This Month's Highlights
UNDER CONSTRCTION
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2026 August Best New Albums
All at Sea
TILLY STREET
Released 3 July 2026
Tilly Street
Jazz
Australia
****-
A radiant debut of spacious vocal storytelling, balancing classic cool-jazz elegance with deeply expressive contemporary songcraft.
Sydney-based vocalist, songwriter, and bandleader Tilly Street has spent nearly a decade establishing herself as one of the most compelling voices on the Australian jazz scene. Drawing inspiration from iconoclastic vocalists like Carmen McRae, Sarah Vaughan, and Chet Baker, Street pairs a warm, resonant tone with effortless, conversational phrasing. Backed by a premier band of Sydney improvisers - guitarist Arthur Washington and pianist Andrew Scott, double bassist Max Alduca and drummer Abby Constable - Street approaches the vocal jazz tradition unapologetically, treating it as a living canvas for emotional truth and intimate audience connection.
This nine song debut album delivers a beautifully poised collection that feels both timeless and disarmingly fresh. Seamlessly mixing original compositions with judiciously selected standards, Street uses her flexible, smoky range to anchor arrangements that are delightfully spacious and sensitive. Opening track "The Great City" slows the Curtis Lewis classic down, turning Nancy Wilson's vibrant original around. Kurt Elling / Carla Bley's "Lawns" (from the lyrics of which the album title is taken) follows, allowing Street to showcase her characteristic, quiet, emotive control of the narrative. Piano-driven co-writes with pianist Scott of "That's It I Quit" and "Let The Right One In", and later "Peter Pan" cowritten with drummer Alduca, fit neatly into the mix.
Rounding out the album Street chooses a selection of little-covered tunes - "Is It Overcrowded in Heaven" (Fran Landesman), "Little Boat (O Barquino)" (Robert Menescal & Buddy Kaye), "Something Cool" (Bill Barnes) and "Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most" (Fran Landesman & Tommy Wolf) and brings to them the tone and feel of evergreen classics.
Throughout the album, Street's core band provides lush, finely-measured framing, allowing her voice to drift, swell, and settle like a tide, in support of this confident, sumptuous debut from a major new Australian talent.
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Sequence
NADAV RAYMAN TRIO
Released 22 August 2026
Nadav Rayman Trio
Jazz, Hip-Hop
Australia
****-
A soulful, shapeshifting marriage of soulful, contemporary instrumental jazz and rich hip-hop collaborations, with effortless ease and infectious groove.
Helmed by Melbourne/Naarm-based pianist and composer Nadav Rayman, the Trio that bears his name - featuring bassist Matthew Coleman and drummer Michael Evans-Barker - blends technical virtuosity with deep and soulful grooves. Their 2022 debut album, Second Sight (2022), earned an Australian Music Prize nomination as a purely instrumental project that seamlessly bridged technical virtuosity with hip-hop-influenced grooves. Working at the epicentre of the vibrant contemporary jazz, hip-hop, and neo-soul scene that has developed in the city in recent decades, Rayman’s piano arrangements balance inviting, highly emotional melodies with rich jazz chords and clever chord progressions.
Whereas their debut was a purely instrumental affair, their follow-up opens their doors to guest vocalists and MCs for the first time, stepping onto a broader stage in Australia’s burgeoning hip-hop scene, positioning them among the most dynamic young outfits. This new approach sharpens their signature blend of head-nodding beats and lush, modern jazz improvisation and elevates this release beyond their instrumental debut.
Rayman’s tactile piano keys maintain the flow, as Coleman’s warm basslines and Evans-Barker’s crisp, in-the-pocket drumming push each track forward. Features from vocalist Tyla Moonchild ("Light Eternal" and "Show Me A Sign"), MC Tumi the Be ("Unbelievable") and Zima (What's To Say") bring fresh vocal dynamics expanding the trio's sound without crowding their core groove.
Sequence captures a band in complete sync, serving up an irresistible, multi-faceted statement.
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Beneath Lifted Skies
LINDA MAY HAN OH & MELISSA ALDANA
Released 21 August 2026
Biophilia Records
Jazz
Australia, Chile, USA
****-
An astonishingly intimate bass-and-tenor sax dialogue that strips jazz classics to the core, alongside the duo's own originals, in a remarkable acoustic interaction.
Bassist Linda May Han Oh and tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana are two of contemporary jazz's most visionary figures. Oh, born in Malaysia, raised in Perth, Australia, and now based in New York, is celebrated for her virtuoso technique and inventive bandleading across solo projects and collaborations with A-list players including Pat Metheny and Vijay Iyer. Chilean-born Aldana made history as the first South American and first female instrumentalist to win the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition. Both are acclaimed composers and bandleaders in their own right, but their combined synergy brings a seamless blend of technical brilliance, harmonic adventurousness, and deep musical empathy.
Beneath Lifted Skies presents an unfiltered, high-wire dialogue between bass and tenor saxophone. that reimagines a playlist of mid-century jazz classics, placing them alongside a free improvisations with remarkable vitality. Opening with a blistering rendition of Parker and Gillespie’s “Anthropology,” the duo immediately establishes an astonishing level of trust, trading fluid phrases at breakneck speeds. Throughout tracks like Bud Powell’s “Hallucinations” and John Coltrane’s “26-2,” Oh’s resonant acoustic bass provides both structural grounding and counter-melodic movement, freeing Aldana’s tenor to soar with warm, nuanced phrasing. Other artists represented include Charles Mingus ("Duke Ellington's Sound of Love"),
Sam Rivers (Cyclic Episode"), Herbie Hancock ("The Sorcerer"), Wayne Shorter ("Dance Cadaverous"), Sammy Fain & Irving Kahal ("I'll Be Seeing You"), Gigi Gryce & Jon Hendricks ("Social Call"), Thelonius Monk ("Introspection") and Billie Holiday & Arthur Herzog ("God Bless The Child").
Offsetting these classics, Oh and Aldana contribute a quartet of their own compositions - "Infinate", "Resolve", "Shoulder To Shoulder" and closing track "Winter". The seamless integration of these pieces, in the company of such iconic classics demonstrates the pair's capabilities as composers and interpreters alike.
Rather than sounding empty, the minimalist duo setting illuminates the sheer depth of their artistic rapport, as they transform familiar standards into vibrant, modern explorations.
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Materia
JULIA HOLTER
Released 21 August 2026
Domino
Folk
UK
****-
Another spellbinding but intellectually exhausting collection of art-pop from one of her generation's most creative, daring, and essential visionary songwriters.
Los Angeles composer and vocalist Julia Holter stands among the pre-eminent generation of women singer-songwriters, sharing rarefied air alongside trailblazers like Joanna Newsom, Beth Orton, Beth Gibbons, Elizabeth Fraser, Laura Marling, and Polly Harvey. Blending avant-garde classicism, academic rigor, and radiant melodic instinct, Holter has spent well over a decade extending the boundaries for modern singer-songwriters. Across monumental releases like Have You in My Wilderness (2015) and Aviary (2018), her work is both intensely cerebral and deeply humane. With her mastery over texture, modal harmony, and literary abstraction, Holter's choices are often sonically challenging, but her adventurousness breaks open new possibilities for her peers and successors, making her one of the most vital, exploratory voices in contemporary art-pop.
Materia is a companion LP to 2024’s Something in the Room She Moves, (among SunNeverSetsOnMusic's top albums that year) - another open, hallucinatory playground where disparate ideas cohere into a vibrant moving whole.
At its thematic centre, the album is structured the Hildegard von Bingen-inspired title track, the original version of which appeared on "Something in the Room..." .Von Bingen was a 12C German Benedictine abbess and polymath - a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary and medical writer. The parallels between her interests and those of contemporary women artists are distinct and it is perhaps unsurprising that Holter would revisit and now realized two distinct new incarnations of the piece: the ether-bound, clarinet-and-bass dream of "Materia 2" (featuring Jessika Kenney) and the slowed, nostalgic tribute of "Materia 3", which is presented as the final track of the album, intended as a kind of CD-era "Bonus Track".
Spanning seven tracks, the LP shifts through dynamic modes - from the percolating bass-heavy flow of the opening track "The Laugh Is In The Eyes"; the haunting vocal range of "My Lost One"; the variations of "Materia"; the ecstatic synth-pop burst of "Fantasy" and two astounding improvisations - "Clepsydra" and the ten-minute centrepiece "My Twin". Supported by her formidable touring band, Holter rearranges spirit, body, and harmony with effortless aplomb. However, the overall result is a complex, demanding album whose polyrhythms, unexpected modal leaps, and layered instrumentation has been described as "like five tracks playing at once."
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Gentlewoman
CLEO SOL
Released 20 August 2026
Forever Living Originals
Soul
UK
****-
A serene, self-produced masterclass in acoustic intimacy, embracing beautiful imperfections to craft an enduring sanctuary against life's background noise.
Over just six years, UK based Cleo Sol has evolved to become a defining light of modern neo-soul and contemporary R&B. Operating both as a acclaimed solo artist and as a core collaborator, alongside her partner and producer Inflo in the anonymous, genre-redefining collective SAULT, her output has consistently set the benchmark for spiritual, introspective music. Renowned for her refusal to participate in traditional music industry promotion, she allows her transcendent vocal delivery and deeply personal song writing to speak entirely for themselves. Her work blends vintage soul dynamics with timeless messages of faith, self-preservation, family, and emotional restoration, solidifying her status as a generational talent.
Dropping with little advance fanfare - a Forever Living Originals convention - , Gentlewoman is a deeply intimate journey through love, family, and divine connection. The record unfolds with exquisite restraint, leaning into slow tempos, tender lyricism, and lush, unhurried production. Opening track "I Only Look to You" sets a poignant boundary of self-preservation as she sings, "Finally, I'm looking out for me". It is a fitting declaration following years of relentless collaborative creativity.
