It sounds like you’ve interrupted Niagara mid-show. “Estação e Torres,” the first track from the Lisbon trio’s wonky new album Catedral Gótica, opens in medias res, right in the middle of a techno pulse and a herky-jerky piano loop. It’s the kind of destabilizing-exciting feeling usually only elicited by high-class roller coasters, or days where you have one too many Monster energy drinks. Niagara — Sara Eckerson with brothers Alberto and António Arruda — supposedly record their music live, so when the track’s piano begins to fade, supplanted by a tinny, skew-whiff synth arpeggio, it really does feel like you’ve walked in on the tail end of an ensemble performance far longer than the track’s eight minutes.
…Niagara, stalwarts of the Príncipe label, have…
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Russian producer Vladimir Karpov. The project’s name is an abbreviation for Xram Yedinennogo Razmuwlenuja, roughly translating to “Temple of Solitary Reflection.” Karpov’s music feels exactly like that. More than albums, it feels like he’s been creating a setting. Each x.y.r. album feels like a destination for listeners to bring themselves into, to clear their minds, and seek insights from within. On x.y.r.’s latest album, Saga, that feeling of a physical space has never felt more tangible. Where ambient is often seen as spacious, Karpov grounds the music to earth with nature sounds and steady percussion loops. It’s an earthly foundation that serves as the base for Karpov’s otherworldly drones and synthesizer warps, utilizing what’s become his signature instrument…
Beyond a musical tradition that goes back to Haydn and Mozart, string quartets today often lead the charge in advocating for and celebrating the compositions of living composers. The Overlook exemplify this role with their highly anticipated debut recording, Say It. They also speak to the connections music makes to the larger community and how it speaks for our culture.
Already accomplished string players in New York, the Overlook formed during the pandemic and began performing in parks and on street corners. This experience led to their first performances in community-based venues. Connection forms the basis of their mission: to build “lasting relationships with composers and consistently championing new works, engaging collaborators…
Bassist and composer Billy Mohler has always had a knack for infectious grooves and for putting together small groups that work wonders. He does it again on Covell, an extraordinary collection of six original compositions and an exciting rendition of an Ornette Coleman tune, all marked by structural clarity and engrossing melodic development. Touching on themes like mortality, loss, betrayal, Native American roots, and family, Mohler couldn’t have chosen better collaborators: saxophonist Mark Turner and drummer Joe LaBarbera are excellent, sculpting a flexible repertory that hits hard with formidable teamwork, powerful soloing, and impactful emotional arc.
With an indie-rock stance, “The Reckoning” alternates tempos, going from a straight-eight…
Exhaust, the trio of adventurous saxophonist Camila Nebbia, inventive keyboardist Kit Downes, and responsive drummer Andrew Lisle, is a product of the fertile, contemporary Berlin jazz scene. These improvisers work from a pure free-jazz angle, showcasing an instinctual kinship that may lead you to unexpected places.
“Complicated Matters of Presence” kicks off with delicate and ruminative interplay, each member layering with confidence as they introduce valid ideas with possibilities for development. Crescendos, climaxes, and sweeping vortexes of sound are constantly carried out with tension and an underlying energy that refuses to dissipate. “Three Heads in One” feels like a warped song, but its narrative is intact. Lisle’s drumming…
The fifth and sixth albums – not including soundtracks – by Dutch lutenist Jozef Van Wissem and filmmaker/musician Jim Jarmusch, whose collaboration goes way back to Concerning the Entrance into Eternity in 2012, are being publicized as “twin albums,” but despite a shared title in Italian and English, Bocca di Lupo and Mouth of The Wolf are very distinct records. At the same time, the pair, recorded in Bologna in July last year, complement each other so well that it makes sense they’re being sold as a package.
Bocca di Lupo – the title comes from the name of the street in Bologna where the studio it was recorded at is located – has seven tracks, five of them new compositions and two reworkings of older material, and although four of…
Devagar Que A Vida É Curta translates loosely as ‘Go slowly as life is short’. The title track does anything but go slowly, a frantic 43 seconds where Ana Lua Caiano’s assertive, multitracked vocals get in as much information as possible before the proverbial window closes. In Portuguese, she gasps: “Life is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful / Oh life, run slowly… Death is near, move fast…”
This second album by the singer and visual artist confronts the process of death and renewal with a vigour, bringing pathos and even a sense of celebration concerning one’s denouement that’s alien in most predominantly Protestant cultures. What makes Devagar Que A Vida É Curta fascinating is the dichotomy of traditional Portuguese folk music she draws upon with…
Darren Hayman could well be the busiest man in the music industry. Whether it be with Hefner, The Secondary Modern, The French or under his own name, he’s released well over 30 albums over the last three decades. When you consider he’s also almost permanently touring, acts as producer for a number of bands, and is also a painter, you wonder where he gets the time to relax.
I’m Your Team is a bit of a surprise release for Hayman. Originally written after the release of his 2022 album You Will Not Die, Hayman only used a total of three instruments when recording: a drum machine, a Rickenbacker bass and, crucially a Yamaha DX7 synthesiser – an instrument that, as Hayman says, “even its own Wikipedia page describes as outdated and clichéd”.
