackson and Prince, Jam & Lewis bring a "Flyte Tyme" sophistication to SAULT’s DIY ethos. Despite their prolific pace and refusal to engage in traditional promotion, SAULT remains a vital cultural force. Their identity is built on collective authorship and a refusal to separate art from moral context, treating each release as a vital chapter in an ongoing social practice that remains both mysterious and essential.

Within SAULT’s dense discography, Chapter 1 does not announce itself as a turning point; it acts as a sophisticated recalibration. Moving away from the symphonic weight of Air (2022) or the choral expanse of Untitled (God) (2022), this set is compact and song-focused. The inclusion of R&B royalty Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis is a masterstroke, grounding Inflo’s experimentalism in the "funky bottom and pretty top" philosophy that defined the Minneapolis sound. The writing prioritizes melody and intimacy, often favoring understatement over grand political declaration.

Musically, the album occupies a refined middle ground. The grooves are present but softened; the arrangements feel deliberate rather than expansive. On tracks like "Protector" (co-written by Danger Mouse), the sound is layered yet lean. Vocals sit closer to the listener, as Cleo Sol and Jack Peñate sound less like communal leaders and more like conversational partners. Rather than "business as usual," the record reads as a moment of consolidation. SAULT seems less interested in widening their palette than in perfecting it.

Back and Forth

RAHEL TALTS, ROB LUFT

DONATAS PETREIKIS, MARIUSZ PRAŚNIEWSKI, JESPER LØRUP

Released 28 November 2025

Rainbow Records

*****

An unforced and luminous exchange where a quintet led by piano and guitar moves with ease, curiosity and quiet joy through a shared melodic terrain.

Estonian pianist and composer Rahel Talts has emerged as a subtle and assured voice within contemporary jazz, valued for her melodic clarity rhythmic poise and openness to dialogue. Her work often privileges interaction over assertion, creating music that unfolds through responsiveness rather than display. UK Guitarist Rob Luft is widely recognised for his harmonic imagination and lyrical touch, bringing a flexible sensibility shaped by modern jazz folk influence and thoughtful improvisation. Supporting the pair in these recordings we round out the internationalist quintet with Donatas Petreikis (Latvia) - saxophone, Mariusz Praśniewski (Poland) - double bass and Jesper Lørup (Denmark) - drums.

Composed over a year and a half following Talts’ move from Denmark to Lithuania, the music reflects a period of personal change – looking back at the past with affection while embracing the unknown of what lies ahead.

Back and Forth places the two leading musicians in direct conversation, in a setting that is underpinned by trust and built around spontaneity and the sheer pleasure of an unadorned musical exchange.

But the overriding impression is of their ease together. From the opening moments, Talts and Luft sound entirely at home with one another, allowing ideas to pass naturally between piano and guitar without hierarchy or urgency. The music flows freely, shaped by a gentle internal momentum and the players' intuitive feel for balance.

Talts’ piano work is clean and melodic, repeatedly creating motifs that invite response. Luft answers with warmth and imagination, sometimes echoing ideas, sometimes nudging them sideways into new harmonic light. With the other three ensemble members' unobtrusive support, the interaction between all players feels playful and generous, driven by curiosity. It’s music that breathes easily and invites the listener to do the same.

Rahel Talts Home Page

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Somebody Tried To Sell Me A Bridge

VAN MORRISON

Released 23 January 2026

Exile Productions

****-

Still in fine voice, the veteran stylist revisits some blues and R&B deep cuts with polish and authority, but reveals little beyond his enduring craftsmanship.

How do you fairly appraise a new release from Van the Man? At this point, now in his eighties (born 1945) and issuing his 48th studio album, the usual metrics don’t quite apply. Morrison remains in such fine voice and musical control here that you’d be forgiven for assuming these performances were pulled from some long-mislaid tape reel from decades ago. The phrasing is supple, the timing immaculate, the authority unquestionable.

This time out, Morrison delivers a straight-ahead R&B and blues (mostly) covers album, digging deep into the canon - which is better than grazing the obvious hits from his own back pages, but not as satisfying to the listener as in breaking new musical ground (new writing, fresh approach or contemporary players, for example).

However, the songbook is formidable: Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Buddy Guy & Junior Wells, John Lee Hooker, Fats Domino, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Arthur Blake, Lead Belly, Willie Dixon, B.B. King. These are not novelty choices, nor are they radical re-imaginings: they’re respectful, workmanlike readings by an artist who has lived inside this music for a lifetime.

Only a handful of tracks bear Morrison’s authorship - “Monte Carlo Blues,” “Loving Memories,” “Social Climbing Scene,” and the title track. All sit comfortably, but somewhat underwhelmingly, alongside the covers. Future interpreters of Morrison’s vast catalogue will almost certainly look elsewhere; none of these feel like songs clamouring for rediscovery.

He’s surrounded himself with fellow old stagers - Elvin Bishop, Buddy Guy, Taj Mahal - and the results are professional, assured, and largely predictable. There are no missteps here, but no surprises either. Morrison, having emerged unscathed from the reputational wobble of his COVID-era polemics with Eric Clapton, sounds focused and entirely himself again. Yet that very professionalism is arguably limiting.

For an artist in whose work the blues once felt omnipresent (a life's force, rather than a mere genre), this album reveals nothing new.

As tributes go, it’s sincere but safe. Somebody Tried To Sell Me A Bridge ultimately sits alongside those mid-career Morrison records, often surrounded by Georgie Fame’s band, in which he paid homage to various chapters of the jazz and R&B songbook. Solid. Enjoyable. Respectable.

But from Van Morrison, that can still feel faintly disappointing.

Glimmers Continued

VELVET TRIP

Released 30 January 2026

Zeppelin Hamilton

****-

Velvet Trip turns an EP into an album by adding five tracks and doubling-down on their neo-psychedelic sweet spot, preferring refinement and clarity to reinvention.

Sydney based group Velvet Trip led by main-stay Zeppelin Hamilton and supported by collaborators Clayton Allen and Agnostics (Nicholas Anagnostis) produce a body of work that sits comfortably within contemporary neo-psychedelia, drawing comparisons to acts such as Tame Impala and Khruangbin, but beginning to forge a unique identity. Their 2024 debut Harmony Blooms established the project’s core qualities: melodic flow, understated grooves and an uncluttered production style that blends electronic and organic elements. Although Harmony Blooms was shaped in part by necessity, with Hamilton’s hand injuries prompting a move away from traditional guitar writing toward MIDI-based composition, the shift has became integral to the group's sound, rather than a limitation.

Glimmers Continued functioning as a five-track extension of 2025’s Glimmers EP, follows this pattern - a companion to their debut rather than a standalone reinvention.
“Superstar” opens the album quietly, taking almost a full minute to find its footing, and groove locks in. That patience pays off, as the five tracks made up the original Glimmers EP, play out uninterrupted.

The final of these, “The Bends” (an original song, not a Radiohead cover) owes much to Daft Punk’s Get Lucky in both pulse and phrasing but is executed with enough restraint to avoid feeling derivative.

The sequence of new tracks "Another Life", "Tell Me Why", "Burnin' Up", Fr3o" and "Let Go", is perfectly weighted to exemplify Velvet Tip's advancing capabilities. The production is smooth and unforced, letting basslines, rhythm and synths do the quiet, heavy lifting.

The album closes with “It’s All For You”, easily its most affecting moment: a hauntingly sung ballad over distorted organ backing, sounding like a radio broadcast from the past.

As it's unassuming title suggest, "Glimmers Continued" doesn’t succeed due to grandeur or overstatement. Instead, this is an album to enjoy with friends, under headphones or as the perfect soundtrack for a long, afternoon drive.

Velvet Trip Home Page

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In the name of the father, the Imam & John Lennon

TAMER NAFAR

Released 20 January 2025

Levantine Music / Tamer Nafar

****-

The Palestinian artist's first English-language album, released at a pivotal moment - raw, reflective, historically rooted and defiantly human in its reach.

Tamer Nafar is one of hip-hop’s most recognised voices from the Middle East, a founding member of DAM - widely considered the first Palestinian hip-hop group - and a long-standing figure in political rap and cultural storytelling. Born and raised in Lyd, (the Arabic name of Lod, a bustling 5,000-year-old Palestinian town that was taken over when Israel was established in 1948), Nafar helped shape a generation of Palestinian artists and activists by blending hip-hop with social critique and lived experience in Arabic, Hebrew and English across a career now approaching three decades.