Throughout the album, Sol explores the necessity of receiving love and granting oneself permission to heal. By the time the title track is reprised to close the collection she declares "I can speak life into my family because I can speak life into myself, and God, I thank you for that strength". Her spoken acknowledgment of strength and perseverance feels like a sacred quiet victory.
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fata morgana
L'RAIN
Released 14 August 2026
Mexican Summer
Experimental
USA
*****
A shape-shifting collage of avant-garde, metal, dancehall and ambient tape elements: a soundtrack to an arresting vision of modern life.
Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist and composer Taja Cheek, performing as L’Rain, has carved out a unique space in contemporary experimental music. Since her 2017 self-titled debut she has steadily drawn critical attention with the release of arresting new projects including Fatigue (2021) and I Killed Your Dog (2023), through music that weaves tape loops, field recordings, and multi-genre arrangements into deeply personal sonic landscapes.
As a curator and artist, she approaches music as a fluid, tactile medium where personal experience and societal alienation intersect. With fata morgana - named for the complex, rare optical illusion or superior mirage that appears right above the horizon, that stretches, magnifies, and distorts distant objects and a perfect metaphor for nature of her music - she completes an ambitious four-album cycle, solidifying her reputation as one of the most visionary sound designers of her generation.
Across her four full-length records, L’Rain uses tape loops, field recordings, and multi-genre collage to explore emotional transformation. Unsurprisingly, the production of such complex, sophisticated soundscapes involves other creatives. Alongside Cheek are co-producers Ben Chapoteau-Katz and Andrew Lappin, who together form the core that has transformed L'Rain from a solo studio project into a collaborative entity. Katz (multi-instrumentalist and live band member) arranges performance dynamics, contributes multi-instrumental layers, and transforms dense tape loops and collage elements into fluid studio compositions.
Lappin (arranger, sound engineer and mixer) provides the technical and structural framework, blending acoustic, electronics, and field recordings into cohesive album arcs.
Each project functions as an unfolding chapter, transitioning from grief on her debut to fatigue, interpersonal heartbreak, and ultimately spectral distortion on fata morgana - a kaleidoscopic universe where jarring motifs seamless collapse into harmony.
Crunchy metal riffs dissolve into weightless ambient loops, while dancehall rhythms, gospel swells, and avant-garde jazz textures bend around Cheek’s ethereal vocals. Standout tracks like "Soulless Cycle" and "Borderline" demonstrate her absolute mastery of tension and release. Rather than escaping reality, Cheek uses these shifting layers to look inward, confronting self-doubt, identity, and existence in a chaotic world.
There's more...
L'Rain Official
Bandcamp
The Womack Sisters
THE WOMACK SISTERS
Released 14 August 2026
Daptone Records
Soul
USA
***--
Impeccably recorded analogue soul undermined by a lack of currency or urgency - the result, a faithful vintage recreation that feels entirely derivative.
The Womack Sisters - BG, Zeimani, and Karren - boast soul music royalty in their DNA. The daughters of legendary duo Womack & Womack (Cecil Womack and Linda Cooke), their lineage extends directly to their grandfathers: R&B icon Sam Cooke and Curtis Womack of the Valentinos. Their uncle, Bobby Womack further cements the dynasty. Possessing undeniable, inherited vocal talent, the trio carries decades of black American musical history in their harmonies and have honed their skills as backup singers and supports. However, where their forebears pioneered new emotional and stylistic frontiers across decades of gospel, R&B, and pop, the sisters face the constant challenge of stepping out from under an immense, formidable historic shadow into a modern world in which the genres have matured, morphing with with contemporary formats.
Backed by Daptone Records’ signature analogue warmth - the familiar, tape-saturated aesthetic that elevates the work of many of our most admired artists(Sharon Jones, Charles Bradley, Thee Sacred Souls, James Hunter Six and others), the trio seem satisfied to recreate the vintage Stax sound, but bring little of their own creation besides. While the production sparkles, and the vocals are note perfect to the genre, innovation is untested and the songwriting fails to ignite. Consequently, most tracks lack emotional urgency and a fresh narrative perspective, relying on worn tropes rather than lived-in truth. Unlike the late Amy Winehouse, who modernized roots music through raw personal confession, or neo-soul stylist Cleo Sol or boundary-pushing artists like Celeste and Cleo Reed, who inject contemporary attitudes and electronic textures, the sisters offer no new ideas.
The result is a polished, nostalgia-driven effort that sounds as though it stepped straight out of 1965 Memphis or Detroit - less like a vibrant evolution than a talented, but uninspired legacy act.
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Summer
JUNGLE
Released 14 August 2026
Caiola Records
Neo-soul
UK
****-
A sunny, nostalgia-fuelled summer indulgence, tracing a direct line from 70s funk roots into modern UK neo-soul dance music.
Formed in West London by lifelong friends J Lloyd and Tom McFarland and in recent years operating as a trio alongside co-producer Lydia Kitto, Jungle energised modern British soul with their self-titled 2014 debut. Anchored by tight-knit collective grooves, falsetto vocal harmonies, and irresistible dance choreography, the BRIT Award-winning group has continually refined their sun-soaked aesthetic. Across five acclaimed studio albums, they have supplemented old-school analogue-sounding soul arrangements with crisp, modern club production, establishing themselves as one of the world's premier live dance music acts.
Sunshine sees Jungle once again leaning heavily into the rich musical lineage that has been their focus - the euphoric, horns-and-falsetto brass setups of Sly & The Family Stone and Earth, Wind & Fire, while sharing a sleek, anonymous collective DNA with modern UK soul visionaries in the extended Inflo family tree (such as SAULT). Tracks like "Carry On" and "The Wave" epitomize the group's knack of converting their collective energy into hypnotic physical motion.
In a fascinating "worlds-collide" moment, Sunshine (the title track particularly) marries this live funk tradition with the sonic landscape typically reserved for sample-reliant acts like The Avalanches, - yet achieves this nostalgic warmth almost entirely through live instrumentation, rather than crates of samples. The result is another vibrant, kinetic triumph.
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Batiste Piano Series Vol. 4
Monk Movements
JON BATISTE
Released 14 August 2026
Verve Records
Jazz
USA
****-
Batiste Piano Series Vol. 2
Black Mozart
JON BATISTE
Released 14 August 2026
Decca Records
Jazz
USA
****-
Batiste Piano Series Vol. 3
Monk Meditations
JON BATISTE
Released 14 August 2026
Verve Records
Jazz
USA
****-
Batiste Piano Series Vol. 1
Beethoven Blues
JON BATISTE
Released 14 August 2026
Verve Records
Jazz
USA
****-
From New Orleans' prolific showman and cultural icon, comes an evolving series of releases bridging classical and Black American music through ragtime, blues and contemporary improvisation.
It was perhaps inevitable that Jon Batiste would become one of the most prominent figures in jazz - after all, he grew up in Kenner, Louisiana, as a member of a New Orleans musical dynasty: the Batiste family includes Lionel Batiste of the Treme Brass Band, Milton Batiste of the Olympia Brass Band, among others. The young Batiste's career has grown exponentially so that he now has become one of contemporary music’s most versatile polymaths - an Oscar and multi-Grammy-winning composer, former late-night bandleader, and genre-blurring pop star. Yet beneath his expansive multi-media projects lies a deeply disciplined virtuoso rooted in the piano tradition. His ongoing Batiste Piano Series is a virtual jazz conservatory where he interrogates his core influences, previously tackling Beethoven - Beethoven Blues (2024) and Mozart - Black Mozart (2026).
With Beethoven Blues (Batiste Piano Series, Vol. 1) Batiste yanks Ludwig van out of Viennese parlors and straight into Storyville, blending European classical with New Orleans second-line, barrelhouse boogie, and deep-felt blues. Through spontaneous composition, he demystifies the master, demonstrating that Beethoven’s complex, multi-metered rhythms inherently share an affinity with the Black American tradition.
With Monk Meditations (Batiste Piano Series, Vol. 3) and Monk Movements (Batiste Piano Series, Vol. 4), Batiste honours his primary precursor and inspiration. As Batiste told the New York Times: "At 19, I became obsessed with everything Thelonious and spent a year focused exclusively on absorbing as much as I could. Monk is a world". Monk Meditations and Monk Movements capture two distinct sides of the bebop high priest's soul. Meditations focuses on Monk’s balladry, with songs of quietude, including "Reflections", "Midnight Around The Corner" and "Crepuscule with Nellie", as Batiste's emotive playing - impressionistic, ambient, classical (and occasional vocalisations) carry us into the more contemplative spaces of Monk's devising. Conversely, Movements leans directly into the kinetic, rhythmically jagged tilt of the joyful, syncopated "In Walked Bud", the quintessential blues of "Blue Monk", the complex "Brilliant Corners," and the extended workout that form's the disc's finale "Monk Movement". Rather than mimicking Monk's percussive attack, Batiste grafts his hero’s harmonic mystery onto his own contemporary vocabulary, bridging heritage to present with his exquisite, entertaining spark.
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Bloodhorse!
GRACE CUMMINGS
Released 14 August 2026
Sugar Mountain Records
Rock
Australia
*****
A powerfully voiced, cinematic masterpiece that draws upon theatrical intensity, religious imagery, and sharp song writing in a display of absolute brilliance.
Melbourne singer-songwriter Grace Cummings possesses one of contemporary music's most astonishing and expressive vocal instruments. Since emerging with her hauntingly austere folk debut Refuge Cove (2019), she has steadily expanded her sonic palette into electric intensity with Storm Queen (2022) and sweeping, theatrical grandiosity on Ramona (2024). Known for her peerless vocal power, fierce emotional authenticity, literary lyricism, and towering stage presence, Cummings has established herself as a singular force in modern roots and rock music - continuously pushing her arrangements into ever-more ambitious and magnificent territories.
