THE WORLD'S BEST NEW MUSIC
2026 March Best New Albums
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Distracted
THUNDERCAT
Released 3 April 2026
Brainfeeder
****-
A richly layered, genre-blurring return that displays virtuosity and vulnerability in equal measure and brings the accessibility of pop music to a suite of deeply sceptical, introspective songs.
Few artists have done more to fold jazz sensibility into contemporary LA pop and hip-hop than Stephen Bruner (aka Thundercat). Emerging from a background that includes work with Flying Lotus and key contributions to Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, Bruner helped reintroduce jazz harmony, improvisation and virtuoso bass playing into mainstream-adjacent music.
His solo trajectory reflects this evolution: Apocalypse (2013) fused cosmic jazz with R&B; Drunk (2017) expanded into fragmented, pop-leaning miniatures; and It Is What It Is (2020) distilled grief and humour into a more focused, song-driven format. Across these releases, Thundercat has steadily moved toward accessibility without abandoning complexity.
His first album in five years, Distracted continues this progression: broadening his reach as he sharpens his thematic focus, the album operates across a wide musical spectrum, but its core concerns are strikingly unified.
The guest list is expansive: A$AP Rocky, WILLOW, Tame Impala, Flying Lotus, Channel Tres, Lil Yachty, and a posthumous appearance from Mac Miller all contribute distinct textures. Yet the album avoids feeling fragmented, largely due to Thundercat cohesive musical vision.
A notable shift is the involvement of Greg Kurstin, whose mainstream pop credentials (from Adele & Paul McCartney to Gorillaz) bring a cleaner, more structured production style. The result is a sleeker surface: hooks are clearer, arrangements more direct, and songs more conventionally shaped, though still anchored by Thundercat elastic bass lines and harmonic richness.
Beneath this veneer of accessibility lie numerous unsettled perspectives. Musically, the album opens with "Candlelight", a dose of the dense, intricate jazz that Thundercat is renowned for, and follows with "No More Lies", the duet with Tame Impala, the first of the album's pop-infused tracks. Next, Thundercat recalls a Mac Miller collaboration, upping the tempo and adding a funk-infused rap workout. An so it builds with Thundercat rolling out song after impeccable song, each of them demanding - and rewarding - close attention to their masterful arrangements. Lyrically, Distracted focuses on disconnection in all its forms - from technology, from progress, from one's self. In addition, there is deep and recurring scepticism toward the idea that things are improving; instead, Thundercat presents a world of constant stimulation masking an emotional drought. Bright, inviting sonics coexist with doubt and unease, but it is this tension that defines the album.
As a consequence, Distracted ultimately succeeds by embracing this contradiction, using the accessibility of pop to sharpen serious questions.
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Hope and Fury
JOE JACKSON
Released 10 April 2026
Sharp Practice / earMUSIC / Edel Music & Entertainment
****-
A sharp, revitalised return that swaps theatrical nostalgia for modern bite — pairing literate songwriting with sleek, confident production.
Few artists have navigated stylistic reinvention as restlessly as Joe Jackson. Emerging from the late-70s new wave alongside peers with Look Sharp! (1979) and many other stunning albums, he quickly distinguished himself through wit, melodic precision and an openness to jazz, classical and music hall traditions. Early hits like Is She Really Going Out with Him? and It's Different for Girls established his voice, but his career (like that of his contemporary Elvis Costello, to whom he was frequently compared) has thrived on divergence rather than repetition. Following the period stylings of this album's immediate predecessor Mr. Joe Jackson Presents: Max Champion in ‘What a Racket!(2023) and the narrative depth of Fool (2019), Hope and Fury finds Jackson re-engaging with the present - musically direct, and lyrically rooted in his unmistakable British sensibility. The album feels like a deliberate recalibration - return to the immediacy of the rhythm-forward, tightly arranged, contemporary textures upon which his career is built. The production is crisp without being sterile, giving Jackson’s piano and vocal phrasing room to cut through with clarity and intent.
There’s a renewed sense of momentum throughout. Songs pivot quickly, driven by sharp melodic hooks and chord progressions that recall his earlier work without imitating it. Crucially, Jackson resists nostalgia: rather than revisiting past formulas, he reframes his strengths, wit, economy, and harmonic sophistication, within a modern sonic palette.