With his new album, "In the Name of the Father, the Imam & John Lennon", Nafar issues his first full English-language album, a milestone situated at a significant moment in the history of the region where politics, identity and narrative urgency collide. According to HyphenOnline, the record was largely written and recorded before the pandemic and saw Nafar revisit his early connection to English hip-hop, a language he first learned by listening to Tupac and working through an English–Arabic dictionary, as a way to foreground nuance, metaphor and historical depth in every verse.

The album represents both a culmination and a new beginning. HyphenOnline adds that this is a record that Nafar “didn’t release for nostalgia” but because the time felt right “for politics, generational trauma, all of it, to come together in one album.” That impulse animates every track, a mixture of reflection, critique and personal reckoning that doesn’t shy away from complexity.

The album opens with “The Beat Never Goes Off”, a collaborative statement that places Nafar alongside younger voices such as Gazan rapper MC Abdul and vocalist Noel Kharman, demonstrating a through-line between experience and emerging perspectives. “Go There” draws on UK drill's heavy bass line techniques as it confronts structural neglect and rising community pressures, grounding the political urgency in contemporary expression.

Importantly, the English language isn’t used cosmetically, but as a tool. Nafar tells Hyphen that English allows him to shape “punchlines, wordplay, metaphors, allegories” in ways that push emotional and intellectual nuance forward, rather than diluting his message. "Change the world for me", Nafar's duet with DAS bandmate Maysa Daw, the penultimate track, is a late-album pearl. The title track itself, a meditation on memory, absence and inherited belief, underscores that blend: remembering a father who played both Qur’an recitations and Beatles records, Nafar locates his own story between conviction and curiosity, reverence and critique.

The result is an album that doesn’t settle for slogans or simplifications. It’s introspective and combative, personal yet resonant, at once a continuation of the political art Nafar has long practised and a distinct new chapter in his voice’s evolution.

Take Me As I Am

DAMES BROWN

Released 21 January 2026

Defected Records

****-

Detroit soul in full voice, rooted in community and collaboration, carried by three singers who, on debut, know exactly who they are.

Dames Brown comes straight out of Detroit’s modern soul ecosystem, and you can hear it in how naturally they sit inside the music. Athena Johnson, Teresa Marbury and LaRae aren’t poseurs chasing revivalist aesthetics - they're singers who’ve grown up inside a tradition, respect its heritage and have the grace to wear it lightly. Early on, the late Detroit singer, songwriter, keyboardist and record producer, the late Amp Fiddler (1958-2023) recognised their instinct and became a crucial supporter, collaborator and guide. He was instrumental in connecting the group to the wider network of musicians, producers and writers that orbit Detroit’s funk and soul lineage. This sense of community still defines Dames Brown’s presentation and sound.

As you might expect from this journey, Take Me As I Am doesn’t try to reinvent a wheel. Instead, it presents fourteen strong songs, brim-full of honest vocals and lived-in grooves, with nothing over-polished. It is all about feel. Johnson, Marbury and LaRae have the space to work their chemistry - blending, punching, gliding, stepping forward and always sounding connected. Harmonies are full and expressive, letting the songs breathe, surge and land naturally.

The wider circle of collaborators follow that same approach: bass lines stay warm and steady, drums lock in without fuss and keyboards add colour rather than clutter.

What really sells the album is its directness. These songs don’t rely on drama or retro spectacle. They say what they mean and trust the voices to carry it. A joyous celebration of Detroit’s musical heartbeat and a deeply personal tribute to their late mentor and producer, Amp Fiddler, Take Me As I Am presents a contemporary take on Detroit soul doing what it’s always done best - staying grounded, staying human and sounding better every time you come back to it.

Yatta!

YĪN YĪN

Released 23 January 2026

Glitterbeat Records

****-

An imaginative, disco-inflected brand of psychedelic groove music, composed with a wanderer’s soul, underpinned in playfulness,

YĪN YĪN are a Dutch quartet from Maastricht known for blending disco, funk, surf, world music and psychedelic sound into something both retro-friendly and forward-leaning. Their fourth studio album Yatta! continues a sonic path established across earlier releases, from their 2019 debut The Rabbit That Hunts Tigers (2019) through The Age of Aquarius (2022) to 2024’s breakthrough Mount Matsu, all built on a kaleidoscope of global influences and unhurried grooves.

For Yatta!, the band’s core lineup Kees Berkers (drums), Remy Scheren (bass), Erik Bandt (guitar) and Jerry Scheren (keyboard), extends its explorations, adding richer textural interests and rhythmic flair while keeping attention on movement and feel. The quartet’s devotion to blending “global sounds” into dance-friendly music, a quality noted in press descriptions of Yatta!, positions them uniquely between thoughtful psychedelia and instinctive groove - in a growing musical movement that includes Khruangbin, Surprise Chef, Home On Stilts, Altin Gün, Glass Beams and many more.

Yatta! feels like a road trip across imagined continents, guided by a band that genuinely delights in colour and rhythm.

From the syncopated opener “In Search of Yang” through to the breezy closer “Mooncake Melody”, the album balances immediacy and exploration. YĪN YĪN’s groove, already deep on Mount Matsu, is even more pronounced here, intensifying the dancefloor impulse without flattening the music’s personality.

“Spirit Adapter” bridges funk bounce with shoegaze warmth, while “Lecker Song” pushes analog disco of the infectious kind. “Yata Yata” and “Night in Taipei” add a playful edge, the latter evoking cinematic late-night streets and “Kasumi’s Quest” lean whimsically into the realm of a retro video game. Throughout these journeys, minimalist percussion and rumbling bass sit alongside jangly guitar and spacey keyboard lines, suggesting influences as wide as Italo disco and Southeast Asian psych guitar traditions.

Yosef Gutman Home Page

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Resisei Lyla

YOSEF GUTMAN

Released 16 January 2025

Soul Song Records

****-

Modest, soulful playing that radiates a thoughtful beauty: a bright colored land of sound that’s drawn by the quill of the soul, tradition and world music influences.

Yosef Gutman Home Page

Play Jazz 3

THE ROOKIES

Released 16 January 2026

The Rookies

****-

This sharp-nosed Melbourne quintet digs deep into jazz history, playing it from all angles, with irresistible energy & affection.

The Rookies are a Naarm/Melbourne-based quintet whose modest name belies a quietly serious body of work. Since 2018, alto saxophonist Greg Sher, trumpeter Tom Sly, pianist Joel Trigg, bassist Anton Schulz and drummer-percussionist Chris Cameron have built a catalogue that reflects both technical assurance and historical curiosity. Their ongoing Play Jazz series has become a kind of open workshop, using repertoire as a way to engage directly with the music’s past, rather than simply reference it. What sets The Rookies apart is their ease with and approach to the tradition - neither unduly reverent or overawed, without irony and ever-alert. They understand jazz as a living language, shaped as much by deep cuts and overlooked figures as by the canonical names. Play Jazz 3 continues that approach, broadening the scope while sharpening the group’s collective identity.

Play Jazz 3 finds The Rookies leaning fully into their role as interpreters, historians and mischief-makers. The selections alone tell you this isn’t a nostalgia exercise. Alongside familiar touchstones like John Coltrane, the band draws from figures often left in the margins: Lonnie Liston Smith, Mary Lou Williams (“the often overlooked mother of bebop”) and Frank Gordon of The Awakening, “one of jazz history’s most criminally underrated spiritual conduits.” There’s also room for the sly New York humour of John Lurie and Erik Sanko’s Lounge Lizards, and a nod to homegrown lineage through fellow Australian John Scurry, neatly “connecting the dots between St. Louis and St. Kilda.”

The playing is tight but never rigid. Sher and Sly handle frontline duties with keen awareness of the balance between clarity and looseness, while Trigg’s piano work anchors the band without crowding it. Schulz and Cameron give the music buoyancy and forward motion, comfortable shifting between swing, abstraction and groove.

Their own Bandcamp has it in a nutshell: "Both earnest and irreverent, intimate and extroverted, The Rookies offer an album that shines a light on the forgotten history of the music that shaped the modern era––an art form that continues to transmit an encoded message of humanity’s salvation. In an age of noise, The Rookies play jazz."

