...a tight, tight thing. Playing so close they are almost picking one another's pockets, their take on 'cubist jazz' fits the term perfectly; all hard angles and unexpected facets.
album review
2632 posts
...has once again gathered a reflective and expressive group around him to do justice to a suite of pieces reflecting on themes inspired by Marcus Clarke's 1874 convict adventure novel For The Term Of His Natural.
Always difficult to categorise, the seven tracks presented here show even more scope in their tribal noise attack, with Lisa's vocals particularly diverse ranging from half-expected spoken ruminations to more feral and freer wordless outbursts.
Loving the meditative space Sightings affords the listener, Jarboe’s drone-registered voice affixed to reverberating gong and paddling percussive on "Holy Waters" as strings and blown accompaniment warmly blur, folding into a respiring abstraction of leisurely repeat.
It’s kind of amazing just how popular that KEXP performance is and, correspondingly, how much their first album goes for. UK shows are sold out already, so they’re very much a hot ticket in 2026 ..Angine de Poitrine do a bang-up job of investing some new life into the old rock beast.
Based on a dream Bid had a couple of years ago, this ten-song cycle has a jaunty lilt to the rhythms that ebb and flow in thrall to hiss unfurling imagination. There is still a loucheness to the delivery, but the voice is softer now and perhaps because of the subject matter perhaps a little less arch.
...for its springtime produce Precious Recordings has switched supply channels to parachuting in a batch of new releases.. two distinctive new albums arrive ..which lean heavily into the reconstituted veterans wing of the enterprise. #indie #musicreview
Stretching the twosome’s multi-instrumentalist and sound design talents to the max – through recording sessions in studio set-ups in rural France and a variety of locales in England — All Clouds Bring Not Rain piles an immensity of layers on and around its kaleidoscopic swirl of songs.
Whilst it takes some patient listening to peel back the hidden layers contained within, the pensive Fly The Ocean In A Silver Plane provides plentiful rewards through its serious-minded but soulful roaming through the expansive inner-world of Pan•American.
Whereas its predecessor saluted the scenery of the Peak District across a smorgasbord flavoured with kosmische Tortoise-tinted post-rock and retro-futuristic synth sculpting, this follow-up honours the North Sea-facing coastline of the UK, on a somewhat less divergent yet deeper-cooked buffet of sounds.
Although the band had bedded in by now, the songs and direction were very much David's responsibility and across the sixteen delightfully ramshackle tracks collected here, his bedsit romanticism and rainy seaside melancholy rub shoulders with punkish disdain and a fleeting sense of desperate alienation.
...brings together older material that has been fermenting in other canonical places with newer pieces cooked-up afresh between the foursome. The result is an album that intrepidly tips a lot into a collaborative cauldron and pours out plenty of impressive distillations.
...thoughtful, measured shapes of the violin are carefully released and there is an air of subtlety to the support, with even the warm caress of the bass providing a sense of solace. The arms around the shoulders allow space for these musical tales to unfold from the vocal, piano and trumpet reflecting a concerto melancholy...
The latest two releases from experimental label Rope Worm find French improvisational duo Maninkari and Polish exploratory drummer Daniel Szwed expanding sound in very different directions, but both leaning very much towards esoteric instrumentalism.
UK trio Mammal Hands are continuing on their trajectory combining pastoral, spiritually aware jazz with hints of minimalism and classical to evoke a space that is constantly moving, but at a pace that is adventurous yet welcoming.
Remarkably the result of just a one-day session last summer, Blank Arcades is an internally wandering yet never unfocused affair that finds multiple routes between sparse simplicity and collaborative camaraderie.... With such well-measured richness to unpack in its roomy interiors, Blank Arcades is another captivating Andrew Rumsey-curated place to get lost inside.
There are hints of jazz inflection here and there, but the album offers far more: a very personal view that recognises some jazz tropes but disguises them with their own subtle sway. In places the bass and drums shapeshift, rolling like marbles with a willingness to forgo structure for texture when it seems right and allow light to pierce through.
...a neatly-distilled pop-noir affair – which includes recuts of prior EP extracts and newer material – that shifts between layered moodscapes and shadowy minimalistic grooves... Glen Johnson is clearly unafraid to wander wherever his perennial penchants take him