In the first era of rock & roll, while country music was a clear part of the DNA of rockabilly and many other white rock sounds, there were few things considered less hip than what was still widely known as hillbilly music, and rock & roll was what the hepcats liked, even if they lived below the Mason-Dixon line. It was with the rise of folk-rock that rock musicians who appreciated the soulful, emotionally honest approach of the best country music gained an audience, and by the mid-’60s, a new breed of rockers were paying open homage to classic country music, though it would take Nashville much longer to reciprocate. By the mid-’70s, the Eagles were stars and most country-rock had become laid-back to the point of being lethargic, and it became easy…
You might think that the last thing the world needs at this time is another couple of compilation albums of Neil Young songs performed by other artists, but you’d be wrong. You’d be wrong because, fundamentally, these releases and the series to which they belong aim to raise the profile of and funds for The Bridge School, a non-profit organisation founded by Neil and Pegi Young to serve individuals with severe speech and physical impairments. All of the artists here donated their recordings in support of The Bridge School. Based in Hillsborough, CA, The Bridge School provides support to children between the ages of three and 13 years of age with extensive speech and physical disabilities, working in tandem with its affiliate charity, Bridge to Life, which…
…The expanded edition features the track “San Francisco Christmas,” a collaboration with The Secret Sisters originally issued on an exclusive Record Store Day 7-inch single in 2025.
According to the fifth song on their first Christmas album, seasonal shenanigans in Old Crow Medicine Show’s family are boozy and raucous.
Step aside Santa because “Grandpappy’s been a-brewing since before the war” and is “the best bootlegger for a Georgia mile”. The result is the riotous barndance fiddlin’ of “Corn Whiskey Christmas” (which brings “good cheer to all the gals and the fellas).
The song is a highlight of OCMS XMAS, a 13-track set which showcases the light-hearted side of a Nashville outfit who’ve been at…
…digital-only deluxe version expands the tracklist with three bonus songs.
Billy Valentine is a Los Angeles-based soul singer/ songwriter/producer who has been performing for five decades. He scored some hits during the 1980s with his brother John in the Valentine Brothers, including “Money’s Too Tight (To Mention)” and “Lonely Nights,” and has sung for film and television. He has held club residencies for many years, playing to sold-out houses.
Billy Valentine & The Universal Truth collects eight topical, spiritual, and socially conscious soul and gospel songs. This is the first release from the newly revamped Flying Dutchman label run by producer Bob Thiele, Jr. It was founded by his producer father and was the home…
There is something reassuring about a band reaching its fifth album and deciding that, rather than reinventing itself, it might be worth remembering what made it exciting in the first place. After the glossy dystopian theatrics of 2023’s Dead Club City, Nothing But Thieves returns with Stray Dogs, trading conceptual ambition for five musicians making considerable noise and apparently enjoying themselves enormously. Unfortunately, the results are rather less adventurous than intended.
The Essex quintet has always occupied an interesting position in British rock: too ambitious to be dismissed as conventional arena rock, yet occasionally too enamored of enormous choruses to venture far beyond it. At their best,…
New York indie artist Eliza Edens was navigating two deeply personal reckonings leading up to the recording of Death Drive. As they entered their late twenties, Edens was grappling with the grief of losing their mother to dementia while also exploring their queerness for the first time. That collision of emotions found its way into their latest LP, with songs exploring everything from grief and desire to uncertainty and moments of joy.
It’s also a musical departure for Edens, away from the more acoustic folk of their previous efforts into a stronger, plugged-in indie pop/rock sound with experiments in tape loops and, surprisingly, bongos on every single track. Their queerness is addressed in the stellar opening song “All in Sinnin’,” where they sing about…
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ mythology was built on abandon. Across Lower East Side dives in the early 2000s, Brian Chase, Nick Zinner, and Karen O put on otherworldly rock shows that verged on performance art — a blaze of vodka-spitting, mic-fellating, IDGAF unruliness and explosive, clamorous tracks. But the indie trio has always operated at two registers: riot, yes, but also ache. That latter quality is there on the back half of Fever to Tell, their 2003 debut, and on later ballads like “Warrior” and “Skeletons.” “Maps,” a career-defining song, isn’t a screamer but a torch song about anxious love. You could argue that this heart-on-sleeve vulnerability is what made their early shows so electric. The point was never instigation but pure, unbridled feeling.
Perfection came quickly to gyrofield. At the beginning of the decade, just 18 years old, the Hong Kong-born, Netherlands-based producer Kiana Li made their name with drum’n’bass tracks that showcased a precocious technical flair, weaving together snappy drums and strobing melodies without breaking a sweat. As the 2020s progressed, Li’s style tested new permutations: an ambient mixtape here, a breakcore riff there, a touch of acidic sleaze corroding the edges of their supple basslines. With the release of 2025’s Succession of Belief EP, gyrofield’s evolution took a sudden leap, reorienting around flushed, hypnotic beats that marched to an obdurate pulse. Amid the ensuing hubbub, Li launched their own label, Field Research, and a creed: to build…
After merging influences from throughout their 20-year career — including but not limited to kosmische, disco, dub, post-punk, and art pop, and bands like Neu!, Kraftwerk, Stereolab, and the Orb — on 2022’s Slight Variations, U.K. alternative dance mavens Fujiya & Miyagi settle into this effortlessly blended approach on the follow-up, New Shiny Object.
Elements of kosmische, post-punk, and disco pulse through opener “Lowest Common Denominator,” a song that also doubles down on singer/guitarist David Best’s dry humor, which includes a dance-motivated world view. They edge toward hip-hop on “Elasticated Waste,” a bass-heavy rap on the subject of aging that incorporates found objects and sounds like drips of water…
Sweden’s Cult of Luna have been creating their engaging take on post-metal for 25 years and show no sign of slowing down or stagnating. This was a concern of main man Johannes Persson when they set about making their tenth studio album In the Shadow of Your Shadow.
…Supported once more by Daniel Berglund’s spotless recording and a finely toned mix from mainstay Magnus Lindberg, Cult of Luna don’t sound tired or sorely in need of reinvention. Rather, remarkably, after 28 years, their core muscles are strong as ever. The title track is a massive flex of post-hardcore’s aggression on the emotional scale of post-rock. Of course, as a post-metal band, the weight primary vocalist and lyricist Johannes Persson carries is all mental.