The Rookies Play Jazz

Julianna Barwick Home Page

Tragic Magic

JULIANNA BARWICK, MARY LATTIMORE

Released 16 January 2026

InFine

****-

A freeform dialogue between voice and instrument and a meditation on tragedy, wonder, and the restorative power of shared experience.

Tragic Magic brings together Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore, two of contemporary ambient, experimental and electronic music’s most celebrated composers, for a unique collaboration at the Philharmonie de Paris, with extraordinary access to the Musée de la Musique’s instrument collection, in partnership with the French label InFiné. The album features seven immersive, evocative compositions guided by the human spirit – intimate, grounded in friendship, both earthly and cosmic – and part of a greater continuum, reflecting the solace and transformative power of artistry across generations.

Co-produced by Trevor Spencer (Fleet Foxes, Beach House), Tragic Magic was created in just nine days, a testament to the “musical telepathy” that has developed between Barwick and Lattimore over years of touring and friendship. Arriving in Paris from Los Angeles shortly after the 2025 wildfires, their sessions combined improvisation with the emotions and experiences they carried, in a setting both inspiring and deeply supportive. Lattimore selected harps tracing the instrument’s evolution from 1728 to 1873, while Barwick chose several iconic analog synthesizers, including the Roland JUPITER and Sequential Circuits PROPHET-5.

The duo, often joined by Spencer, also explored the city, sharing meals and visiting museums and landmarks, each encounter leaving an impression on their next session. The experience allowed them to work intimately with rare instruments, blending their personal sensibilities with centuries of history, resulting in music that honors the past while remaining a deeply authentic expression of the present.
Throughout Tragic Magic, Barwick and Lattimore find something beyond themselves: a sense that while everything may not be okay, beauty persists. Their approach – transforming life into music, observing, feeling, and creating – continues a lineage of creative expression and visionary invention, embodied in the very instruments they employed for this project.

Mary Lattimore Home Page

Fabiano do Nascimento Home Page

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Aquáticos

FABIANO DO NASCIMENTO, E RUSCHE V

Released 16 January 2026

Easy Eye Sound / Concord

****-

A fluid meeting of Afro-Brazilian guitar and cosmic electronics, unfolding through intuition, interplay and an unusually strong sense of shared flow.

Fabiano do Nascimento is a Brazilian guitarist and composer whose work is deeply informed by Afro-samba and choro traditions, often performed on extended-range nylon-string guitars that allow him to blur harmony rhythm and melody. Now based in Los Angeles, his recent output has shown a growing interest in studio-based collaboration that preserves the physicality of live playing.

Eddie Ruscha, working here under his own name rather than Secret Circuit or E Ruscha V, brings a contrasting but complementary approach rooted in modular synthesis drum machines and vintage keyboards. Music From Memory present Aquáticos as the beginning of a partnership rather than a one-off project, describing it as “an organic, free-spirited collaboration full of interplay and vitality.” Conceived in the early 2020s, the album took shape gradually across multiple sessions, guided less by concept than by responsiveness between the two musicians.

Aquáticos is built around moments of instinctive connection. The opening track “Nascer” (“the very first piece they recorded”) sets the tone immediately, pairing Fabiano’s 7 and 10-string nylon guitars with Ruscha’s modular synths drum machines and vintage keyboards. The combination is unusually fluid: guitar lines weave rather than lead, while the electronics pulse and bubble underneath, creating movement without pressure.

That first session established what the Bandcamp text calls “a template of intuitive interplay and musical freedom”, and the album develops by returning to that idea rather than complicating it.

Across nine tracks, the music feels as though it is discovering itself in real time. Melodic ideas recur and mutate gently, rhythmic figures breathe, and no element insists on prominence. Like Ruscha’s work elsewhere, the electronic textures are groove-driven but soft-edged, giving Fabiano’s guitar space to remain tactile and expressive.

The Brazilian influence is explicit in the guitar language, but Aquáticos never frames itself as fusion. Instead, it operates as “a celebration of musical conversation”, where instruments respond more than they declare. The result is immersive without becoming ambient, playful without losing focus, a record shaped by trust and momentum rather than design.

The James Hunter Six Home Page

Off The Wall

THE JAMES HUNTER SIX

Released 16 January 2025

Easy Eye Sound / Concord

****-

Long-hailed soul meets fresh energy, a record rooted in classic R&B shaping a timeless feel that still moves the body and heart.

Off The Fence is the eleventh studio album by British soul singer-songwriter James Hunter and his long-standing ensemble The James Hunter Six, and his first release on Dan Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound imprint.

Hunter’s career spans more than four decades, from early R&B and blues roots to a global reputation as one of the UK’s most distinctive soul voices, praised for smooth control and gritty expression.

This album continues that trajectory, featuring twelve original songs anchored in rhythm & soul, jump blues and Northern Soul-inflected grooves.

Standout moments include a rare duet with Hunter’s longtime collaborator Van Morrison on “Ain’t That A Trip,” marking a full-circle moment decades after early work together on Morrison’s records. The band, featuring Myles Weeks (double bass), Rudy Albin Petschauer (drums), Andrew Kingslow (keys, percussion), Michael Buckley (baritone sax) and Drew Vanderwinckel (tenor sax), delivers arrangements that shape each song with precision and warmth, showcasing Hunter’s knack for melodic detail and feel.

Off The Fence feels like both a celebration and a steady refinement of what The James Hunter Six do best. From the opening “Two Birds One Stone,” with its buoyant rhythm and sly lyrical twist, to songs that lean into tender reflection, this is music that rewards head-nodding and wholehearted listening in equal measure.

Across twelve tracks, Hunter’s voice remains the unmistakable centrepiece, capable of scuffed-edge grit one moment and velvet-smooth croon the next, while the band spin grooves that honour classic soul forms without feeling merely retro.

Hunter’s lyricism mixes earnestness with wry wordplay, a quality highlighted in his song “Particular,” which takes a simple phrase and turns it into a playful rumination on love and life. Elsewhere, “Gun Shy” pairs tongue-tied affection with a bluesy sax solo that underscores the band’s tight chemistry and respect for tradition. The infectious “A Sure Thing,” with its nod to Northern Soul bounce, sits comfortably beside the slower, atmospheric pieces “Here And Now,” a love song built around lilting guitar and understated groove.

Essence

IMARHAN

Released 16 January 2025

Wedge / City Slang

****-

Desert blues refined by a band stretching its language to wider horizons and electronic colour, without losing its soul.

Imarhan are a Tuareg group from Tamanrasset in southern Algeria, part of a generation extending the region’s rich guitar tradition into contemporary settings. Their name, in the Tamasheq language, suggests intimacy and care (“the ones I care about”), and their music historically blends dry guitar riffs, pan-African rhythms and melodic pop sense rooted in local tradition. Essam is their fourth album and marks a subtle but significant shift in sound and approach: after three albums of blues-inflected, psychedelic desert rock, the band worked with long-time engineer Maxime Kosinetz and French multi-instrumentalist Emile Papandreou to introduce electronic elements such as sampled live instruments processed through modular synthesiser, creating a more open, exploratory sonic world.

Recorded in their own Aboogi Studio, the album (it's title meaning “lightning”) preserves the communal energy of friends and neighbours, who contribute handclaps, vocals and atmosphere, all the while expanding the band’s palette beyond the traditional, live-recorded framework , but not dissolving it.
From the languid opener “Ahitmanin” through to the sprawling “Assagasswar”, the band maintains the cyclical guitar motifs and rhythmic warmth that have defined their earlier work, while weaving in electronic textures that broaden the music’s horizon. The modular treatments and subtle synth colours add space without overwhelming the live band feel, letting ancient lineage and modern touch co-exist.

Standout tracks such as “Derhan N’Oulhine” and “Azaman Amoutay” showcase the band’s hypnotic interplay: repeated guitar figures and layered percussion feel meditative even at a steady pace. The third track, “Tellalt” (named for a rare Saharan acacia wood) drifts with nostalgic warmth, its tone evoking desert dusk as much as memory itself.

The extended grooves allow the band’s multiple voices to breathe and respond, retaining the communal immediacy of their previous records while inviting new textures and mood shifts.