Reuniting with producer Jonathan Wilson, Cummings expands her sonic palette and song-writing range on Bloodhorse!, blending her hallmark vocal control with unexpected variety, and often-confounding lyrical content and even humour. The opening quartet of songs plunges into subjects characterised by stark religiosity and fervent intensity, culminating in the fierce, life-affirming surge of the title track - but jolting the listener with the shockingly raw, obscene burst of "Bloodhorse! (part two)" which hits unnanounced, like an abrupt intermission commercial.
The curtain rises gently on "Part two" with the reassuring "I'm Not Crazy" as Cumming's vocal, softened almost beyond recognition, delivers lyrics that shift towards literary and song-writing references: nodding explicitly, almost prayerfully, to "John Lennon" and echoing Bob Dylan’s classic "Girl From the North Country" within the magnificent (and all to brief)"The Magnum Opus of the North is a Cowboy Boot." Elsewhere, "Witch! Witch! Witch!" and "My Island and Me" and the closing track "See you in Fifty Years" present Cummings at her powerfully-voiced, enigmatic best.
Bloodhorse! is an engrossing, beguiling album of a kind that not only demands immediate replay, but is rare among modern releases, few of which pair such rich lyrical depth with such proficient, tight-knit musicianship.
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Temple Songs
LAURA VEIRS
Released 14 August 2026
Raven Marching Band
Folk
USA
****-
A serene, self-produced masterclass in acoustic intimacy, embracing beautiful imperfections to craft an enduring sanctuary against life's background noise.
Portland-based singer-songwriter Laura Veirs has spent over two decades establishing herself as one of modern folk’s most evocative, poetic voices. Known for marrying rich, nature-infused lyricism with intricate fingerpicked arrangements, Veirs established her legacy across acclaimed albums like Carbon Glacier (2004) and Year of Meteors (2005). After years of collaborating with high-profile producers, her recent work reflects an empowering shift toward complete self-reliance. Writing, recording, and painting from her Pacific Northwest home, Veirs continues to refine an artistic ethos centered on quiet resilience, independence, and finding profound beauty within life’s unpredictable, everyday shifts.
Crafted entirely by Veirs in her backyard studio, Temple Songs is an exquisitely raw, DIY portrait of self-sufficiency. Using just two microphones and a laptop, Veirs dispenses with click tracks and pristine soundproofing, opting instead to let ambient room tones and human touch inform the atmosphere. The result embraces the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi - finding grace in life’s natural imperfections. Musically, the album relies on Veir's delicate folk picking, allowing her melodic voice to carry her often cryptic lyrics. She is at her best however, when singing with conviction, conveying sharp social and personal observations or balancing existential questioning with domestic peace.
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Live from the Roundhouse
JACOB ALON
Released 14 August 2026
Island Records
Folk
Scotland
****-
A captivating live document from a generational folk talent, expressing raw vulnerability in soaring, cinematic, modern balladry.
Fife-born singer-songwriter Jacob Alon has rapidly emerged as one of the most singular voices in contemporary UK folk music. Honing their craft across the Edinburgh acoustic circuit before breaking onto national stages, their non-binary, neuro-diverse perspective brings rare candour to modern storytelling. Pairing intricate, finger-picked fretwork with an astounding vocal range, gliding seamlessly from quiet whispers to gilded falsetto, Alon explores themes of queer identity, unrequited desire, and emotional healing. Following critical acclaim for their debut record In Limerence, a Mercury Prize nomination, and a BRITs Critics' Choice win, Alon presents as a formidable new talent.
Recorded during a headline show at the iconic London venue, Live From The Roundhouse expands the intimacy of Alon’s debut into something more theatrical and shared. For the most part, the performance in Alon's alone, on piano and guitar, their otherworldly voice filling the historic space with the delicate intimacy. They are supported by Rubie Green (vocals and synthesisers), bringing out Dan Carey (synth and bass) and Yuri Shibuichi (Drum Kit) for the final tracks - "Fairy in a Bottle" and "Don't Fall Asleep".
Highlights like "August Moon - parts 1 and 2", "Fairy in a Bottle" and "Confession" showcase breathtaking vocal acrobatics, while "Glimmer" and "Liquid Gold 25" display their distinct blend of warmth, wit, and contemporary poetry. Their version of Curt Kobain's "All Apologies" brings new meaning and considerable drama to this familiar classic. Between tracks, Alon’s unpretentious banter anchors the emotional weight of their performance in genuine human connection.
Captured with extraordinary atmospheric clarity, this live album is a defining testament to an original, emerging artist - as exciting as any vocalist since Jeff Buckley, and worthy of comparisons with Nick Drake, Rufus Wainwright, and Adrianne Lenker - in full, glorious ascent.
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Lost Weekend
PHOEBE BRIDGERS
Released 14 August 2026
Dead Oceans
Folk, Pop
USA
****-
Her third and most daring release - a fully realized artistic statement that contains and expansive reckoning with grief, romance, and fame.
Phoebe Bridgers has evolved from a lauded indie singer-songwriter into a generational voice and multi-Grammy-winning powerhouse. After stepping into the spotlight with Stranger in the Alps (2017) and Punisher (2020), the Los Angeles native spent six years expanding her musical profile and experience - headlining arenas, collaborating with pop titan Taylor Swift, and dominating the charts alongside Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker in boygenius. Known for her razor-sharp conversational lyricism, eerie folk-pop melodies, and emotional candor, Bridgers balances quiet intimacy with monumental cultural impact.
Lost Weekend arrives as Phoebe Bridgers’ most adventurous, and emotionally devastating work to date. Written in the turbulent shadow of her father’s passing and high-profile romantic fractures, the album navigates the messy intersection of grief, lingering resentment, and fragile new love. Co-produced alongside a stellar cast of producers and musicians including Jack Antonoff (synths, guitars, vocals), Alex G (synths), Blake Mills (guitar), Tony Berg (guitars), Ethan Gruska (multi-instrumental), Caroline Shaw (vocals, arrangements, viola), and Bo Burnham (vocals, lyrics), the soundscapes shatter traditional indie-folk bounds. Lost Weekend echoes landmark indie-folk blueprints - Wilco’s noise-tinged Americana of "Yankee, Hotel, Foxtrot" (2003), Justin Vernon’s vocoder-drenched isolation of "For Emma, Forever Ago" (2008) , and Sufjan Stevens’ unfiltered grief of "Carry & Lowell" (2015) yet it remains unmistakably Phoebe Bridgers at her inventive peak.
Across the album's sixteen tracks, Bridgers turns profound personal trauma and newfound happiness into an extraordinary, cathartic work of art that stands entirely on its own remarkable terms. Opener "The Outside" sets the stage - her voice run through a disorienting vocoder filter before resolving into raw, unvarnished clarity. Lyrically, Bridgers swerves from the heavy weight of her father’s passing to the quiet euphoria of romantic rebirth. Rather than merely referencing her musical precursors, she transforms their sonic vocabulary - pairing Blake Mills’ synth-guitar glitches with delicate pedal steel; mirroring Justin Vernon's harmonic resonance; summoning boygenius' explosive energies - as she explores dissociation, memory, and healing.
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Water For Gasoline
REB FOUNTAIN
Released 14 August 2026
Fountain Records
Folk Rock
New Zealand
*****
Recorded live in her garage studio, another smouldering collection of masterpiece turns instinct into lightning, igniting human truth with passion.
Reb Fountain is an Aotearoa New Zealand singer-songwriter celebrated for her emotional gravity, folk-noir art-pop sensibility, and magnetic stage presence. After overcoming early personal adversity and building her craft across years of unyielding touring, her 2020 self-titled breakout earned critical acclaim and widespread recognition. Subsequent releases Iris (2021) and How Love Bends (2025) have solidified her reputation as an artist of profound patience, commanding vocal power, and poetic lucidity. Alongside enduring collaborators Dave Khan, Simon Gooding, and Earl Robertson, Fountain consistently translates vulnerability, trust, and human connection into enduring songs built upon raw depth.
Fountain describes the album as "written within the turning of a moon, recorded in a week and released three months later, Water for Gasoline stands as a message of hope, resilience and the fight for love". Continuing the musical trajectory of 2025’s How Love Bends the album captures the raw energy of this process in ten electrifying tracks. Lead single "Good People" opens the album with defiant anti-authoritarian spirit. "Beautiful Lie" benefits from a lightness of touch in the opening, before the tom-tom driven band kicks in. The falsetto-voiced "Swarm" and the haunting title track balance the set's rough-edged folk-rock urgency with exquisite emotional vulnerability.
Fountain's trust in her ensemble in this live recording process - in her garage is rewarded with a unique intimacy, and lets the music evolve organically, as her soulful, husky vocals emphasize astutely observed, often devastating lyricism. Closing the album with the pairing of the heartbreaking "Things' and the devastating "Grief Is Like A Song", she ensures that Water For Gasoline stands as another courageous, beautifully unvarnished triumph, that elevates her to the forefront of her craft.
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YouTube
For All Your Flowers
SKÚLI SVERRISSON, BILL FRISELL
Released 7 August 2026
Newvelle Records
Jazz
USA, Iceland
****-
A hushed, close-miked super-session in sonic restraint as a pair of icons swap fiery technique for mist-shrouded minimalism and subtle counterpoint.