Lyrically, his voice remains distinctly British - observational, dry, occasionally biting -capturing social nuance with the same precision that once defined his early writing. Yet there’s also a looseness here, a sense of enjoyment in the craft that keeps the album from feeling overly calculated.
Hope and Fury ultimately succeeds because it doesn’t attempt reinvention for its own sake. Instead, it presents an artist re-energised, drawing on decades of experience while sounding engaged, contemporary and, most importantly, fully alive to the moment.
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EP One & EP Two
BRIAN JACKSON, MASTERS AT WORK
Released 24 October 2025 & 6 March 2026
BBE Music
****-
A vibrant, cross-generational collaboration where soul, jazz and house traditions converge, driven by deep groove, legacy and a shared sense of musical purpose.
This collaboration unites two distinct but complementary legacies: Brian Jackson - keyboardist, flautist, singer, composer, and producer, best known for his seminal work with Gil Scott-Heron, and Masters At Work - the long-standing partnership of DJ, record producer Louie Vega and fellow DJ and producer Kenny Dope. Jackson brings a lineage of spiritual jazz, soul and politically conscious songwriting while The Masters contribute decades of influence in house, Latin, disco and club culture.
EP One presents interpretations and remixes of four classic Jackson & Scott-Heron tracks - "The Bottle", "Racetrack In France", "New York City" and "Winter In America". EP Two takes on Jackson & Scott-Heron's "Racetrack In France", Home Is Where The Hatred Is" and "Lady Day & John Coltrane" in addition to two new tracks composed by Jackson & Masters At Work - "Moonshine", "Now More Than Ever".
The EP's are companion pieces, parts of an evolving conversation between generations and styles.
At the musical core is Jackson’s unmistakable musical voice: warm Fender Rhodes textures, fluid harmonic movement and an instinct for melody that carries emotional and historical weight. Around this, Masters At Work construct richly layered rhythmic frameworks that are percussion-heavy, deeply syncopated and unmistakably rooted in their house lineage. Guest contributors (Omar, Josh Milan, J. Ivy, Moodyman, Carl Cornwell, Rahshaan Patterson and Rich Medina) each play a crucial role in shaping the albums’ character. Vocal performances range from soulful and direct to more expansive, improvisatory approaches, while additional instrumentation - horns, keys and rhythm sections - results in a live, collective ambience, rather than a studio-produced feel. This balance between looseness and polish is outstanding: grooves are tight, but not rigid; arrangements feel open, allowing space for interplay and subtle variation.
These recordings connect spiritual jazz, soul and dance music traditions. They feel celebratory and purposeful: music built on history, but fully alive in the present.
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Vol.I & Vol.II
ANGINE DE POITRINE
Released 9 June 2024 & 3 April 2026
Angine de Poitrine
****-
A startlingly original fusion of microtonality, polyrhythm and performance art, transforming complexity and chaos into music that is outrageously rebellious, rigorous, playful and viscerally alive.
Emerging from Québec’s experimental underground, Angine de Poitrine, the pseudonymous pairing of Khn de Poitrane (microtonal guitars and vocals) and Klek Poitrane (percussion and vocals) have rapidly shifted from cult curiosity to global phenomenon following a viral live session for Seattle progressive music broadcaster KEXP - performing in seven-feet-tall papier-mâché masks and adopting a deliberately surreal aesthetic. Having played together for over 20 years, officially launching the Angine de Poitrine project shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic and releasing their first album in 2024, the duo blur the line between band and conceptual art project. While truly individual, the approach brings to mind that of such past acts as King Crimson, The Residents, The Mothers Of Invention and early Genesis.
But beneath the visual intrigue lies formidable musicianship. Their musical practice centres on microtonal guitar systems, loop-based construction and tightly controlled polyrhythms, developed over years of playing together. Critics consistently note the paradox at the heart of their work: music that appears wilfully obscure yet remains strikingly immediate and even danceable, a balance that has driven their sudden rise as viral cult figures,
Across Vol. I and Vol. II, Angine de Poitrine establish a highly specific musical language, one that treats rhythm as both framework and illusion.