What Essam offers most clearly is continuity through change. Imarhan haven’t abandoned their roots in Assouf and desert blues; they’ve simply broadened the frame around it, letting electronics and extended colour sit alongside sand-hardened guitar and rhythm. The result is an engaging, mature record that respects tradition and curiosity in equal measure - music that feels rooted yet expansive.

Dino d'Santiago Home Page

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The Solastalgia Suite

KRIS DAVIS AND THE LUTOSLAWSKI QUARTET

Released 9 January 2026

Pyroclastic Records

****-

A contemporary jazz suite responding to ecological unease and collective anxiety. What surprises is how clarity and emotional directness emerge from music of such scale and conceptual weight.

Kris Davis is a Canadian born pianist composer and bandleader now based in New York, widely recognised as one of the most formidable creative voices in contemporary jazz and improvised music. Her work is distinguished by rhythmic acuity structural ambition and a willingness to engage with extra musical ideas without sacrificing musical integrity. Davis has written extensively for ensembles ranging from solo piano to large groups, often addressing social political and environmental themes through sound. As both composer and improviser, she balances intellectual rigor with visceral impact.

The Solastalgia Suite represents one of her most expansive compositional undertakings, drawing together a large ensemble to explore emotional responses to environmental loss and instability. Its name derives from a term describing the distress caused by environmental change close to home, and Davis treats this idea with seriousness rather than abstraction. The suite unfolds in distinct movements, each shaped by sharply etched ensemble writing and moments of improvisational release. Dense orchestration gives way to exposed passages where individual voices surface briefly, as if searching for footing.

Despite its scale, the music never feels overloaded. Davis’ writing is precise and purposeful, allowing complexity to serve expression rather than overwhelm it. Rhythms fracture and reassemble, harmonies tilt and stretch, yet there is a strong sense of forward motion throughout. The ensemble plays with urgency and commitment, conveying tension without theatrical excess.

What is most striking is the emotional clarity that emerges. Beneath the angularity and shifting forms lies a sustained human response: unease grief resolve and, occasionally, fragile hope. The suite does not offer solutions, but it articulates feeling with conviction and care.

This is an ambitious and deeply felt work; intellectually rigorous yet emotionally accessible, it confirms Kris Davis as a composer capable of translating complex contemporary realities into music that resonates beyond concept.

CRIOLO, AMARO E DINO

CRIOLO, AMARO FREITAS, DINO D'SANTIAGO

Released 15 January 2026

Criolo Producoes

****-

Three singular voices meet on shared ground, where Brazilian song jazz intuition and Lusophone soul lock into something quietly powerful.

Criolo, Amaro Freitas and Dino d’Santiago each arrive with distinct artistic identities shaped by place history and social engagement.

Criolo is one of Brazil’s most influential contemporary artists, emerging from São Paulo’s hip hop scene before expanding into samba soul MPB and politically charged songwriting.

Amaro Freitas is a Recife based pianist whose work has reimagined jazz piano through Afro Brazilian rhythm spiritual jazz and compositional rigor.

Dino d’Santiago bridges Cape Verdean heritage with Portuguese pop electronic music and R&B, often foregrounding questions of identity diaspora and belonging.

Though their paths differ, all three transcend the limits of genre and share a commitment to music as lived expression. Criolo, Amaro e Dino is not a supergroup statement but a meeting of equals, shaped by listening, exchange and mutual respect.

The album is built around restraint and space, so that voice piano and rhythm interact without one dominant. Criolo’s vocals anchor the record emotionally, his phrasing conversational and grounded, often carrying more weight through tone than lyric density. Amaro Freitas resists the urge to dominate, favouring sparse figures rhythmic nudges and harmonic colour that subtly reshape the songs’ emotional contours. Dino d’Santiago brings a different warmth, his vocal presence and melodic instincts softening edges and opening the music outward.

The music draws subtly on Brazilian song forms, jazz improvisation and Lusophone soul, as tracks unfold patiently, often circling a single idea.

Criolo Home Page

Amaro Freitas Home Page

Bandcamp

Anagnorisis

DWIKI DHARMAWAN, GILAD ATZMON

Released 16 January 2026

Moonjune Music

****-

A genuinely international collaboration rooted in Indonesian musical thought that unfolds with a shared trust, clarity of purpose.

Dwiki Dharmawan is one of Indonesia’s most respected contemporary musicians, an artist used to moving between popular and serious music while carrying the melodic and rhythmic complexity of the Indonesian archipelago into global contexts. Celebrated in those islands for bridging traditional and modern, he has increasingly embraced the role of cultural ambassador abroad - a role that is made explicit on Anagnorisis, partly supported by the Indonesian Embassy in Athens.

His musical journey includes numerous expansive projects and collaborations with musicians from disparate cultures, typically to the enrichment of all parties.

Anagnorisis (Greek for “recognition”) is built around the idea of mutual understanding. It brings Dharmawan together with Israeli-born saxophonist Gilad Atzmon and a quartet of Greek musicians, forming what the Bandcamp text describes as “a meta-music of depth, beauty, and vitality that transcends mere collage”. Despite the international lineup and multiple production hands involved, the music never sounds assembled for effect. Instead, it unfolds with ease, reflecting “an inherent mutual trust and deep respect for one another as both people and musicians”.

Indonesian musical thinking anchors the album throughout. On “Gambang Ney,” Near Eastern flute timbres stand in for Southeast Asian counterparts, while “Pacu Javi” draws on rhythmic subdivision and acceleration associated with classical gamelan practice. Elsewhere, the mood shifts fluidly: “Perjuangan” moves with a pastoral calm that “evokes memories of the late ECM piano master John Taylor”, while “Jazz For Freeport” leans into rambunctious free-bop energy.

Even in the freely improvised “Ya Kita Bisa,” the emphasis remains collective rather than virtuosic. As the Bandcamp notes stress, “no single player dominates”. The album’s strength lies in how attentively its voices listen, respond and align.

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Fly Before You Buy

LOPHAE

Released 9 January 2026

Gregory J E Sanders

****-

A playful and self aware continuation of a fast moving creative run. The surprise is how reflection emerges without slowing the pace.

Imagine More

LOPHAE

Released 3 October 2025

Gregory J E Sanders

****-

A warmer and more focused second chapter shaped by familiarity and trust. What deepens the impact is how affection replaces uncertainty without losing spontaneity.

Perfect Strangers

LOPHAE

Released 24 January 2025

Gregory J E Sanders

****-

An unguarded debut rooted in immediacy and shared space. Its surprise lies in how quickly strangers begin to sound like confidants.

LOPHAE (pronounced “low-fi”) is a prolific UK based collective - a supergroup of sorts - that draws upon a broad spectrum of influences and sensibilities, operating at the intersection of lo-fi aesthetics, jazz and indie songcraft.

Featuring the unmistakable compositions of guitarist and bandleader Greg Sanders, the core group includes drummer Ben Brown, bass player Tom Herbert and saxophonist Sam Rapley, four uniquely expressive and sensitive improvisers.

Their Bandcamp profiles set it out:

Sanders – known for his work with Juanita Euka and Teotima – brings a unique aesthetic and an unmistakable feel to every musical setting he appears in. His writing and playing combine melodic elegance with rhythmic complexity, and provide a lush foundation for improvisation and dialogue. He also has a tried and tested talent for bringing together specific constellations of extraordinary musicians to interpret his original music.

Drummer Ben Brown, who brings wide-reaching rhythm expertise, honed while performing with Ethio-Jazz legend Mulatu Astatke and leading his own group Waaju. Brown’s intricate playing propels the band with absolute confidence and fierce energy.

Bass player Tom Herbert, who is a mainstay of the UK jazz scene, known for his work with The Invisible, Polar Bear, London Brew and Acoustic Ladyland. Herbert is much in-demand for his unparalleled ability to ground any musical situation with his massive sound, beautiful tone, highly-tuned sensitivity and unceasing musical curiosity.

Saxophonist Sam Rapley, who possesses a lyrical flair and a relaxed mastery of his instrument in the vein of tenor giants such as Stan Getz and Sonny Rollins. Rapley weaves seamlessly between textural and melodic roles with understated skill and grace.