Bill Frisell is a legendary jazz guitarist celebrated for blending Americana, folk, and avant-garde improvisation into a recognizable, air-suspended tone. Skúli Sverrisson is a virtuoso Icelandic bassist, composer, and producer known for his extensive work across jazz, ambient, and modern classical spheres, including long-running collaborations with Allan Holdsworth, Laurie Anderson, and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Revered by musicians for his expansive harmonic sense, Sverrisson prioritizes texture and tone over flashy pyrotechnics. Reuniting after their 2018 duo effort Strata, the pair share a rare, empathetic chemistry built around dynamic patience, space, and quiet structural trust.
To the untrained ear, For All Your Flowers can easily sound like two masters aimlessly "noodling" over morning coffee. Dynamic pyrotechnics are absent, replaced by static tempos and muted attacks. However, for those in the know, the technical brilliance of this record lies entirely in what is omitted.
Rather than playing rhythm-versus-lead, Sverrisson uses his electric bass to build independent counter-melodies, taking over the middle register so Frisell can leave vast expanses of silence between phrases. Frisell relies heavily on microscopic touch, delicate volume-pedal swells, and subtle timbral shifts to bend notes into the air. Captured live over two days at NYC's EastSide Sound, the pristine engineering picks up every finger-slide and string vibration.
If you want fireworks, skip it. But if you value micro-textures, room acoustics, and two iconoclasts having a whispered dialogue, it is well worth your time.
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Skúli Sverrisson - Newvelle Records
Bill Frisell - Newvelle Records
Donn/Dubh
ARUN SOOD & ANGELINE MORRISON
Released 7 August 2026
Real World Records
Folk
UK
*****
An atmospheric, convention challenging, collision of Gaelic song, dub and ambient drone that courageously reclaims and redefines Hebridean heritage.
Multi-instrumentalist Arun Sood and singer Angeline Morrison represent two of the most vital voices in contemporary British folk. Morrison, renowned for her ground-breaking, 2022 albums The Sorrow Songs (Folk Songs of Black British Experience), and The Brown Girl and other Folk Songs and subsequently for Grace Will Leave Me Home and Ophelia (both in 2024) uses what she calls "mythopoeic singing" to invoke forgotten Black British histories.
Sood, a Scottish-Indian acclaimed musician, poet, and writer, explores themes of memory and landscape through field recordings and ambient loops, as heard on his debut solo album, Searching Erskine (2024). Uniting over their shared mixed-race island heritage, the duo coined the term "Brown Hebrideans" to reclaim liminal spaces in the traditional Scottish canonical landscape.
Inspired by Saltair na Rann (a 10th-century Celtic text linking wind directions to distinct colors) Donn/Dubh (Gaelic for Brown/Black) fractures and reimagines Gaelic song archives. Opening track "A Rìbhinn a Bheil Cuimhn' Agad" sets a haunting precedent, layering reverbed flutes and pulse-like bass underneath Morrison's searching vocal refrains. Across 12 tracks, traditional Gaelic texts collide with abrasive guitars, post-rock swells, and deep dub production. Soon's surreal soundscapes feel both ancient and futuristic. Similarly, Morrison's etherial vocals oscillate between the traditional and the otherworldly.
By associating centuries-old melodies and words with fragmented drones, lush synths and contemporary media, Sood and Morrison have constructed an immersive masterpiece that is comparable in it's significance to predecessors such as Bill Laswell, Martyn Bennett, Transglobal Underground and Afro Celt Sound System - if not redefining traditional folk, then pushing it's envelope into mesmerising new shapes.
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Real World Records
I Am Both
MARGARET GLASPY
Released 7 August 2026
Acoustic Folk Rock
USA
*****
Fierce, unvarnished emotional directness, crafted to form sharp witted servings of folk-rock and a refreshing exploration of modern living.
Hailing from Red Hook, New York, singer-songwriter Margaret Glaspy first turned heads with her critically acclaimed 2016 debut, Emotions and Math and has continued to develop her craft with a string of subsequent releases - Devotion (2020), Echo The Diamond (2023) and a star-studded, uber-collaborative covers album The Golden Heart Protector (2025). Taking full advantage of the inherent character of her rasping, expressive vocal delivery, rhythmic electric guitar work, and biting observational writing, Glaspy bridges the gap between raw indie-rock grit and timeless acoustic storytelling. She has built a reputation as one of her generation's most uncompromising lyricists.
On I Am Both, Glaspy displays a formidable strength of character that places her squarely in the lineage of peers and precursor songcraft giants like Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch, Iris DeMent, and Mary Gauthier. Stepping into rare company, Glaspy possesses a rare knack for extracting humor, nuance, and crushing pathos from everyday matters without ever leaning on tired songwriting tropes. Her straight-talking lyricism operates with surgical efficiency, whether it is towards resistance to abuse with dignity in the outstanding title track; neglect-induced loneliness in "That Rose", an apology in "Petty"; self defense against predatory attack in "Sharp Knife"; detailing urban burn-out on "Michigan", dissecting self-acceptance on "Reminder", overcoming abandonment in "Wildest Dreams" or singing a prayer for compassion in "Martin Luther King Jr".
Supported by Joe Henry's warm, unobtrusive folk-leaning production, Glaspy's voice and guitar do the heavy lifting throughout. Decades after the foundational templates of post-war Americana were cast, she proves that unvarnished honesty and sharp-eyed human observation can still feel strikingly fresh.
I Am Both stands alongside Williams' "Car Wheels On A Gravel Road", Welch's "Time (The Revelator)", DeMent's "Infamous Angel", and Gauthier's "Mercy Now" as a triumphant, beautifully grounded new example in authentic American songwriting.
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What Does It Take To Bloom?
SOMI
Released 7 August 2026
Jazz
Salon Africana, Inc.
*****
An exuberant, deeply personal exploration of womanhood and identity that brings together West African highlife, spoken word and contemporary jazz.
Born in Illinois to Rwandan and Ugandan parents, Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter, playwright, and actor Somi has crafted a singular career rooted in bridging African narratives with the global diaspora. Recognized as the first African woman nominated in a Grammy jazz category, she effortlessly blends modern jazz, pan-African grooves, and evocative storytelling. Across a celebrated catalogue, that includes Zenzile: The Reimagination of Miriam Makeba (2022) - a tribute to the great South African icon - and reflections on cultural landscapes from Lagos to Harlem, Somi consistently uses her rich vocal instrument to explore memory, displacement, and belonging. Her multifaceted artistry continues to elevate pan-African voices while redefining the boundaries of contemporary jazz music itself.
On What Does It Take To Bloom?, Somi delivers her first collection of original material in six years, turning her sharp cultural-observer's lens inward, with the focus on the complexities of selfhood. Recorded across Dakar, Lagos, Paris, and New York, with Somi newly resident between New York and Nairobi, the 13-track collection radiates raw intimacy and artistic audacity.
Opening with reflective vulnerability on lead single “We’re All Falling,” Somi navigates themes of womanhood, survival, and quiet emotional resilience. Seamlessly fusing West African highlife rhythms with lush jazz horn arrangements, highlighted by guest Lakecia Benjamin on “So You Want to Be a Woman”, the album thrives on fluid genre transitions. Somi takes dramatic vocal risks, shifting from hushed, whispered confessions to soaring melodic declarations.
The album also includes two spoken word interludes, both spoken by her mother: "Mama On Blooming" (on raising children versus growing plants) and "Mama On Tradition" (on heritage and legacy). These are not placed as novelties, but are essential to the album's narrative and depth. Although they may interrupt the musical flow and are distracting for the casual listening, they are essential to the depth of the album's themes of intergenerational growth and womanhood.
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Trip The Night Fantastic
TERRI LYNE CARRINGTON, SOCIAL SCIENCE
Released 31 July 2026
Jazz
USA
*****
A joyous second serving of activist-inspired ensemble jazz, seamlessly blending genre-defying grooves with a vital, unflinching, and deeply compassionate vision for humanity.
As an elite, in-demand session drummer and producer, Terri Lyne Carrington has supported giants ranging from Stan Getz, Woody Shaw, and Lester Bowie to Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Cassandra Wilson, Dianne Reeves, David Sanborn, and Julian Lage. Beyond her prolific work as a sideman, the multi-Grammy winner has spearheaded ground-breaking projects as a bandleader, including her acclaimed collaborative releases New Standards Vol. 1 (2022), and We Insist 2025! With Trip The Night Fantastic, Carrington reunites her collective Social Science - featuring pianist Aaron Parks, guitarist Matthew Stevens, and multi-instrumentalist Morgan Guerin - alongside a stellar gathering of guest visionaries.
Expanding upon the conceptual framework of their 2019 landmark Waiting Game, Carrington and Social Science surround their tightknit core with a fluid, world-class line-up of guest collaborators, including Brandee Younger, Fatoumata Diawara, and Arooj Aftab. Structured like thematic chapters across 13 narrative tracks, (such as "Autonomy Song," "Climate Song," "Children's Song," and "Step Song"), the album evolves as an inviting, contemporary tapestry of improvised free jazz, lush lounge, hip-hop, spoken word, and soulful R&B.
On her website, Carrington describes Trip The Night Fantastic as"... a musical sanctuary and a call to action. Originally commissioned for the Visualizing Abolition Initiative, the album explores a vast landscape of social justice themes, including women's empowerment, gender identity, climate justice, and the abolition of punitive systems. Through a series of evocative collaborations, the album celebrates the resilience of the human spirit."
Trip The Night Fantastic proves that politically conscious and activist music can be as musically rich as it is urgent. Tackling pressing contemporary realities with grace and nuance, Carrington and her collective deliver an extraordinarily rich, eclectic program that expresses an unflinching, inclusive, and deeply compassionate view of humanity’s breaks and bonds.
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Terri Lyne Carrington Official
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Joy (EP)
ISAIAH COLLIER
Released 31 July 2026
Brownswood Recordings
Jazz - Contemporary, Spiritual, Free, Fusion
UK
*****
Positioning joy as a guiding light during challenging times and delivering an affirmation of love, with discovery as a source of reassurance.