At the core is Khn’s microtonal guitar, an instrument deliberately designed to access pitches “between” conventional notes. This produces lines that feel unstable yet precise, constantly shifting their perceived centre. Around this, Klek’s frantic drumming locks into repeating cycles, the beat staying consistent as accents move around just enough to make it feel like the rhythm is constantly shifting.
Compared to it's predecessor, Vol. II is distinguished by its refinement. Where Vol. I introduced the vocabulary, the newer material extends it into longer, more cohesive forms. Tracks evolve through accumulation, (some overly-repetitively), as motifs stretch, contract and reappear in altered states, giving the music a strange, “weightless momentum”.
The duo’s central achievement is their success at transforming mathematical, microtonal and conceptual systems into music that is sensual and immediate and (despite the outrageous costuming) ultimately presenting not just a style, but a fully realised musical concept.
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In A Space Outa Dub
NIGHTMARES ON WAX, ADRIAN SHERWOOD
Released 3 April 2026
Warp Records
****-
A deep, reimagined companion to a cult classic — where Adrian Sherwood reshapes Nightmares on Wax’s signature downtempo into a spacious, bass-driven dub landscape.
Nightmares on Wax, the long-running project of George Evelyn, has been a defining presence in UK downtempo since the establishment of Warp Records in Sheffield in 1989, blending hip-hop, soul, dub and electronica into a warm, headphone-friendly sound. His 2006 album In A Space Outta Sound remains a high point: a laid-back, groove-rich record that distilled his aesthetic.
For In A Space Outta Dub, the material is handed to Adrian Sherwood, a central figure in UK dub, through his On-U Sound imprint. Known for radical reinterpretation rather than straightforward remixing, Sherwood approaches source material as something to dismantle and rebuild.
In A Space Outta Dub is not a remix album in the conventional sense, it is a reconstruction. While it draws from In A Space Outta Sound, the differences are immediate. The tracklist is reduced (eight tracks instead of twelve), titles are altered, and structures are often unrecognisable. This is because Sherwood does not simply rework individual songs; he extracts elements - vocal fragments, basslines, rhythmic motifs - and reconfigures them into entirely new forms.
Where the original album was smooth and groove-oriented, Sherwood’s version is more spatial and elemental. Bass is pushed to the foreground, drums become more skeletal, and echo and delay reshape the music’s sense of time. Tracks unfold less as songs and more as environments - shifting, dissolving, reassembling.
The absence of certain tracks and the renaming of others reflects this process. Rather than preserving identity, Sherwood prioritises flow: pieces are merged, extended or stripped back to serve the overall arc of the album. The result is a dialogue between two sensibilities. Evelyn’s warmth and melodic instinct remain present, but refracted through Sherwood’s dub methodology.
In A Space Outta Dub ultimately stands as both homage and transformation - a reminder that in dub, the “version” can be as definitive as the original.
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JID 26 Antonio Carlos & Jocafi
ANTONIO CARLO & JOCAFI
ADRIAN YOUNGE, ALI SHAHEED MUHAMMAD
Released 3 April 2026
Jazz Is Dead
****-
A warm and respectful collaboration that bridges Brazilian soul and contemporary analog production - honouring legacy while subtly reframing it for a new context.
Jazz Is Dead continues its mission of pairing legendary artists with modern producers, here spotlighting Brazilian duo Antonio Carlos e Jocafi. Emerging in the 1970s, their work blended MPB (Música Popular Brasileira - the post-Bossa Nova genre of Brazilian urban music that emerged in the mid-1960s, blending traditional rhythms like samba and baião with foreign influences such as jazz, rock, and soul, gaining international recognition through recordings later sampled by hip-hop producers.
Since February 2022, producers Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, known for their analog-focused approach, have built their Jazz Is Dead series around live instrumentation and respectful collaboration. Their work here situates Antonio Carlos & Jocafi within a contemporary sonic frame while preserving the duo’s melodic and rhythmic identity.