Emerging fully formed in 2025, their defining feature is their intuitive interaction as players, coupled with proficiency in output: two (or is it three?) albums released in the space of a year, each responding to the moment, yet complete unto itself.

LOPHAE’s music favours feel over intensity, but that's not at the expense of excellence or polish. Across these albums, we see a new ensemble emerge and coalesce with friendship, humour and camaraderie.

From its first moments, Perfect Strangers delivers compelling, danceable grooves, yet it is a record that will reward multiple listens and deep engagement. The inflections you hear will depend on the music you know and love, but this record is full of moments that will resonate, creating that feeling that you have indeed discovered rare and beautiful treasure.

A strong second album is always something to celebrate, the continuation of a joyful thing. The album is released under various titles (Spotify has a 6 track "To Friends" version and a 7 track "Fry Before You Buy" version, while Bandcamp sells an 8 track "Imagine More" version).

As Aodren Pecnard (of djolo.net ) writes, Lophae’s music, “tells the story of the obstinacy of Greg Sanders, who suffers from a chronic illness ME/CFS and refuses to keep quiet about the music he plays. (It’s a) work of resilience, in which every note becomes an act of belief.”

This music is one of Sanders’s ways of finding and making meaning against the low-level hum of absurdity in the background; and while the album as a whole (and the composition in particular) bristles with wry wit and deep intelligence, the joy abounds.

YouTube

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Dolce Vita

LOUIS MATUTE

Released 9 January 2026

naive / Association Encontro

****-

A record shaped by collaboration and cultural inheritance, that confidently holds together across a wide musical vocabulary of influences.

Louis Matute is a Geneva born guitarist and composer whose work is closely tied to and influenced by migration, travel and ensemble playing. Leading his Large Ensemble, a collective of young Franco Swiss musicians, Matute has developed a sound that blends European jazz sensibilities with groove, Caribbean, rock and vintage textures. His surname derives from a Latin heritage that has become central to his music, shaped through extended time spent in Spain, Cuba, Costa Rica, Honduras and Brazil.

Dolce Vita was recorded in March 2025 at La Frette Studios outside Paris - a space known for its rock music pedigree - and completed in Brazil, bringing together long standing Large Ensemble collaborators, alongside guest vocalists Joyce Moreno, Dora Morelenbaum, Gabi Hartmann and Rico TK.

This is an album grounded in place. It carries a lived-in warmth that suits Matute’s writing. The Large Ensemble provides a flexible core, with Nathan Vandenbulcke’s drumming giving the music much of its propulsion and elasticity. His playing anchors tracks that move easily between groove-driven passages and more open jazz forms.

Specific voices shape the album’s identity. Zacharie Ksyk’s trumpet brings bite and urgency, particularly on Tegucigalpa 72, while Léon Phal’s tenor saxophone adds a darker, smouldering tone elsewhere. The presence of Brazilian singers Joyce Moreno and Dora Morelenbaum deepen the album’s connection to Brazil, reinforcing Matute’s ongoing dialogue with Latin American music.

What holds the record together is commitment of all the players involved, allowing the various influences to coexist without flattening into fusion. The result is expansive but coherent, personal without becoming inward.

Dolce Vita is a confident and generous album that captures Louis Matute at a point where ambition and clarity meet, producing music that feels both exploratory and fully inhabited.

Louis Mutate Home Page

FLUGEL

ANDRIS MATTSON

Released 2 January 2026

Sonar Music

****-

A warm and soulful exploration of the flugelhorn’s expressive potential , through the conjunction of mournful lyricism, nuance and technical experimentation.

"Combine the flugelhorn with the harmonic interface of an accordion"
That is what Mattson set out to do in the summer of 2025. And through much experimentation and trial and error, the "flucordion" was born. What followed was an extended period of exploration into the instrument’s harmonic and compositional possibilities.

Whereas previous records by Mattson (with more production heavy approaches) took many months or years to complete, FLUGEL was different. For him, the spirit of the flucordion has always been, at its core, a live, one-take instrument. Both the album and its accompanying short film (released on YouTube) were created with this ethos in mind.

FLUGEL (German for "wing") was recorded in Mattson’s living room over a few days in November 2025 and released a few weeks later.

Jono Ma / Sonar Home Page

Higher Together (EP)

(Sydney NYE Fireworks 2025/6)

JONO MA

Released 19 December 2025

Sonar Music

****-

A rare instance of fireworks music that feels structurally and emotionally aligned with the display: immersive electronic choreography for sound and light in true partnership.

Jono Ma is a composer, producer and performer whose work bridges club, electronic, ambient and experimental approaches. Known for his rhythmic precision sound design and creative adaptability across contexts, he creates music that is both physical and expressive. Higher Together was commissioned for Sydney’s New Year’s Eve 2025-26 fireworks, a context where music too often defaults to surface spectacle. Rather than opting for familiar orchestral tropes or tired pop cues, Ma embraces contemporary electronic idioms, shaping sound that interlocks with the pyrotechnic sequence itself. The result is music conceived from the outset as choreography in time, integrating sonic motion with visual flourish.

Higher Together is notable because it refuses to be merely an accompaniment. From its opening moments there is a sense of purposeful momentum, rhythms and textures engineered to resonate with both the heavens and the bodies watching below. The EP moves through a series of distinct yet interrelated sections, each matched to the arc of the Sydney midnight spectacle: anticipation further lift and the eventual release.

Ma’s palette blends deep pulse with ambient wash, propulsive rhythm with crystalline tension. Synthesisers are sculpted to suggest both breadth and precision, while bass-driven grooves give forward motion without overwhelming nuance. There’s a generosity of space too — not emptiness, but structural breathing room that allows transitions to land and thematic ideas to unfold.

The music never feels like a backdrop. Instead it asserts a choreographic logic of its own, shaping and shaped by the fireworks it accompanies. It also works as a standalone listening experience, rhythmic enough to hold attention yet rich in textural detail upon repeated plays.

Higher Together is a distinctive and successful commission: electronic music for spectacle that feels thoughtfully composed and deeply connected to its context. It stands as one of the more artful approaches to music for public display in recent memory.

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Sumbisori

TEMPORARY BLESSINGS

Released 5 December 2025

College Of Knowledge Records

****-

Cinematic soul for curious ears a Melbourne ensemble realises noir, giallo and library music traditions with warmth, drama and collective flair.

Temporary Blessings is a new project from Naarm/Melbourne trumpet player and composer Liam McGorry, assembling trusted collaborators from the city’s rich cinematic soul scene to realise a distinct musical vision.

Their debut album, Sumbisori draws deeply on “1960s Italian & French soundtrack music” - film noir, giallo and library music, filtering their influences through Melbourne’s improvisational and soul-inflected sensibilities. McGorry’s musical history runs through groups like Surprise Chef, Dorsal Fins and Saskwatch, and he has worked alongside Sampa The Great, Ella Thompson and others as a core figure in the local scene.

Around him, the ensemble for Sumbisori includes members of fellow travellers Surprise Chef, Karate Boogaloo, Saskwatch and Let Your Hair Down. The recordings were captured live in one room, reflecting what McGorry describes as “a shared spirit”, a thoughtful fusion of cinematic reference and ensemble conversation.

From the opening title to the closing “Denouement”, the album’s 10 tracks unfold like chapters in a score, with McGorry’s trumpet often acting as a narrative thread rather than spotlight focal point. This is music shaped by texture and movement: strings and horns move together with a painterly logic, and rhythm sections are steady but never formulaic, giving the pieces a sense of forward momentum without urgency.

The LP truly leans into its soundtrack lineage. “Fata Morgana” drifts with a haze that evokes late night cityscapes; “Solitary Islands Theme” could easily accompany a slow, atmospheric scene; and “Dennouement” closes with a patient sense of resolution rather than dramatic finality. Production choices underline this – the ensemble was “captured live in one room”, lending the record warmth and an intimacy that feels more like collective breathing than staged performance.

What makes Temporary Blessings’ debut compelling is how it balances homage with presence. The nods to Italian and French soundtrack music are clear, but the record never simply mimics a past era. Instead, it translates those references through the group’s own chemistry and McGorry’s seasoned compositional touch. This results in an LP that’s evocative and mood-rich without resorting to cliché — music that rewards both active listening and ambient enjoyment.