Over recent years, Isaiah Collier has featured often on SunNeverSetsOnMusic - as solo artist, bandleader and collaborator.
In 2022 we noted that he had contributed saxophone to The Kahil El'Zabar Quartet album A Time For Healing, observing that "following his (2021) acclaimed album, Cosmic Transitions, he has been hailed as the new ‘Coltrane’". In 2023 we included his direct-to-disc debut album "Parallel Universe" among our albums of the year, noting how it "...explores the shared musical heritage of the African diaspora with a sense of grace and assurance that belies his years." His 2024 releases "The Almighty" and "The World Is On Fire" and his 2025 work on Theon Cross' album "Affirmations (Live At Blue Note New York)" drew our attention once again.
Collier's new project, released on Gilles Peterson's Brownswood Recordings, is another outstanding addition to this already-formidable portfolio - and, as the title suggests, it's an absolute delight. At the outset, with the opening/title track, the listener is engaged by a staccato piano figure that leads brass and a Stevie-like, celebratory voice channeling old-school optimism. Then, backed by Wurlitzer, Mellotron, flutes and drums "Landscape of Dreams", backed by his sun-filled, mellifluous modal flow, is a transportive joy-filled mini-soundtrack. "Where I'm Loved", follows, a vehicle for Collier's repeated declaration while by contrast, "When The Dust Settles" presents as a discordant improvisation, at a machine-gunned tempo, underpinned by hip-hop influenced bottom-end. Finally, "God's By Your Side" takes us to the music's source, with a rousing, church-ready, contemporary arrangement.
As his Bandcamp notes: "Throughout the album’s five compositions, Collier positions joy as a guiding light during challenging times, an expression of challenging yourself to utilize your gifts, an affirmation of love and discovery, and as an affirmative source of reassurance".
You may also like these previous reviews:
Isaiah Collier - The Almighty (2024)
Isaiah Collier - The World Is On Fire (2024)
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Conversations With Jack
JOSEPH TAWADROS, JACK DEJOHNETTE, YACOUBA SISSOUKO, JAMES TAWADROS
Released 31 July 2026
Joseph Tawadros
Australia, USA. Mali
*****
A masterful cross-cultural exchange of Australian/Egyptian oud, US jazz percussion and West African kora that weaves sublime, spontaneous dialogues - and takes me back to the Kasbah!
Egyptian-born and Australian-educated oud master Joseph Tawadros and his percussionist brother, James, have released many award-winning albums in Australia since 2004 and, as the Sydney Morning Herald observed, they have "...taken the oud out of its traditional Middle Eastern setting and into the realm of classical music and jazz." Joseph, who has the higher profile of the pair, has collaborated with musicians such as John Abercrombie, Roy Ayers, Béla Fleck, Joey DeFrancesco, Richard Tognetti, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, and The Academy of Ancient Music.
Jack DeJohnette is the famed Chicago drummer best known for his extensive work as leader and sideman for musicians including Charles Lloyd, Freddie Hubbard, Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans, John Abercrombie, Ralph Towner, Alice Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, Joe Henderson, Michael Brecker, Pat Metheny, Herbie Hancock, and John Scofield. The New York Times noted that, as a drummer, "few could rival his virtuosity or his dynamism." He has recorded more than 35 albums under his own name as a bandleader.
Yacouba Sissoko is a Malian kora player best known for his collaborations with jazz and pop musicians, including Paul Simon and Damon Albarn (Blur, Gorillaz).
Conversations with Jack is another stunning cross-cultural exchange in which the flamboyant Australian oud master produces lively, cross-cultural, and cross-genre dialogues. Generous in scope (spanning 76 minutes across 25 pieces), this is a relaxed affair with such a live-and-improvised edge that it might easily have been recorded in a hidden-away lounge somewhere in the Levant or Maghreb, anywhere between Istanbul and Tangier.
Tawadros's oud remains the signature element throughout, but as he has done so well for so long, DeJohnette provides inspired yet unobtrusive backing that elevates and energizes the music, allowing Tawadros to coax a seamless mix of the traditional and the contemporary from his instrument. The album's four-song opening stanza between the pair beguiles and captures its audience, transporting listeners in place and time, even before Sissoko is invited to join. When he does enter, the album's mellow tone lifts, as if the music salon's curtains have been drawn back to admit the afternoon light. Sissoko's delicate fretwork buzzes and thrills for "Tell Me What You Feel", as DeJohnette withdraws and Tawadros provides deft, droning support. "Remember How We Danced?" is livelier, as all three contribute to the song's romantic recollection. Sissoko momentarily withdraws for the subdued oud and percussion duet "A Sad Dream", but returns for the trio's melodic mid-album suite of the wistful "Memories Of Home", the gentle "Safe Space", and the delightful "Pure Happiness".
Except for two more pieces - the complex, rhythmic "Nubian Dance" and the pensive "In Loving Memory" - the remaining 45 minutes of the album belong to Tawadros and DeJohnette. This allows them free rein to meander and experiment across many moods without ever losing the shape of the whole, conveying a wide range of emotions: joy, in the aptly titled "Free Spirits"; delight, with "Pure Happiness"; or to groove ("In The Pocket"), caress ("Almost A Lullaby"), go solo ("Just Jack"), and eventually sign out on "Baksheesh".
Oh, I do miss the kasbah! But this helps!
You might also like our previous reviews:
Joseph Tawadros - History Has A Heartbeat (2022)
Joseph Tawadros - To Those Who Came Before Us (2023)
Joseph Tawadros - The Virtue of Signals (2024)
Joseph Tawadros - The Forgotten Path To Humanity (2025)
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The New World
SHEARWATER
Released 31 July 2026
Chamber-pop
USA
*****
An engrossing narrative synthesized from expansive rock, orchestral textures, spoken word and field recordings.
Formed in Austin, Texas in 1999, as the duo of Jonathan Meiburg and Will Sheff, Shearwater has been Meiburg's solo project since 2006, during which time he has released a stream of eight literate, ecologically-themed albums of indie-rock and chamber pop. Meiburg, who is author, geographer and ornithologist as much as musician, supplements his work with field recordings collected from global travels.
Of his writing debut A Most Remarkable Creature : The Hidden Life of the World’s Smartest Birds of Prey (Knopf, 2021) one reviewer wrote, “to call this a bird book is like calling Moby-Dick a whaling manual.”
Shearwater's output, unsurprisingly, ranges from tender and folk-infused to embrace cinematic grandeur. Meiburg is supported in these ambitious endeavours (in the first instance) by fellow band members: multi-instrumentalist Emily Lee, and drummer/engineer Dan Duszynski. However, the immense depth and unique quality of this recording is in large part due to the assembled riches of players who also contributed, playing exotic instruments that include bass ngoni, calabash, tamma, yabara, all manner of drums, percussion, brass and strings - and not to forget, Laurie Anderson's unmistakable voice on final track, “You and Your Dog”.
Recorded over four years in NY. LA, London and Berlin,"The New World" (and including Meiburg’s field recordings that stretch the record’s geographic range even further, with German church bells and blackbirds, Tasmanian rivers and forest ravens, coyotes in the California mountains) this is Shearwatte's ninth album. Crowdfunded and independently released, the album's narrative sweep spans the entire breadth of the group's musical vocabulary.
Opening with the accessible, folk-tinged "Even Song", Meiburg's delivery channels Nick Drake as he sings a song of bewilderment in the face of God. "More and More" intensifies the opener's musical profile, as lyrics obliquely reference humanity's meek regard to its compounding impacts, singing "To slake one appetite You’ll kill a million cultivars Cry But you’re blind to mistakes How can you know If you’re wrong or right?". Similar themes are developed as the music's intensity cranks up through the emphatic "Daydream Believer" and a gently funky "A Mink In The Dusk", reaching a powerful mid-album climax in "The Only Sound I'm Afraid Of".
The collection then "The High Ranges" allows a gentle, Beck-like, musical reset, "Slugs In The Marigolds" adds silky, mid-tempo momentum leading and penultimately, the soothingly sung and accompanied "Anamnesia".
The final, Anderson-voiced, narrative-driven "You and Your Dog" is in distinct contrast to the more cryptically worded pierces that precede it. A poignant recollection of past moments, a day at a beach, the narrative is apparent and the music, though delightful, is a lighter, more repetitive ensemble piece than the lushly orchestrated, cinematic music that precedes it.
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Hillbilly Erotica
SIR RICHARD BISHOP
Released 31 July 2026
Drag City
Folk
USA
****-
Masterful Appalachian fingerstyle guitar, served with a liberal dose of cheeky rural humour and breathtaking, fiery acoustic virtuosity.
Best known as a founding member of experimental, irreverent (and often blasphemous) legends Sun City Girls, Richard Bishop adopted the tongue-in-cheek moniker "Sir Richard" as an enigmatic nod to mock-nobility and his sprawling musical travels. Across decades of solo work, the Phoenix-born guitarist has built an extraordinary reputation bending Eastern ragas, Middle Eastern scales, and American Primitive acoustic styles to his will. Drawing heavy inspiration from pioneers like John Fahey and Leo Kottke, Bishop treats technical acoustic guitar playing as a playground for improvisational wizardry and uninhibited wit, having long ago mastered its formal strictures and discipline. The album follows 2025's companion album "Hillbilly Ragas".
At first glance, Hillbilly Erotica leans into ribald humour - its title and tracks like "Lick Skillet", "Finger, Tennessee" and "Hookers Bend" read like bawdy jokes, though they are actually real rural town names near his father's Tennessee home. Yet beneath the cheeky front lies serious, hyper-literate musicianship. Like Leo Kottke before him, Bishop proves that acoustic wizardry and comedic flair can happily coexist (Who, after hearing it, has forgotten the former's description of his own voice as "geese farts on a muggy day"?