From the opening moments, JID026 establishes a relaxed, groove-oriented atmosphere. Guitar lines and vocal melodies carry the unmistakable warmth of Antonio Carlos & Jocafi’s songwriting, while Younge and Muhammad provide a gently structured backdrop, recording bass, drums and keys with a deliberately vintage sensibility.
The arrangements are understated. Rather than reimagining the duo’s sound in dramatic terms, the producers focus on allowing space for the natural interplay between voice and rhythm to remain central. Subtle orchestration and textural details enrich the palette without overwhelming it.
There is a strong sense of continuity throughout. The music does not seek contrast or tension; instead, it maintains a consistent reflective, melodic and rhythmically grounded tone. At times, this restraint can verge on uniformity, with tracks blending into one another. Yet this consistency also reinforces the album’s purpose: this is less about reinvention than about linking past and present.
Once more, this is a quiet but meaningful addition to the JID series - respectful, cohesive and deeply rooted in groove.
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& Friends
JNBO
Released 3 April 2026
College of Knowledge Records
****-
A richly textured, collaborative instrumental album that combines cinematic soul and offbeat funk: precisely constructed, yet warm and deeply human in feel.
Jnbo is the solo moniker of Naarm/Melbourne-based composer, producer and bassist Henry Jenkins, a central figure in the city’s thriving instrumental soul scene. Best known for his work behind the desk with groups like Surprise Chef and Karate Boogaloo , The Pro-Teens, and the Grammy-winning Frollen Music Library, Jenkins has helped define a distinctive “cinematic soul” sound rooted in vintage tones, tight arrangements and atmospheric depth.
With & Friends, he steps forward as a composer, assembling a cast of close collaborators. including members of The Cactus Channel to realise a carefully conceived project built on shared musical language and disciplined constraints.
& Friends is shaped by limitation, as Jenkins sets himself a clear framework, relying on a core group of musicians and a fixed palette of instruments across all twelve tracks. Within these constraints, the album relies on variation, through subtle rearrangements and tonal contrasts.
At the core of the collection lies a dialogue between rhythm and atmosphere. As one would expect, bass and drums provide a steady, funk-informed foundation, understated but insistent, while guitars, keys and organ move more freely atop them. The three-guitar setup is particularly effective: each part occupies a distinct space, interlocking rather than competing, creating a wide, gently shifting stereo image.
There is a strong cinematic sensibility throughout. Echoes of Bernard Herrmann (best known for his psychologically charged film scores for Alfred Hitchcock) and Les Baxter (who pioneered lush, escapist “exotica” music) surface in the album’s harmonic language and mood, while touches of Lamont Dozier’s work with Motown’s Holland–Dozier–Holland team ground the music in groove.
What stands out is the album’s patience: it unfold without urgency, allowing details, like a passing chord change or slight rhythmic accent, to carry weight. & Friends ultimately succeeds due to cohesion: it is a focused, collaborative work whose depth derives from its refinement.
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Personal Computer
Music, 1977-2022
JEREMY DOWER, TETRPHNM
Released 14 November 2025
Chapter Music
****-
A quietly radical body of work spanning decades, where deadpan humour, lo-fi electronics and conceptual framing anticipate whole strands of contemporary ambient and library music culture.
Jeremy Dower is best known in visual art circles, whose visual practice often merges nostalgic aesthetics with digital surrealism. His most widely circulated work, a pixel-art version of The Simpsons opening sequence, premiered in 2015 and was acclaimed for its meticulous reinterpretation of pop-culture iconography. Performing under his own name and as Tetrphnm, Dower's musical practice has unfolded largely out of view. Across releases like Sentimental Dance Music For Couples (2000), Music for Retirement Villages, Circa 2050 (2002) and Music for the Young & the Restless (2004), he has established a distinctive approach, producing deliberately modest, conceptually framed works that blur sincerity and irony.
Working with early computer-based tools, MIDI systems and lo-fi production, he explored functional, “applied” music decades before it became fashionable again. Their output sits somewhere between ambient composition, library music and quietly absurdist commentary, often presented with a straight face that makes interpretation part of the experience.
Which raises the obvious question: where have they been hiding? In plain sight, perhaps, operating just outside the usual circuits of genre, scene and industry recognition.