Stephen Cummings Home Page

Joy (EP)

STEPHEN CUMMINGS

Released 21 November 2025

Cheersquad Records

****-

A short, satisfying set of deep-cut covers, delivered with a mix of determination and hope, in a character-filled, life-formed voice.

For many of us ("of a certain age"), Stephen Cummings has been a beloved musical presence for all our adult lives. Some of us were around for his formative years with the band-spawning stamping-ground The Pelaco Brothers, but he strutted into most of our consciousness on the airwaves, on 3RRR, and in Melbourne's inner city pubs and halls. He was the stylish one out in front of The Sports, urging "Don't Throw Stones" and ironically, pleading "Who Listens To The Radio" and singing "Reckless", "Boys! (What Did The Detective Say?)" and (my favourite of them all) "Cruisin' in a Citroen" - wherein he memorably rhymes "Bardot" and "radio".

Short-lived, the band produced four critically acclaimed albums in as many years, but commercial success failed to materialise in that overcrowded era of rising talents. Cummings' solo career followed, with release of "Senso" (1984) and about 20 more albums of a restless kind of singer-songwriter of R&B and three novels in the three decades that have followed.

Following a stroke while performing in March 2020, Cummings undertook rehabilitation and courageously returned to recording, releasing "100 Years From Now" in May 2023. In our review of the album we wrote, "The album is a collection of co-writes that put Cummings’ post-stroke physical condition to the fore, both musically and lyrically. The effect of Stephen’s stroke on his singing adds a layer of bittersweet heartbreak to his already emotive style."

"Joy" takes up where "100 Years..." left off, presenting fresh interpretations of four deep cuts from other Australian artists, songs originated and recorded at various times between 1971 and 2021 by Mike Rudd (Spectrum), Jess Ribeiro, Graeme Dunn & Jude McGee (Pel Mel), and Dusty Anastassiou (Dag).

These are songs that address the challenges and uncertainties that life throws our way. Their lyrics respond with a mix of determination and hope, delivered in a character-filled, life-formed voice: "Walking on the water Lying on the sand Living in the balance Placing my heart in my hands"... "Been feeling unwell, though in time I know I'm gonna be better"... "No word from China, no sign from the keeper I tried to sleep, excuses of mine"... Is this the land for which I’m seeking? Must I travel on? The answer lies within you Your searching must continue".

Long may you continue to do so Stephen Cummings - and so continue to inspire. Keep cruisin'.

Father Mother Sister Brother Wikipedia

Sendas

OMAR SOSA

Released 21 November 2025

Sosafunka Music

****-

A hushed, inward-looking piano meditation recorded early in the COVID pandemic, in which Sosa's gentle engagement of silence, voice and keyboard touch creates a language of resilience and prayer.

Omar Sosa is a Cuban-born pianist, composer and bandleader whose career has been defined by his fearless synthesis of musical styles and cultures - weaving Afro-Cuban, jazz, West African, Andean and contemporary improvised music into an ever-evolving personal language. Since relocating to Europe (now based in Barcelona), Sosa has continued to broaden his palette, collaborating with percussionists, vocalists and instrumentalists from diverse traditions.

"Sendas" ("Paths") is a heartfelt set of solo piano improvisations recorded at Fazioli Concert Hall in northern Italy in 2020 during the initial shock of the COVID pandemic. For Omar Sosa, with every stage silenced, the only way to release the tempest raging within was through the universal language of music. Each note became a sigh, a raw cry, a sincere prayer. Only art – that invisible and unbreakable bridge – offered an echo of our being that would resonate beyond the fragility of the present moment.

The music unfolds as a series of solo improvisations, sparse and unguarded. Sosa’s touch is intimate and deliberate. Melodies surface gently, often fragmentary, as if shaped by breath rather than bar lines. Occasional vocalisations and minimal percussion appear as extensions of the same expressive need, reinforcing the sense of music as bodily response. There is little overt drama here; instead the emotional weight accumulates through restraint and repetition.

Sendas is a fragile and moving document. Unhurried and stripped of all spectacle, it reveals Omar Sosa in communion with silence, memory and resilience, offering music as solace at a moment of global uncertainty.

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Father Mother Sister Brother (Original Music From The Film)

JIM JARMUSCH & ANIKA

Released 14 November 2025

Sacred Bones Records

****-

An austere and quietly subversive soundtrack where atmosphere, intuition and voice fold an emotional envelope around family, memory and human frailty.

Jim Jarmusch has long treated music as an essential narrative force within his films, often composing or co creating soundtracks that blur the line between score and autonomous work. Like David Lynch with Angelo Badalamenti (Twin Peaks) or Wim Wenders with Ry Cooder (Paris, Texas), Jarmusch approaches sound as mood-making and meaning, rather than as decoration. Anika, born Annika Henderson, is a hybrid artist whose work spans experimental electronics post punk dub and spoken word, marked by a confrontational intimacy and a voice that recalls Nico in its detached gravity. Their collaboration on Father Mother Sister Brother, winner of the Golden Lion at the 2025 Venice Film Festival, brings together two artists united by restraint curiosity and a refusal to over explain.

The music for Father Mother Sister Brother functions less as a score than as an atmospheric presence. Built from improvisation texture and reduction, it inhabits the spaces that beyond the movie's dialogue, gestures and silences.

Much of the album emerges from loosely structured improvisations shaped into brief instrumental vignettes. Electric guitars are treated electronically and distant, Wurlitzer chords drift without resolution. Rhythms are subdued - suggested rather than highlighted.

Anika’s voice appears sparingly, its cool intimacy carrying an emotional weight disproportionate to its frequency. The covers of These Days (Jackson Browne) and Spooky (Bubby Buie & others / Dusty Springfield) stand apart, their clarity (and familiarity) in stark contrast to the remainder, all instrumental pieces. Consequently, they become emotional anchors, redefined by their newly-acquired minimalism and restraint.

This music neither explains nor comforts, but it observes. Like the film itself, it is funny tender and quietly unsparing.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

For Judy

LAUREN TSAMOURAS, TOM AVGENICOS

Released 7 November 2025

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

****-

A tender act of remembrance where reinterpretation becomes devotion and Judy Bailey’s singular musical voice is honoured through space listening and deeply felt restraint.

Lauren Tsamouras and Tom Avgenicos are both former students of the late Judy Bailey, one of Australian jazz’s most influential pianist composers and educators. Their musical partnership is grounded in attentiveness collaboration and an openness to reimagining form. Rather than approaching Bailey’s music as repertory, they treat it as living material open to reflection and transformation. For Judy grew out of a performance at Sydney’s Inner West Jazz Festival and was later realised as a studio recording commissioned by ABC Jazz. The album reflects not only Bailey’s compositional legacy but also the profound personal and artistic imprint she left on those she taught.

For Judy is shaped by memory, as Tsamouras and Avgenicos engage Judy Bailey’s compositions through electroacoustic reinterpretation, allowing her melodic and harmonic language to surface slowly and with reverence. The approach is spacious and immersive, placing emphasis on tone resonance and dialogue rather than forward motion.

Pieces such as The Calling and The Traveller are stretched and reweighted, their inner harmonies given room to breathe. Elsewhere, their interpretations of Colours Of My Dream and The Spritely Ones reveal Bailey’s distinctive blend of lyricism surprise and structural elegance. The duo format highlights the conversational nature of her writing, particularly on Two-Part Sketch where improvisation feels intimate and alive.

Riversphere Vol. 1

IAIN BELLAMY

Released 2 November 2025

Babel Label

****-

A fluid, textural exploration between improvisation and composition, weaving together diverse musical influences into a seamless, organic whole that mirrors the endless cycles and movements of river ecosystems.

Saxophonist and composer Iain Ballamy has long been recognised for his adventurous blend of jazz tradition and exploratory soundscapes, a practice honed across collaborations with leading European improvisers and his own ensembles, with a repertoire that commenced with Bill Bruford and Tom Robinson in the late 1980's. Riversphere, Vol. 1 brings together an exceptional band, including Ballamy (tenor and alto sax), guitarist Rob Luft, bassist Conor Chaplin’, trumpeter Laura Jurd and drummer Corrie Dick and introduces Ballamy's son Charlie (trumpet).

