An ambitious eighteen-track project recorded “in the field, from the grassroots up’” on various islands across the Pacific and Indian ocean, Small Island Big Song is a beguiling document of some of the world’s most criminally underappreciated musicians. Music producer Tim Cole and project manager BaoBao had a vision to document the mostContinue Reading
Sergiu Celibidache once described time as a ‘condition’ by which ‘the multitude of information contained in sound can be reduced to a unity.’ On Formations by Sunhaus, the tracks seemingly escape from the chains of tempo, smearing notes, and musical voices across a spectrum of electronics and glitches. Formations by Sunhaus IfContinue Reading
Rich Freitas has been behind the drum kit for seventeen years now. For bands like Low-beam and Slander, he has been patient in developing his own musical voice. His debut solo album, using the name Ellery Twinning, was recorded in a log cabin in his native Connecticut. These tracks certainly have a bucolic atmosphere;Continue Reading
Quebecois neoclassical composer Jean-Michel Blais has been releasing his own brand of piano-focused instrumental music since his much-acclaimed debut Il came out in 2016. His third album, aubades, sees the composer rearrange over five hundred separate improvised piano pieces into an eleven-track mission statement on the beauty of spontaneity and the importance of aContinue Reading
Irish muso Henry Earnest has been operating on the outskirts of the Irish music scene for several years now. As part of the Dublin collective knowns as Herzog TV, Earnest (who globetrots between Lisbon and Tokyo) has been gradually maturing from his bowl cut days to a fully fledged artist,Continue Reading
Nottingham based musician Ben McElroy has been making waves with his latest album How I Learnt To Disengage From The Pack, and for good reason; it doesn’t take long for its gentle finger stylings and emotive string work to hit you. Based on pagan themes of mid-winter harvests, the albumContinue Reading
A riveting experiment at the intersection of spoken word, performance art, and electronica, Tongues by Tanya Tagaq is an absorbing, challenging, and often uncomfortable listening experience. The imagery throughout the album is fiercely somatic, using the metaphor of tongue removal as a symbol of language and culture loss at the hands ofContinue Reading
Robert Stillman is an American experimental jazz practitioner currently based in the United Kingdom. This transplant of continents has led the artist to some self-reflection on the philosophy of nationality on What Does It Mean To Be American? Sprawling opener Cherry Ocean is a brooding piano-based piece, Stillman’s velvety vocals resting atop the sporadicContinue Reading
Photo by Hayes Potter Metal Bird – Eve Adams folk I’ve had Metal Bird by Eve Adams playing in my kitchen all morning. The slow burning sensorial landscapes Adams paints with elongated song structures have gone well with my hypnopompic coffee. The mixes contain layers of ear candy buried beneath theContinue Reading
Photo by Lisa Fotios Triangle, L’Orage (2022) jazz/afro/funk Hailing from Switzerland, L’Orage are a jazz ensemble operating at the intersection of classic and progressive styles of jazz, mixing the results with a dash of afro funk for good measure. While opener Pentatetrahydratonic is a straightforward free jazz affair, tracks suchContinue Reading