Personal Computer Music, 1977–2022 is both an archive and a career-spanning statement, assembling material that gestures back to the earliest days of home computing, and tracing a consistent aesthetic: simple melodic figures, synthetic textures and restrained arrangements that favour mood over development. At first glance, the music seems naïve, but over time, its intention becomes clear.
Like early library recordings feel designed for environments such as waiting rooms, instructional videos. The music is familiar, but slightly “off,” as though filtered through memory or obsolete technology.
It is less a retrospective than a reminder that sometimes we find that the future arrived earlier and has gone unnoticed for years.
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Glorious Mahalia
KRONOS QUARTET
Released 3 April 2026
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
*****
A powerful and reverent exploration of legacy and spirituality that sees traditional string quartet and contemporary compositional techniques converge to honour the enduring voice of Mahalia Jackson, in interview and majestic performance.
For over five decades, the Kronos Quartet has redefined what a string quartet can be, commissioning hundreds of works and collaborating across genres, cultures and disciplines. Known for their commitment to contemporary composition and social themes, the ensemble consistently expands the classical canon.
On Glorious Mahalia, they work with two distinct compositional voices. Prolific US composer Stacy Garrop brings a narrative-driven, expressive style rooted in classical tradition, while California-based composer, musician, engineer, producer Zachary James Watkins draws from experimental, electronic and spatial practices. Together, their suites form complementary perspectives on the life, spirit and cultural impact of gospel legend Mahalia Jackson. And in between, listeners are treated to a newly arranged version of “God Shall Wipe All Tears Away,” with Jackson’s powerful vocals set to new music by multi-instrumentalist and composer Jacob Garchik.
Garrop’s Glorious Mahalia (Parts I–V) is grounded in storytelling. The music accompanies archival audio from two moments in Jackson’s history: a 1957 live performance of gospel and spirituals in her adopted hometown of Chicago, and a 1963 interview with her friend, the radio broadcaster Studs Terkel, which covers a wide range of topics including Jackson’s experiences of working in the South, the continuing hardships she faced as a Black woman, and the civil rights efforts of her friend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Her writing leans into the quartet’s lyrical capabilities, as rich harmonies, clear melodic lines and carefully shaped dynamics evoke both the emotional intensity and spiritual conviction associated with Jackson’s voice. There is a sense of reverence throughout, with passages that feel almost hymn-like, balancing restraint with moments of quiet grandeur.
In contrast, Watkins’ Peace Be Till (Parts I–V) approaches the material more abstractly. The music in this suite sits behind audio from an interview that was recorded for the album with Martin Luther King Jr’s speechwriter and lawyer Clarence B. Jones, concerning the civil rights efforts of the great activist. Texture and space take precedence over melody, with extended techniques, subtle electronic inflections and shifting tonal centres creating a more meditative, sometimes unsettled atmosphere. Where Garrop reflects the outward expression of faith, Watkins seems to explore its inner dimensions.
The Kronos Quartet navigates both approaches with characteristic precision and sensitivity. Their ability to move between warmth and austerity, structure and openness, is central to the album’s success. Glorious Mahalia ultimately succeeds through contrast - two compositional voices, distinct yet complementary, brought together by an ensemble uniquely equipped to realise both vision and nuance.
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Vibe Factor
VIBE FACTOR
FEAT. OMAR SOSA, JOO KRAUS & DIEGO PINERA
Released 3 April 2026
Omar Sosa, Joo Krauss, Diego Pinera
****-
A rhythmically vibrant and globally attuned trio that unites jazz, Afro-Cuban traditions and European sensibilities in a fluid, groove-driven dialogue.
A trio that brings together three highly distinctive musical voices who share a history of cross-cultural collaboration: Cuban born, Barcelona -based Omar Sosa is renowned for blending Afro-Cuban roots with jazz, electronic textures and world music influences, building a career defined by rhythmic complexity and spiritual depth; German trumpeter and keyboardist Joo Kraus emerged from the European jazz and hip-hop scene (notably with Tab Two), known for his warm tone and melodic clarity; Uraguay-born, Berlin-based drummer Diego Pinera, who adds a versatile rhythmic language shaped by Latin American traditions and modern jazz. Having collaborated for over a decade , particularly through touring and previous recordings, the trio has developed an intuitive rapport, balancing structure with improvisational freedom.