From the initial interplay between Luft's gently harmonic opening bars and Ballamy's probing sax, Riversphere, Vol. 1 shapes to the narrative of the album's title. As the full band joins, it is clear that this is music composed with an organic logic and responsive to collective intuition. Ballamy’s writing encourages interplay upon the theme, as individual pieces work laterally as much as forward, allowing their insights to emerge one by one, through layered interaction, as horns and guitar weave melodic lines that suggest conversation more than hierarchy.

Rob Luft’s guitar work brings a vivid harmonic openness, looping between angular motifs and warm lyricism. Conor Chaplin’s bass underpins the ensemble with steady elasticity, while Corrie Dick transforms rhythmic space into kinetic detail with agile command. Guesting on three of the ten pieces, Laura Jurd’s trumpet shines with incisive clarity and bold phrasing, with Charlie Ballamy joining on two of them.

Riversphere, Vol. 1 is an accomplished and compelling ensemble piece that confirms Iain Ballamy and his extraordinary band as one of the classiest acts in the contemporary jazz universe. Ani if the album title holds true to it's promise, there should be more of the kind in future!

Iain Ballamy Home Page

Also recommended are "Quercus" and "Quercus Nightfall", Ballamy's previous albums with English vocalist June Tabor and Welsh pianist Huw Warren.

Tabor, Ballamy, Warren - Quercus (ECM, 2013)

Tabor, Ballamy, Warren - Quercus Nightfall (ECM, 2017)

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Nice For Some (EP)

HOME ON STILTS

Released 25 October 2025

Harrison Wyville

****-

From the heat and humidity of a Darwin wet season, amid tidal flows and wide-open horizons, come relaxed grooves in an EP whose reach extends far beyond the Top End.

Home On Stilts take their name from a very practical Northern Territory reality: houses raised above floodwaters built to survive monsoons and cyclones in Darwin/Garramilla - the traditional land and sea country of the Larrakia people, also known as saltwater people.

That practical local logic sits in easy tension with the band’s dreamy, outward-looking sound. While rooted in Australia’s tropical Top End, Home On Stilts play music that is borderless, built around Harrison Wyvill's electric prog-rock and jazz influenced guitar technique and Rhiannon Oakhill-Steel's classically-informed electric bass work, underpinned by Chur "Mase" Temeke's grounding percussion. Their instrumental approach leans heavily on feel: guitars soaked in tremolo, basslines that favour a slow glide and rhythms that stretch rather than compress.

Nice For Some, their second EP, finds the group refining a language that draws equally from Asian and Middle Eastern melodic traditions, surf-adjacent guitar tones, and the unhurried confidence of left-field disco and dub.

The EP unfolds at a pace that is unbothered by urgency or climax; that from the opening bars, settles into a sun-dazed, deliberate groove, where tremolo-heavy guitar lines ripple like heat off bitumen and melodies seem to drift in from elsewhere. Comparisons to Khruangbin are inevitable - not just in the tone, but in the way repetition becomes hypnotic rather than static. There’s also a distinct Top End looseness here, a sense of space that suits a band living far from big-city scenes and schedules.

The band’s playing is deceptively restrained. Link Wray-style guitar stabs cut through slow-rolling disco rhythms, while basslines hum patiently underneath, anchoring the tracks without pinning them down. Subtle nods to Asian and Middle Eastern modes add colour without tipping into pastiche, giving the EP its gently international flavour. Nothing is overplayed; every element seems content to sit just where it lands.

What Nice For Some does best is build and sustain a particular atmosphere. These tracks feel made for late afternoons, long drives, or rooms where the windows are open and time isn’t pressing. It’s unforced, quietly confident music: laid back, nut not lazy; rewarding close listening without demand.

Babo Moreno

BABO MORENO

Released 26 September 2025

Matsuka Records

****-

A London-born drummer steps out front, turning his Brazilian heritage and city life into something joyous, restless and proudly his own.

Babo Moreno is the project of London-based drummer and percussionist Fabio De Oliveira, stepping out front after years behind the kit with artists including Sault, Jacob Collier and Terry Callier. According to the artist’s own Bandcamp, Fabio is “the proud bearer of a legacy of Brazilian music in London”, shaped deeply by his father Bosco De Oliveira — a key figure in the UK’s Brazilian scene and founder of the London School of Samba.

That lineage matters. This isn’t a side project or studio experiment, but an attempt to articulate identity: “life as a young Londoner from an immigrant family”, filtered through jazz, forró, ijexá and maracatu, and animated by the city’s collaborative energy. Early support from Gilles Peterson, Jamie Cullum and Jazz FM suggests the message is landing.

Led from the drum kit, Babo Moreno unfolds as an exuberant but personal statement. The album is described as “an ode from this British artist to his Brazilian heritage”, and you can hear that push and pull everywhere: rhythm sections that feel grounded and communal, horns and melodies that stretch outward, always moving.

The cast is heavyweight but purposeful: Dennis Rollins, Ife Ogunjobi, Tamar Osborn and others reinforce the record’s sense of shared authorship. As Bandcamp notes, the music is “an expression of conflict, pride and connection to identity”. That tension gives the album its shape, and a range from celebratory to reflective.

There’s a strong sense of place too. Recorded at Livingston and Fish Factory Studios, and co-written with Greg Sanders, the sound balances polish with warmth: virtuosic, social, complex and built to move bodies.

This is the confident arrival from an artist claiming his own space, inviting others in and crucially, sounding like himself while doing it.

Babo Mareno Home Page

Neon Grey Midnight Green

NEKO CASE

Released 26 September 2025

Neko Case / Anti

****-

After seven years "away", a masterclass in restraint, confidence, emotional clarity: a record that grows in stature with every listen - richly textured, unafraid of nuance and generous in its emotional reach.

Neon Grey Midnight Green is the iconic artist's first full-length solo album in seven years, and an ambitious follow-up to 2018’s Hell-On. Across a celebrated 3 decades long career and eight albums (but only two, now 3, since 2009), Case has steadily expanded beyond alt-country roots into baroque pop, folk and indie rock terrain, consistently distinguished by lyrical depth and a voice capable of both detachment and fierce emotion.

On this record she steps forward as producer of her own vision, collaborating with a 20-piece chamber orchestra and her long-standing band to shape songs that feel simultaneously panoramic and intimate. Release amidst a memoir and a broader creative period, the album finds Case reflecting on grief, love, memory and the mystery of life with a rare combination of clarity and poetry, confirming her place as one of her generation’s most distinctive songwriters.

Neon Grey Midnight Green rewards patience. Many reviewers note how the album feels “all-encompassing and strikingly intimate”, a rare balance where lush arrangements never overshadow emotional core. Case’s voice remains the centrepiece: crystalline yet weathered, capable of conveying wonder and wounded tenderness often within the same phrase. The orchestration - strings and winds woven through guitars and percussion - develops a cinematic sweep without ever feeling overblown.

Lyrically, Case continues her lifelong mastery of vivid, sometimes surreal imagery and unexpected emotional turns. Songs like “Winchester Mansion of Sound” and “An Ice Age” are rooted in specific memory and loss, yet spiral outward into broader meditations on time, mortality and persistence, with metaphors that stay vividly strange rather than settling for facile sentiment. Pitchfork highlights that the album’s reflective quality springs from a space between life’s mysteries and its mundane mechanics, “mixing baroque pop” with visceral storytelling and dreamlike logic.

Critics are broadly in agreement that this is Case “at the peak of her powers,” an artist who knows her strengths and isn’t afraid to use them in service of subtle complexity rather than immediate hooks.

Babo Mareno Home Page

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INHABIT

SANDRAYATI

Released 5 September 2025

Decca Records

****-

A radiant, spiritually grounded debut in which voice and ensemble playing combine to create music that feels both ancient and vividly present.

Sandrayati Fay, an artist of Filipino/Irish-American roots, was born and raised on the islands of Java and Bali Indonesia. Her songs are an expression of inspiration and perceptions that reflect her journeys and beliefs in the world revolving around human rights, identity and love.

INHABIT marks a major artistic statement: a project shaped by spiritual reflection cultural multiplicity and ensemble synergy rather than genre prescription. Her vocal approach, rooted in jazz and extended by technique, remains open to chant hymn and folk inflection, all of which gives the music an expansiveness that feels both intimate and cosmically oriented. Her collaborations with musicians across jazz and experimental scenes have positioned her as a distinctive contemporary voice, unafraid to explore meaning shape and community through sound.