Playing a single acoustic guitar without overdubs, Bishop fires off rapid, complex fingerstyle runs, blending bluegrass picking, mini-ragas, and frenetic, off-kilter picking runs. Highlights like "Sweet Lips Spiritual" and "Postcoital Serenade" balance dizzying fretwork with genuine warmth. It is a stunning, joyfully eccentric record.
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A Supreme Blue
NICHOLAS PAYTON + BUTCHER BROWN
Released 24 July 2026
Concord Jazz
Jazz
USA
****-
A bold, contemporary re-imagining of two of Jazz's most seminal albums - drawing on house, neo-soul, dub, hip-hop, and Southern jazz, and marking the 100th anniversary of their originators.
Born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, Nicholas Payton is a Grammy Award–winning trumpeter, multi-instrumentalist (piano/Rhodes, bass, vocoder), producer, and composer. A driving force in Black American Music, Payton moves effortlessly across swing, bebop, funk, neo-soul, R&B, electronic, and house music in a career spanning three decades. Butcher Brown, known for their blend of jazz, hip-hop, funk, neo-soul, house, and Southern rock, comprises Corey Fonville (drums, percussion), Andrew Randazzo (electric, upright bass & synth bass), DJ Harrison (Keyboards, Fender Rhodes, melodica), Morgan Burrs (electric & acoustic guitar), Marcus Tenney (tenor saxophone, brass, vocals). For A Supreme Blue, Payton adds trumpet, Fender Rhodes, and vocoder, while also co-producing and arranging Chicago-based five piece.
The project originated during an unplanned moment at a Butcher Brown concert when Payton sat in and began quoting Coltrane’s "Acknowledgement" over the group's house-music oriented rhythm section and the release marks the 100th anniversary of both Miles Davis and John Coltrane (both born in 1926). Rather than treating the originals as static, untouchable artifacts, Payton and Butcher Brown aim to prove that Davis’s and Coltrane’s modal and spiritual frameworks remain living, adaptable languages.
The album reframes the compositions through contemporary house pulses, dub production effects (engineered in real-time by Alex de Jong at Spacebomb Studios), neo-soul harmonies, synth bass, and vocoder textures. The tracks were recorded with minimal rehearsal and no extensive prior arrangements, relying instead on direct studio interaction and dynamic group improvisation.
All About Jazz wrote "Rather than treating these canonical works as untouchable artifacts, the ensemble subjects them to a contemporary filter drawing on house, neo-soul, dub, hip-hop, and Southern jazz idioms... The cool subtlety of Davis's work is largely replaced by groove-driven warmth, while Coltrane's ecstatic intensity is tempered by production aesthetics that prioritize texture over transcendence... The most productive way to approach A Supreme Blue is to hear it on its own terms - as a contemporary reinterpretation"
You may also like this previous review:
Nicholas Payton, Esperanza Spalding, Karriem Riggins - Triune
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Season of Glass (45th Anniversary)
YOKO ONO
Re-released 17 July 2026
Released 8 June 1981
Pop
USA
*****
A harrowing yet cathartic monument to grief that unites public tragedy and public devastation with an artful, courageous, and transformative pop-art masterpiece.
Released barely six months after John Lennon's tragic assassination, Season of Glass was a pivotal moment in Yoko Ono’s creative life and a cathartic gift to legions of the late Beatle's fans around the world. Despite facing decades of venomous animosity from sectors of that same fandom, who had unfairly vilified her for a decade, Ono delivered a remarkably brave work of public mourning. The record was warmly received by critics upon release, even by many who had been among her critics. Commercial pushback over the stark cover photograph featuring Lennon's blood-spattered eyeglasses and ambiguous glass half full/empty, was offset by the rear photo - potted marigolds & glass full. Rather than retreating from the world, Ono stepped back into it, sharing her private agony into unvarnished emotional truth.
Musically, Season of Glass strikes a compelling middle ground between the polished, wholesome pop of Lennon and Ono's Double Fantasy (1981) and the fiery, avant-garde experimentation of her catalog with the Plastic Ono Band, Elephants Memory, and her solo recordings.
Arriving on digital platforms alongside expanded physical editions to commemorate the 45th anniversary, this release includes three key bonus tracks: the seminal 1981 dance-punk single "Walking on Thin Ice," a stirring home demo of "I Don't Know Why," and a previously unreleased alternate Phil Spector mix of "Dogtown".
Decades later, progressive critical reappraisal has rightfully cemented Season of Glass as one of the most significant albums of its era. Structurally ambitious, the record makes poignant use of spoken interludes - including a moving short story recounted by a young Sean Lennon Ono.
In a 2023 re-appraisal of the album for Pitchfork, writer Jayson Greene describes how many of the songs on Season of Glass were written before Lennon's death, in very different circumstances. He writes "these songs didn’t spring from Lennon’s murder, but they did pointedly address his absence." He also cites Ono's observation that, “For 10 years I was the devil, and now suddenly I’m an angel,” she noted. “Did the world have to lose John for people to change their opinion of me?... If it brought John back, I’d rather be hated.” and suggests that "She wasn’t saying anything that she hadn’t said before; this time, the only difference was that people were, momentarily, listening".
Above all, Season of Glass helps consolidate Ono's role as a pioneering prototype for generations of outspoken, unapologetic feminist artists.
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Beard
SYD
Released 17 July 2026
Free Lunch Records
R&B
USA
****-
Continuing a journey of self-realisation that bridges teenage bedroom beat-making to mature alt-R&B mastery and newfound romantic peace.
Syd Bennett’s musical evolution has been one of modern R&B’s most compelling. Emerging as a teenager in the late 2000s, she served as the resident engineer and DJ for Odd Future, recording raw, boundary-pushing hip-hop in her childhood bedroom. She then evolved into the charismatic frontwoman of soul-collective The Internet, earning a Grammy nomination for 2015’s Ego Death before co-writing highlights like Beyoncé’s "Plastic Off the Sofa" (from B's massive "Renaissance" album). Nearly two decades into her career, the Los Angeles singer-producer has shed early industry expectations to claim total ownership over her sound, aesthetic, and identity as a solo artist.
Where 2017’s Fin announced her independence and 2022’s Broken Hearts Club processed romantic angst, Beard finds Syd at her most self-assured and artistically serene. Named after the subtle upper-lip facial hair she reclaimed as a symbol of self-love and being a music industry outlier, the 12-track project documents a fully matured creative.
She describes Beard, as the first album on which she truly feels like herself, revealing the musician at her most open-hearted - swooning, seducing, falling, and ultimately healing.
Self-producing ten tracks alongside mentors and peers like Raphael Saadiq, Rodney Jerkins, and James Fauntleroy, her lyrics trade heartbreak for open-hearted devotion and marital warmth, while her arrangements balance lush, bossa nova-tinted soul ("My Love") with intoxicating, minimalist grooves ("Jasmin 17").
Beard is an effortless triumph - the work of a visionary artist quietly mastering her own craft.
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Pints Of Ambient Nectar
DAWN AGAIN
Released 10 July 2026
Hell Yeah
Ambient
Australia
****-
From Melbourne/Naarm, another round of unhurried, amber ambiance: a third collection of weightless "pubwave" - the ideal soundtrack for slow, beer-soaked afternoons at your local.
Melbourne producer Nick Verwey has spent over a decade quietly refining a loose, lived-in sound tailor made to supplement everyday moments, rather than to feature as a prime-time focus. Recording as Dawn Again, Verwey has built an impressive catalogue across various imprints, his signature "pubwave" style emerging across the constraints of lockdown to capture and combine the essence of sun-faded Balearic rhythms, beer garden calm, and the romance of late-night FM radio. Following 2024's breaks-driven album Every Dog's Hotel and the soothing pulse of 2025 EP Lost In The Front Bar, Pints Of Ambient Nectar is Verwey's third release in consecutive years, consolidating his role as one of Australia’s premier architects of escapist downtempo.
The album opens to the sounds of distant, almost subliminal bird calls and warm swarming synths, as "Backyard Paradiso", conjures the mood of a tranquil, dawn-lit scene - a revealing contrast to the song's previous iteration on "Every Dog's Hotel", the result of Verwey's withdrawal of the its driving drum track. A remake of "A Day In The Life Of Pond Algae" (from "Lost In The Front Bar") strips away its rhythm section, and becomes an ode to still waters, and "Kneverending Knockoffs', previously an energetic percussion-based dance number, now presents as a cloudlike drift of synths.
Mid album, the synths return for "A Pub With No Beer," which received dub and reverb-heavy treatment, (while bearing no similarities to it famous C&W namesake). The pub-focused theming extends through "Hard Earned Thirst - Ambient Mix", (another re-edit) and "Hair of the Dawg" (new). The album concludes with a watery, ambient remix of "Vanilla Sky", from the Dawn Again's previous album.
"Pints of Ambient Nectar" is a sun-dazzled collection clearly intended to offers pure, unhurried soundtrack for a quiet afternoon at the pub - and more remix album or side project than advancement in this artist's development.
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Whatchu Bringing?
DINNER PARTY
Released 10 July 2026
Sounds of Crenshaw
R&B, Hip-Hop
USA
****-
A lush, potluck-style feast of laid-back jazz fusion, smooth boom-bap beats, and soulful R&B to feed the human soul.
Dinner Party is the ground-breaking jazz-rap supergroup formed by producer-saxophonist Terrace Martin, keyboard pioneer Robert Glasper, saxophonist Kamasi Washington, and hip-hop beatmaker 9th Wonder. Arriving on the scene in 2020 with their self-titled debut, the collective bridges virtuosic contemporary jazz, neo-soul, and classic 90s hip-hop. Joined by vocalist and producer Phoelix, the group is arguably the peak gathering in modern Black American music. Their intricate fusion of acoustic jazz with infectious, hip-hop grooves, creates a safe space for experimentation.