Vibe Factor lives up to its title from the outset: rhythm is not just a foundation here, but the central organising principle. Sosa’s piano work anchors the music with layered patterns that move between percussive drive and harmonic colour. His lines often function as both rhythm and melody, creating a sense of forward motion even in more spacious passages. Kraus responds with lyrical phrasing, his trumpet tone warm and rounded, preferring to develop the melody rather ahead of showcasing his technical prowess. Pinera’s drumming provides the connective tissue. He's more than a timekeeper, preferring to shape the music's flow from behind the kit by shifting groove, texture and dynamics with remarkable fluidity.
The trio's members bring their experience and influences to the album - Afro-Cuban rhythms, jazz improvisation and subtle electronic inflections, allowing them to surface naturally and coexist without friction. The member’s long-standing relationship is evident in their timing and restraint - solos emerge organically, and transitions feel unforced.
Spoken word passages and introductions (such as in "One Song For You", "Dancing Sun", "Kalimba Spirit"), although distracting at first, add to the crafted feel of the set, becoming less intrusive with repeated listening. The underlying success of Vibe Factor lies in the seamless balance of the contributions from each the players. The music is intricate but never dense, exploratory yet accessible - a conversation built on trust, experience and a shared commitment to the groove.
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Ambiguous Desire
ARLO PARKS
Released 3 April 2026
Transgressive Records
****-
A quietly ambitious and emotionally intricate album that broadens her introspective songwriting palette, while retaining the intimacy that defines her voice.
Arlo Parks emerged as one of the defining voices of her generation with her debut Collapsed in Sunbeams (2021), a record that earned widespread acclaim and the Mercury Prize for its empathetic lyricism and understated musicality. Her follow-up, My Soft Machine (2023), broadened her sound, incorporating denser production and more abstract emotional themes while maintaining her diaristic approach to songwriting.
Across her work, Parks has built a reputation for blending poetry, indie pop and R&B influences, often focusing on mental health, relationships and the small, revealing details of everyday life. Now, with Ambiguous Desire, she continues this trajectory, turning toward more complex emotional terrain.
This album is structured less as a collection of songs than as a loosely unfolding emotional narrative and, from the outset, Parks leans into ambiguity: relationships are not clearly defined, emotions rarely resolve cleanly. Instead, the album traces a series of interconnected moments: attraction, uncertainty, distance and reflection. This creates a subtle but effective arc, where meaning accumulates gradually rather than through overt storytelling.
Musically, her palette is further expanded but remains controlled. Soft electronic textures, muted guitar lines and carefully layered vocals create an atmosphere that feels both intimate and slightly removed. Compared to her earlier work, there is a greater emphasis on space: arrangements often feel suspended, allowing her voice and lyrics to carry the weight.
Her songwriting remains the focal point. Parks’ strength lies in observation: small details - gestures, passing comments, fleeting feelings - are rendered with precision and emotional clarity. At times, the restraint can verge on uniformity, as tempo and tone is closely aligned across these tracks. Yet this consistency also reinforces the album’s intent. Ambiguous Desire is less about contrast than about nuance - a sustained exploration of emotional complexity and a deepening of voice and perspective.
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Tom Misch
FULL CIRCLE
Released 27 March 2026
Beyond The Groove
****-
A deeply personal collection that refines Misch's classic jazz-pop sensibility to its most intimate form - subtle, reflective and quietly assured.
Over the past decade, Tom Misch has evolved into one of contemporary music’s true “quiet achievers,” building a global audience without sacrificing nuance or restraint. His sound - often compared to Michael Franks and Jack Johnson - blends jazz harmony, laid-back funk and electronica with the intimacy of a singer-songwriter.
Each release has revealed a different facet: Geography (2018) introduced an energetic, sample-driven palette; What Kinda Music (2020), created with Yussef Dayes, explored mellow, jazz-inflected textures; Quarantine Sessions (2021) captured stripped-back, home-recorded covers; while Happy Music (2023), under his Supershy alias, leaned into funk and dance.