INHABIT unfolds with gentle ritualistic motion, its musical language balancing lyricism with improvisational openness. The album places the voice at the centre not merely as a melodic instrument but as a textural and spiritual force, guiding ensemble colour and dynamic shape. Sandrayati’s phrasing draws on jazz tradition yet often ventures into extended vocal territory, creating lines that feel like invocation as much as song.

Instrumentation across the record is richly varied, often grounded in subtle rhythmic cycles and modal interplay. At times the ensemble folds into chant-like unison, at others it scatters into intimate solo gestures, but always the music feels cohesive, moving with shared intent rather than directionless exploration.

Thematically INHABIT negotiates presence and relationality. Love and belonging are examined not as abstract ideals but as lived experience shaped through listening and shared empathy. The album’s spatial clarity, both in performance and production, reinforces its focus on community, voice and resonance.

INHABIT is a compelling and deeply considered release. Thoughtful, spiritually aware and musically expansive, it confirms Sandrayati as an expressive force in contemporary vocal and ensemble music.

Soundcloud

Oppression Is Nine Tenths Of The Law

ORGANIC PULSE ENSEMBLE

Released 3 August 2025

RR Gems Records

****-

Free jazz reimagined with groove and purpose as a one-person ensemble channels jazz history into contemporary rhythm and resolution.

Organic Pulse Ensemble is the project of Swedish musician Gustav Horneij, a one-person ensemble who writes records and performs every instrument himself. Beginning with turntables beat-making and vinyl sampling, Horneij’s musical path led from hip-hop into jazz soul and funk, shaped by the influence of labels such as Black Jazz and Strata-East and figures like Sun Ra.

Over time, practical realities transformed the project into a fully self-contained studio endeavour, with multitracked horns rhythm section and percussion built in his home studio. Since its first release in 2019, Organic Pulse Ensemble has positioned groove driven jazz as a vehicle for protest uplift and collective consciousness.

Oppression Is Nine Tenths Of The Law is deeply rooted in groove. The album builds momentum through layered rhythm sections and tightly voiced horn arrangements, evoking the energy of classic big band jazz, facilitated by modern production techniques and sensibilities. The music moves with purpose, balancing repetition and variation with an ever-present sense of propulsion and collective drive.

Horneij’s hip-hop background is felt in the clarity of the rhythms and the weight of the bass lines, while the harmonic language and ensemble voicings draw directly from spiritual jazz and liberation era precedents. The music invites movement and reflection, while funk and soul elements surface naturally, grounding the album in physicality rather than theory.

Crucially, the political intent is carried by feel rather than explicit rhetoric. The album does not preach, but persuades through groove. By transmitting big band energy through a single pair of hands, Horneij creates music that feels communal even in its solitary construction.

Be It Known

WINK WINKELMANN

Released 28 June 2025

Wink Winkelmann

****-

An ambitious genre-bending debut where spiritual jazz meditations meet eclectic rhythmic shifts and compositional curiosity with a playful exploratory spirit.

Be It Known marks the long-anticipated debut of bassist and composer Wink Winkelmann, a Venice, California–based artist whose musical path has been strikingly unconventional. After a 15-year hiatus during which he pursued medicine and dermatologic surgery, Winkelmann cultivated his sound as a self-taught composer, gaining early attention for evocative film scoring before assembling a diverse ensemble to realise his first full-length project. The album draws from spiritual jazz traditions while embracing wide-ranging influences including hip-hop, classical electronics and even heavy-metal textures, reflecting Winkelmann’s belief in improvisation as a connective thread across styles and his interest in expansive, often unpredictable musical dialogues.

The album unfolds as a mosaic rather than a straight narrative, with mood and momentum shaped by contrast as much as continuity. Winkelmann’s compositions navigate between meditative passages and spirited ensemble interplay, reflecting the album’s underlying spiritual jazz frame while refusing to be confined by it. From the playful genre-blending of “Cute and Clustered,” which moves from R&B-tinged melody into classical textures and psychedelic rock gestures, to “Q-Trip,” where hip-hop influences segue into swing-inflected jazz, the music is restless and generative.
The contributions of woodwinds keyboards and guitar add colour and directional shift, but it is Winkelmann’s bass, both electric and acoustic, that anchors the album, shaping harmonic space and rhythmic thrust. “The Id and The Eno” highlights soprano saxophone’s lyrical edge and dynamic drum support while maintaining a sense of structural openness.
This is a record that inhabits contrasting worlds within a single frame, without losing coherence. With moments of dense activity and passages of reflection, the result is a debut that feels exploratory and imaginative rather than merely eclectic, or eccentric.

Wink Winkelmann Bio

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Keys

MATT OWENS

Released 22 May 2025

All Made Up Records

****-

A fluid and open minded set of compositions where the bass leads with quiet authority and genre boundaries soften in service of song and collective flow.

Manchester based composer and bassist Matt Owens has built a diverse career spanning jazz world classical and folk influenced music. His debut album The Aviators’ Ball drew on a large scale compositional vision, incorporating extended ensemble writing and cross genre thinking. Alongside this, Owens has worked widely as a bassist with artists ranging from Youth and Larry Harlow to The Herbaliser and Baked a La Ska, as well as writing songs with Kirsty Almeida for film and television. Keys presents Owens in a more distilled setting, foregrounding his compositional voice while retaining the stylistic openness that has long defined his work.

Keys is a bass led album in the truest sense, not through dominance but through configuration: Owens places the instrument at the centre of the music’s gravity, shaping harmony rhythm and direction with understated assurance.

The compositions are fluid and unforced, allowing influences to surface naturally rather than as signposts. Jazz forms the foundation, but traces of various folk influences are woven throughout. The ensemble is relaxed and conversational, with sufficient space given for lines to breathe and evolve. Owens’ bass work is melodic and supportive, guiding the music without constraining it.

Keys is a quietly confident release that showcases Matt Owens’ strengths as both composer and bassist. Grounded yet expansive, it reflects a mature musical voice comfortable working across borders while remaining anchored in ensemble connection.

Some Kind of Control

RUBY GILL

Released 28 March 2025

Ruby Gill / Timothy Harvey

****-

Charm and candour carry the emotional weight in this disarmingly open set, shaped by observation, vulnerability and everyday detail.

Ruby Gill is an Australian songwriter whose work sits at the intersection of indie, folk, spoken word and diaristic confession. Emerging from Melbourne’s rich music and songwriter scene, she has developed a compelling performance persona by the force of her distinctive lyrics set against minimalist instrumentation. Her speak-singing vocal style, conversational and unguarded, draws comparisons with antipodean peers such as Courtney Barnett, though Gill’s perspective is more inward and tender. Rather than relying on metaphor or theatrical flourish, her songs reflect intimate lived experience, small moments and emotional honesty.

Some Kind of Control her sophomore release, the follow up to I’m Gonna Die With This Frown On My Face (2022), presents a new collection that values clarity, sincerity and connection over polish. With a take-it-or-leave-it attitude, it unfolds with a sense of immediacy, as though the songs are being privately shared. Casual at the surface, and disarmingly unadorned, her phrasing and playing is carefully timed, so that lyrics land with a combination of directness and sincerity.

The opening track, Under the Flying Foxes on the Last Night of Summer, establishes the tone. Its melodic contours and emotional pacing (strongly) recall REM's "Everybody Hurts" (a "borrowing" that follows the folk tradition of tunes shared as a common good) but it's strength in the lyric that carries the day.

Throughout the album, Gill balances vulnerability with humour, resisting self importance even when addressing uncertainty loneliness or self doubt. The songs have the delicacy and force of poetry and they demand repeat listening to unpack their hidden secrets.

Produced with a her "found family, comprised of queer, female and gender-diverse local musicians" in Beechworth, Victoria, the arrangements are musically understated and supportive, creating space that allows the lyrical narrative to lead. The result is an album that Gill describes as "a searingly intimate, body-focused, yet globally-relevant sophomore that's cheekier, looser, gayer and even more raw" (than it's predecessor). Its strength lies in it's winning honesty and a distinctly contemporary candour that trusts simplicity to do the work.