On Whatchu Bringing?, Dinner Party turns their third studio release into an inviting musical potluck dinner, centred around communication, community, and unconditional love. Spoken-word icon J. Ivy sets a comforting tone on "Stop Being Late," assuring listeners that heartfelt presence is the ultimate contribution. Across nine concise tracks, Martin and Glasper craft lush keyboard and woodwind arrangements anchored by 9th Wonder’s fierce loops and Phoelix’s silky vocal melodies. Standout tracks like "If It Ain't Broke (Love Wins)" "I Wonder" and the funk-infused "Stargazing" shine through glimmering synth textures, Washington's soaring sax solos, and tasteful guitar embellishments by Isaiah Sharkey.
Clocking in under thirty minutes, the LP avoids sprawling solos in favour of melodic restraint and infectious groove that invites listeners to sit back, relax, and savour every note.
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FATHERS
FATHERS - NATE SMITH, KIEFER, CARRTOONS, KENNY BEATS
Released 10 July 2026
Blue Note Records
Jazz - Contemporary Free, Hip-Hop, Beat-Scene, Fusion
USA
****-
Unhurried, pocket-focused instrumental soul, blending lo-fi hip-hop beat-making with master-level live jazz improvisation and warm vintage grooves.
Formed as a supergroup quartet, FATHERS unites four pivotal exponents of modern groove-oriented music: virtuoso drummer Nate Smith, beat-scene keyboard maestro Kiefer, in-demand bassist CARRTOONS, and renowned hip-hop producer Kenny Beats. Emerging from live jam sessions at the Montreal Jazz Festival and recorded during a whirlwind two-day studio test, the collaborative powerhouse seamlessly bridges virtuosic jazz dexterity and modern beat-maker production. Approaching the project from independent careers across modern soul, hip-hop, and post-bop jazz, their unified musical chemistry effortlessly transforms spontaneous studio improvisation into eight tightly crafted, warmly textured, and melodically rich instrumental anthems for Blue Note Records’ contemporary jazz era.
The ensemble strikes gold with an effortlessly laid-back fusion of analog soul-jazz and hip-hop minimalism. Built in the studio around spontaneous live interplay rather than digital sample chopping, tracks like "EYE LEVEL" and "THE LEAK" weave lush Brazilian bossa harmonies, melodic basslines, and crisp, unquantized pocket drumming into hypnotic, head-nodding grooves.
Those familiar with the thriving Melbourne/Naarm instrumental soul scene, may find that this project shares a striking aesthetic kinship, echoing the tightly disciplined rhythm sections, tape-saturated warmth, and cinematic funk sensibilities of bands like Surprise Chef, Karate Boogaloo, and Mildlife. While Naarm’s celebrated sound leans into vintage library grooves, FATHERS explores a similar live-band synergy through a modern West Coast beat-culture prism.
Kenny Beats’ transparent, uncluttered production gives each instrumentalist ample space to stretch out, proving that rhythmic restraint, analog warmth, and collective improvisation create a truly universal, cross-continental language for twenty-first-century instrumental groove music on Blue Note Records.
You may also like these previous reviews:
Karate Boogaloo
Mildlife
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Winter Songs
STEVE SWALLOW
Released 26 June 2026
ECM
Jazz
USA
****-
A quiet triumph of reflective elegance, transforming shared memory and unspoken grief into nine luminous, masterfully understated chamber-jazz meditations..
Bassist and composer Steve Swallow is one of modern jazz’s defining voices, revered for taking the high-register electric bass and giving it the fluid, singing lyricism of a acoustic solo instrument. Over six decades, in a career spanning seminal work with the Jimmy Giuffre 3, Gary Burton, and a decades-long creative and life partnership with the legendary composer, pianist, organist, and bandleader, the late Carla Bley (1936-2023), Swallow has perfected a signature compositional style defined by harmonic clarity, gentle humor, and impeccable space. Marking his first album as a leader in over a decade, Winter Songs captures all his enduring poise, warmth, and post-bop sophistication.
Recorded at NYC's Sear Sound, the album offers nine consecutively-numbered original pieces that function less like formal post-bop tracks and more like quiet, interconnected reflections. Written in the wake of Carla Bley’s passing, Swallow’s writing transmutes solitude into an inviting, understated sanctuary. Surrounded by long time confidants, including pianist Gil Goldstein, guitarist Steve Cardenas, drummer Adam Nussbaum, and a subtle horn frontline of Chris Cheek and Mike Rodriguez, the music is an expression of collective empathy rather than showmanship. Without thematic titles for guidance, the listener has only the music itself upon which to rely.
As ECM's notes for this album so perfectly express it: "Fluid swing, thoughtful balladry and a chamber-music-like feel for space and interplay are in full bloom here and pull through the suite of nine untitled winter songs with a strong sense of direction."
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Sucker
LINA
Released 26 June 2026
Cataline Lonie-Richardson
Soul
Australia
****-
A sprawling tapestry of warm and deeply personal songs that mix club-ready house grooves with intimate, soulful ballads that pay homage to the emotional complexities of motherhood.
Born in Melbourne and raised along the windswept coast of the Great Ocean Road, alt-soul-pop artist LINA has spent nearly a decade carving out her space in the Australian indie scene. Having honed her song writing and live performance chops across projects like Outtatime, which she describes as "a musical mixed-brew of folk-balladry, smooth soul and open-ended funk" and The Fillmores, a rowdy six piece surf-rock outfit. Along the journey, she's earned a Bachelor’s degree in song writing and production, qualified as a yoga teacher and juggled responsibilities as a working mother with the demands of a self-produced musician. Eventually, all these threads are woven into the fabric of her engaging, debut solo album, making it a kind of case study of contemporaneous artistry in the fragmented post-digital economy.
She describes the album as "characterised by an array of different styles and textures, each song serv(ing) its individual and collective purpose" and hopes that "there is a song on there for everyone and anyone", while listing a diverse line-up as her inspiration, including Erykah Badu, Hiatus Kaiyote, Gorillaz and Fontaines DC.
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SOULSTAR
BOYSODA
Released 19 June 2026
Warner Music Australia
Soul, R&B
Australia
****-
An intoxicating, genre-fluid debut of contemporary soul that balances electric live instrumentation with unflinching, intimate vulnerability.
Raised on Australia’s Central Coast and graduated from Sydney’s vibrant creative community, BOY SODA (Brae Fisher) seems to have surfaced all of a sudden as one of the nation's most compelling voices in contemporary R&B and soul. After gaining traction with early EPs and securing an ARIA Award for Best Soul/R&B Release, the 27-year-old singer-songwriter and producer has built a reputation for crafting warm, genre-defying soundscapes. Pulling inspiration from neo-soul, hip-hop, and alt-pop, Fisher captures the awkwardness, euphoria, and grief of young adulthood with conversational honesty. SOULSTAR, his debut album, arrives as his quintessential artistic blueprint.
The set was recorded over a transformative two-week session in the Blue Mountains, inland west of Sydney, alongside a live three-piece horn section, string quartet, and close collaborators. It is an expansive, organic achievement that navigates love, generational trauma, and emotional growth without forcing immediate epiphanies. Opening track "My Body" sets a high bar with its contemporary themes (relationships, therapy, family), powerful vocal flow and swelling strings and brass backing. "Lil Obsession" pairs infectious, funk-infused rhythms with the chaotic rush of infatuation, "4K" (featuring Dean Brady) showcases honeyed harmonies over D'Angelo-inspired basslines. The second half of the record dynamically shifts between the warm optimism of "Good Morning" and the heartbreakingly sparse, string-adorned closer "Platonic & Sacred".
With the Deluxe expansion, five additional tracks - "Front Door", "Bad News", "Burnin' All Hope", "Elements" and the introspective "Chase Your Tail"- deepen the record's narrative loops. SOULSTAR cements BOY SODA not just as a smooth vocalist, but as an inventive artist broadening the possibilities for Australian soul music on a global scale.
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L'adversaire
HASARD NOIR
Released 12 June 2026
Vidalowcash / La Cabane Music Works
Jazz
France
****-
A slow-burning collection of hauntingly melodic and cinematic soundscapes.
Led by French pianist, composer, and sound designer Luis Galceran, Hasard Noir is a contemporary jazz collective with a reputation for atmospheric and deeply introspective soundscapes.
The project originally emerged as a classic piano, double bass, and drum trio - featuring Luis Galceran, Yoann Bellefont, and Léo Darras, respectively - with their acclaimed records Luna (2023) and Fortuna (2025). Blending neoclassical elegance, filmic motifs, and modal improvisation, Galceran draws from his background in film scoring and hip-hop production to craft jazz that feels narrative and visually evocative. With L'adversaire, the ensemble expands its horizons, bringing saxophonist Baptiste Horcholle into the fold, transitioning into a quartet.
The addition of Xavier Pernet’s saxophone gives Galceran's lush piano textures a new counterweight, and allows more a dynamic expression of shadow and light across all nine tracks. There album opens at an unhurried pace, as the trio of piano, bass and drums establish a metronomic rhythm before the they are joined by the mournful saxophone. The track is a perfect metaphor for the enlargement of the group, as the intensity and tension of the piece is subtly ramped up over its four minute journey.