Following a step back from touring and a return to a quieter London life, Misch’s Six Songs EP (2024) hinted at a more reflective direction - now fully realised with his new full-length release.
Full Circle feels exactly as its title suggests - a return, and also a refinement. Where earlier albums balanced multiple stylistic threads, here Misch narrows his focus almost entirely to a jazz-inflected singer-songwriter mode. The palette is deliberately restrained: soft guitar voicings, warm keys, understated rhythm sections and vocals delivered with conversational ease.
At first, the songs can seem almost indistinct, their tempos and tonalities closely aligned. Yet this is deceptive. With repeated listens - or when taken individually - their subtle distinctions begin to surface. Melodic turns, harmonic shifts and lyrical details gradually reveal themselves, rewarding patience over immediacy.
Lyrically, Misch turns inward. Themes of ageing, love and family are explored with a light touch - observational, gently humorous, but never overstated. There is a sense of an artist taking stock, not dramatically, but with quiet clarity.
What ultimately defines Full Circle is its discipline. By limiting his scope, Misch achieves a deeper coherence - an album less concerned with range than with resolution.
It is a modest work on the surface, but one that settles in over time, and stays.
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Future Present Past
IRREVERSIBLE ENTANGLEMENTS
Released 27 March 2026
Impulse!
*****
A fiercely articulate and musically expansive convergence of free jazz energy and radical poetry - urgent, unflinching and deeply collective in spirit.
Irreversible Entanglements operates as a tightly unified sextet rooted in improvisation and political expression. At its centre is Camae Ayewa (Moor Mother), whose spoken-word delivery channels history, resistance and Afrofuturist thought into visceral performance. Guest vocalist MOTHERBOARD (New York artist Kyle Kidd) expands the album’s tonal and emotional palette, appearing across half of it's tracks with a more abstract, textural vocal presence.
New York based trumpeter Aquiles Navarro and saxophonist Keir Neuringer drive the ensemble’s melodic and improvisational language — their interplay balancing fire and lyricism. Beneath them, bassist Luke Stewart and drummer Tcheser Holmes form a powerful rhythmic core, anchoring the group’s most explosive passages with precision and elasticity.
Future Present Past wastes little time establishing its intensity, voices and instruments entering as if already in motion.
Ayewa’s presence is immediate and commanding. Her phrasing resists conventional metre, cutting across the ensemble’s surging momentum with lines that feel both declaimed and incanted.
When MOTHERBOARD enters, the dynamic shifts: vocals become less declarative, more atmospheric, hovering within the ensemble rather than leading it, adding a layered, almost spectral dimension.
Navarro and Neuringer operate in constant dialogue, their brass lines intertwining and diverging with restless energy. At times they push toward cacophony; at others, they pull back into fragile, near-unison motifs that briefly stabilise the music before it fractures again.
Stewart and Holmes play a crucial role, underpinning the otherwise divergent work of the sextet - bass provides propulsion and grounding, while drums move fluidly between driving pulse and textural fragmentation: never static, always responsive.
What distinguishes the album is its sense of collective purpose. Even at its most chaotic the work demands scrutiny - vocals feel urgent, while music feels directed: each surge, break and silence part of a larger, uncompromisingly expressive arc.
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Syrr (Secret)
MARYAM SALEH
Released 27 March 2026
Simsara Records
****-
A mythic and introspective work, that transforms memory, loss, and lived experience into a shifting world of sound, voice, and embodied emotion
Since emerging as a young actor and and musician almost two decades ago, Maryam Saleh has carved out a singular position within contemporary Arabic music, that resists easy categorisation. Grounded in Cairo’s independent scene, her work draws on alternative rock, electronic experimentation and Arabic poetic traditions, often shaped through collaborations with producers who favour texture and tension over polish.
Unlike more mainstream Arabic pop trajectories, Saleh’s output leans into dissonance and narrative depth. In the context of a new generation of female Arabic artists - the indie swagger of Yasmine Hamdan, the polished alt-pop of Elyanna, the introspective R&B-inflected Nemahsis, and the sleek hybridity of Zeyne - Saleh remains the most confrontational and avant-garde of them all.