"Bleu rêve" (Blue Dream) follows, as saxophone assumes a place as lead instrument - a generous musical gesture that cements the instrument as integral to the band's new iteration. Horcholle's fluid playing, which belongs to the Charles Lloyd, Charlie Mariano, Jan Gaarbarek school of crossover jazz , brings new energy to the group. These pieces set the tone for the record, which maintains an even tone and pace throughout, without any obvious standouts. Consequently, this is a rare album that is equally suitable for close scrutiny under headphones or as a mood-setting background listening.
A showcase the quartet’s gift for tense yet elegant interplay, seamlessly weaving melancholy melodies around Victor Lay’s grounding basslines, L'adversarie is a refined, cinematic entry in modern European jazz catalogue that balances delicate nostalgia with striking improvisational power.
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Lithic
LAURA MISCH
Released 5 June 2026
One Little Independent Records
Jazz, Folk
UK
****-
A mesmerizing force in modern progressive music, blending ambient saxophone, lush vocals, and intricate production into utterly blissful soundscapes.
Laura Misch is a London-based saxophonist, vocalist, producer, and composer who has emerged as a captivating force in contemporary experimental music. Seamlessly merging her formal jazz foundation with electronic production, field recordings, and avant-garde song structures, she crafts deeply immersive sonic worlds. Operating as both a visionary bandleader and a meticulous producer, Misch uses her saxophone as an extension of her voice, treating acoustic and electronic textures as a unified canvas.
Her Bandcamp places Lithic as the third of a trio of albums. The first, Sample The Sky (2023), "suspends high above ground in clouds of sound", and its acoustic sister-album Sample The Earth (2024) is "reimagined and regrown amongst the soil". Now, Lithic (2026) is "informed by stone, water, lightning and wind, journeying through deep time and into the murky depths of the psyche in the dawn of a new sonic Stone Age". She notes that the album was "Recorded across various quarries, cliffs and caves of Cornwall, a treehouse at Kudhva, between Tinos in the Cyclades and Old Carpet Factory Studios in Hydra, Unwound Studios in Deptford, in the pebble desert of Dungness. Mixed, weathered through tape machines at Brewery Studios in Berlin.
Lithic is a tour de force that highlights Misch's extraordinary versatility across every dimension of composition and performance. Sliding effortlessly through jazz, folk, ambient, and avant-garde pop, the album weaves organic instrumentation with delicate electronic synthesis. Her soaring vocal lines and evocative saxophone work float over intricate rhythmic textures, grounding complex musical ideas in pure emotional resonance.
While its fluid, elusive nature may keep it outside mainstream pop circles, those who tune in are rewarded with an extraordinary listening experience. Musically however, her genre-defying approach places her alongside pioneering artists like Nala Sinephro, Hania Rani, Beth Orton and Laura Marling - solidifying her reputation as one of the most original voices in modern alternative music.
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English jazz vocalist, lyricist and improviser Norma Winstone is a pioneer and stalwart of European jazz singing and co-founder of the influential ambient-jazz trio Azimuth - along with Canadian trumpeter and composer Kenny Wheeler (1930-2014), and her husband, British pianist John Taylor (1942-2015). Her long career has taken her from live performances at Ronnie Scott's Soho mid-60's jazz club, to an extensive, uninterrupted recording and live performance career as soloist, collaborator and ensemble member.
Remarkably, Winstone's enduringly fertile creativity has only accelerated with age. For nearly two decades, her enduring partnership with Italian pianist Glauco Venier and German clarinetist & saxophonist Klaus Gesing, for ECM Records, has produced a series of Grammy-nominated and critically adored albums including Distances (2008), Stories Yet to Tell (2010), Dance Without Answer (2014), Descansado - Songs for Films (2018) and "Chamber Music" (2023), each a showcase for her masterful lyricism and quiet, chamber-jazz intimacy.
Even now, in her 80's, Winstone continues to expand her artistic circle, releasing "The Soundless Dark" (2023) with composer/pianist Will Bartlett, collaborating with younger European jazz innovators like pianist Kit Downes for "Out[post of Dreams" (2024) and assembling "The North", a group of northern European musicians for "Wheeler With Words" (2024).
Her work during these years has further solidified her reputation not just as a virtuoso improviser and one of the most evocative and literate songwriters, but also as a leader and shaper of modern European jazz.
And now, as if to make up for the absence of new releases last year, Winstone has returned with three new albums (already) in 2026: "Vital Spark (Music of Kenny Wheeler)" - a tribute to her late friend and long-time Azimuth collaborator; "A Timeless Place" - an unreleased German radio archival recording, and the recent live recording "Gilles Peterson Presents Norma Winstone (Live at Maida Vale)"
You might also like our previous reviews:
Joseph Tawadros - History Has A Heartbeat (2022)
Joseph Tawadros - To Those Who Came Before Us (2023)
Joseph Tawadros - The Virtue of Signals (2024)
Joseph Tawadros - The Forgotten Path To Humanity (2025)
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Gilles Peterson Presents Norma Winstone (Live at Maida Vale)
NORMA WINSTONE
Released 31 July 2026
BBE Music / BBC
UK
*****
A vibrant living testament to Winstone's ongoing vocal influence, her extraordinary poise in performance and her irrepressible longevity.
Curated by BBC broadcaster Gilles Peterson and issued via BBE Music, Live at Maida Vale captures a luminous session recorded at the BBC's historic London studios. Peterson, a longtime champion of improvisational jazz, unearths a set that bridges Winstone's avant-garde heritage and the Capital's surging contemporary jazz scene. The lineup for the session includes her sons Leo (drums) and Alex Taylor (vocals), Oren Marshall (tuba), Elliot Galvin (piano), and Mark Lockheart (saxophone).
Freed from the over-dubbed polish of studio productions, and far superior to the proliferation of handphone "bootlegs" on YouTube, the recording captures the raw, conversational phrasing and daring harmonic flexibility in Winstone's performance. With the support of an agile, empathetic rhythm section, Winstone navigates a repertoire that bridges wordless vocal gymnastics and poignant, story-driven balladry.
Reprising and reimagining the title tracks of two of her classic albums: "Edge of Time"(1972), "Azimuth (1977), Winstone demonstrates her signature ability to treat the human voice as a primary lead instrument, gliding effortlessly within the ensemble's embrace, with acoustic purity.
The recital opens with the boisterous fanfare of "Edge of Time" that soon evolves into a birdlike dialogue between singer and ensemble. The choice invites direct (and favourable) comparison between her debut-album voice and the refined live instrument it has become with over a half century of nurturing and technique.
"Azimuth", in its day a prototype and point of reference for a generation of ambient jazz vocalists, showcases Winstone's transcendence of "vocals" beyond words, to the level of an instrument.
"The Tunnel", a cover of another beguiling song from Azimuth's eponymous 1977 album, receives a haunting, otherworldly treatment, every bit as engrossing as the original.
"Sirens' Song" adds an ambient instrumental that relies on a hypnotic, repeating vocal phrase - using the human voice as a siren-like instrument - to weave over the ensemble's minimalist rhythmic motif.
Finally, Winstone includes Kenny Wheeler's "2081", a song that reflects his signature harmonic style - bittersweet, wide-interval melodies that are notoriously difficult for a vocalist to sing accurately, demonstrating her sheer technical mastery. It serves as a tribute to their joint legacy and provides a high-octane, contemporary finish to the Maida Vale set.
Credit must be given to Peterson for his curation, which has placed Winstone's legacy directly into conversation with his worldwide audience, proving that her improvisational edge remains as vital, sharp, and charismatic today as it was during the dawn of the British jazz boom.
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A Timeless Place
NORMA WINSTONE
Released 26 June 2026
Enodoc Records / Norddeutscher Rundfunk
UK
****-
An essential historical artifact and a high-water mark for British orchestral jazz vocals.
Uncovered from the German radio archives after sitting unreleased for 35 years, A Timeless Place captures a rare 1990 broadcast collaboration between Norma Winstone and the NDR Radio Orchestra (now the NDR Radiophilharmonie).
Arranged, conducted, and performed by the late British pianist Steve Gray, this album presents Winstone in an expansive orchestral context rarely documented across her six-decade discography. The jewel of the collection is the title track—Winstone’s celebrated lyrical adaptation of Jimmy Rowles’ standard "The Peacocks". Captured here three years before her famed studio version on Well Kept Secret, her vocals soar over Gray’s lush, cinematic string arrangements with heartbreaking elegance. Across the 11 tracks, Winstone tackles a sweeping range of material: from Gershwin’s "I Loves You, Porgy" to vocal adaptations of compositions by Kenny Wheeler ("Sea Lady") and Steve Swallow ("Ladies in Mercedes"). Gray’s sensitive arrangements never overpower Winstone's delicate delivery; instead, the orchestra functions as a shifting tonal canvas for her exquisite storytelling.
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Vital Spark (Music of Kenny Wheeler)
NORMA WINSTONE
Released 20 February 2026
Edition Records
UK
****-
Winstone honors Wheeler's legacy not merely through nostalgia, but by pushing his musical vision forward into grand, uncharted territory.
A monumental tribute to her late friend and long-time Azimuth collaborator Kenny Wheeler, Vital Spark brings together Winstone, bass legend Dave Holland, pianist Nikki Iles, saxophonist Mark Lockheart, and the London Vocal Project under the direction of Pete Churchill.
Built around Wheeler’s final, unfinished choral and ensemble compositions mailed to Churchill before his passing, the album features original lyrics penned by Winstone alongside settings of classic poetry. Vital Spark is a masterpiece of light, shadow, and architectural vocal arrangement. Winstone’s voice acts as the emotional anchor, navigating complex, chromatic melodies with astonishing warmth and precision.
On standout tracks like "Inner Traces" and "Not Waving But Drowning" (set to Stevie Smith’s poem), her lead lines blend seamlessly with the multi-layered textures of the choir and Holland’s resonant bass work. Rather than a somber retrospective, the album feels alive and deeply transcendent.
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