The album, her first in eight years. is the product of a three-year collaborative journey between Saleh and Palestinian music icon Kamilya Jubran, mastered by the legendary Heba Kadry. From its opening moments, Saleh establishes a sonic language built on contrast: jagged electronics collide with traditional melodic phrasing, while rhythms often feel deliberately unstable.
The album’s Arabic song titles follow similarly evocative themes - translating to ideas such as “Whisper,” “Silence,” “Burden,” “Echo,” or “Confession,” reinforcing the album’s focus on interiority, tension and unspoken experience. Lyrics explore the emotional weight of secrecy - how personal truths are suppressed, distorted or revealed under pressure. Through fragmented narratives and shifting sonic backdrops, Maryam Saleh examines vulnerability, internal conflict and the psychological toll of withholding expression in both intimate and societal contexts.
Saleh’s voice is expressive, unvarnished, and emotionally direct - cutting through dense arrangements that oscillate between minimalism and overload.
Where artists like Elyanna and Zeyne lean toward accessibility and global pop structures, Saleh disrupts them. There are moments where tracks seem to fracture mid-course, shifting tone or tempo without warning, yet this unpredictability becomes the album’s defining strength. And, in contrast to the smoky, downtempo elegance of Yasmine Hamdan or the diaristic intimacy of Nemahsis, Syrr feels outward-facing, urgent and confrontational.
The production resists gloss, favouring texture: distortion, echo, and negative space are used as compositional tools rather than embellishments. At times abrasive, this reinforces the tension, and emotional volatility implied by its title.
Syrr is not designed for passive listening. It demands engagement, rewarding those willing to persist its unease. With it, Saleh reaffirms her role as one of the most uncompromising and vital voices in the region’s evolving musical landscape.
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Sounds Have Dreams
ASTEROID EKOSYSTEM
Released 13 February 2026
Asteroid Ekosystem
*****
A deeply immersive electro-acoustic work shaped by four of Australia’s most accomplished improvisers — where subtle interplay and sonic architecture take precedence over convention.
Asteroid Ekosystem brings together a formidable collective of Australian musicians whose combined histories span jazz, experimental rock and improvised music at the highest level. Pianist Alister Spence is widely regarded as one of the country’s most inventive composers and improvisers, with projects bridging jazz and avant-garde traditions. Guitarist Ed Kuepper, best known as co-founder (with Chris Bailey) of proto-punk band The Saints, leader of Laughing Clowns and a prolific solo career, brings a raw, textural sensibility. Double bassist Lloyd Swanton (The Necks) anchors the ensemble with deep, resonant minimalism, while drummer Toby Hall contributes a highly responsive, detail-oriented rhythmic language. Together, they form a group defined by collective intuition, untethered from the constraints if genre, creating new musical forms based around listening, space and the development of long-form musical figures .
Sounds Have Dreams unfolds with a quiet sense of intent, its movements gradual, its shifts almost imperceptible. Opening passages establish a low-frequency foundation: pulsing kicks, soft-edged piano figures and distant, reverberant guitar textures. Rather than pushing forward, the music expands and explores. Elements enter and recede, working in cycles, creating a sense of suspended momentum, as though each track exists in its own orbit. Mid-album highlights "Catch Breath", Off Axis" and"Open To" exploit this balance as they range between inactivity and progression. Swanton’s bass provides a gravitational centre; Hall’s percussion traces subtle, constantly shifting patterns around it; Spence’s piano moves between harmonic anchor and textural colour, and Kuepper’s guitar introduces grain, distortion and fleeting melodic fragments.
Asteroid Ekosystem is part of a generation of musicians whose careers as composers and recording artists has spanned punk adolescence to avant-jazz maturity. What stands out now, is the ensemble’s restraint, in contrast to their urgency as youths. Even at its most rhythmically engaged, the album resists climax. There is no dramatic peak, only continuous evolution, a steady recalibration of texture and space. In its closing stretch, the music leans further into abstraction, allowing ambience to take precedence over structure.
Sounds Have Dreams ultimately succeeds through cohesion: a carefully shaped listening experience grounded in sensitivity to the collective and decades of shared musical intelligence.
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