Ray Lema & Ensemble Partage – Passion Congo
Ray Lema puts his piano in front of an Italian string quartet, a soprano saxophone and two percussionists: nine pieces that move from minimalism to ragtime without losing the pulse.
Vamze Wybrańczyk – Akvæn
Ten improvisations by drummer Patrycja Wybrańczyk and saxophonist Inga Vamze, with no harmonic instrument and the states of the North and Baltic seas as the programme.
Alekos Vretos – Mediterranean Echoes
Greek oud player Alekos Vretos builds a drummerless chamber quartet: oud, clarinet, piano and bass crossing Arabic modes, Greek folk music and improvisation.
Kulk – Choosing To Die
Twenty-six minutes of sludge from a British duo: nine tracks, an out-of-tune violin at the end of “Ache” and a minute of rising water that somebody cuts off dead.
Alcantara – Tamam Shud
The second album by Sicily’s Alcantara: six tracks of Mediterranean space rock sung half in Italian and half in English, issued on vinyl first and only later on the platforms.
Kraanerg – Aria for Labellum Tongues
Nat Bergrin writes every note and leaves only bass and drums free: sixty-four minutes of chamber music with violin, two saxophones and a rock rhythm section.
Jello Biafra gives the San Francisco Giants the 1951 acetate of Bobby Thomson’s home run
A twelve-inch reference acetate carrying Russ Hodges’ call. The club receives it seventy-five years to the day after the play.
Josh Homme brings Beck, St. Vincent and Norah Jones together for a benefit at the Wiltern on 16 November
One night for the Sweet Stuff Foundation and CORE, with The Kills, Chad Smith, Weird Al Yankovic and Jack Black. Tickets go on general sale on 9 October.
Cherie Currie gathers her Cleopatra sessions on vinyl, with a new “Cherry Bomb” half a century on
“The Cleopatra Sessions” is out on 4 December on purple marble vinyl limited to eighty-five copies, with Marky Ramone, Cheetah Chrome and Mick Box among the guests.
Undeath premiere “Arterial Bombardment”, their first track for Relapse, and play Razzmatazz 2 on the 25th
The fourth album is already recorded and due this winter. The track comes out on a limited flexi disc during the European tour with Suffocation, which stops in Barcelona.
Firtan premiere the video for “Shadows of a Dawn Unborn”, with Christian Höll on soprano saxophone
“Helios” came out on 2 October through AOP Records: twelve tracks with violin, two guests and a Bathory cover to close.
Michael Barber leaves Gloryhammer for Wizardthrone, who return with “Death Cycles” and their first live dates
The band’s first track since 2021 and the first tour of their existence: London on 21 November and fifteen UK and Irish venues in January.
Boss Keloid release “Float & Aperture” on 23 October, five years after “Family The Smiling Thrush”
Seven tracks on Church Road Records, with “Pedestal” as the second preview after “Landslide”. It is the Wigan quartet’s first album since 2021.
Peter Hammill books five German shows for spring 2027, and nothing in Spain
Stuttgart, Bonn, Rüsselsheim, Nuremberg and Berlin between 27 April and 3 May. They are his first dates since “Tears in Time” came out.
Dwayne Dolphin – Let the Music Play
Pittsburgh bassist Dwayne Dolphin runs “Milestones”, “St. Thomas” and “Autumn Leaves” through Latin rhythms, with James Moore’s trumpet out front.
WDR Big Band – Jagged Edges & Elegant Lines
The WDR Big Band records a full programme of Ayn Inserto’s music, with a new twenty-two-minute suite for trumpeter Sean Jones in four movements.
Henry Grimes & Marzette Watts – The Call
“The Call”, Henry Grimes’s 1966 debut as a leader, returns with three tracks by Marzette Watts’s octet tacked on: two opposite ideas of free jazz.
The Knights of Unicron – The Transformers: The Movie: The Soundtrack: The Reformatted Edition
Forty years on, the “Transformers: The Movie” soundtrack is re-recorded as metal, with Stan Bush back to sing “The Touch” and “Dare”.
AetheR – III
Third album from Italian quartet AetheR: six tracks running from a piano miniature to a ten-minute finale, with Andrea Serino’s Fender Rhodes as the house colour.
I Sincopatici – La Corazzata Potëmkin
Francesca Badalini’s Milan quartet scores the centenary of “Battleship Potemkin”: five movements, forty-one minutes and no period pastiche.
Camel – Earthrise: Live at the Marquee 1974
The Marquee show of 30 October 1974, complete and on its own for the first time: two CDs, fourteen tracks and a band that hadn’t finished “The Snow Goose” and was already playing three pieces of it.
Christy Doran – Disambiguation
Guitar and tabla, eight pieces and fifty-one minutes. The seventy-seven-year-old Irish guitarist lets Imran Khan’s rhythm take his phrases apart rather than decorate them.
Jon Hassell – Music Is Invisible (Pentimento Volume Three)
Forty-two minutes of the last concert Hassell’s band ever played, in London in May 2015. Four tracks, one of them sixteen minutes long, and a trio that sounds like an orchestra.
Frozen Crown – The Legend of the Six Kings
Ten tracks, thirty-six minutes and not a single song that reaches five. The Milanese band’s sixth album is the most compact they’ve made and the one that least stops to tell the story in its title.
Kavus Torabi – October By Name
Six songs and thirty-three minutes that the Gong frontman played and recorded entirely on his own, bass always last. It closes the trilogy “Hip To The Jag” opened in 2020.
Ghost Funk Orchestra release “Yours In The Ranks Of Death”, their fifth album, on 4 December
Eleven tracks, two of which have been out since the summer. Karma Chief presents it as Seth Applebaum’s most pared-down and personal work.
Girlschool’s 1982 Tokyo concert comes out on vinyl for the first time on 6 November
Sixteen songs from 21 January 1982, four of them CD-only. “We went on, and the screaming was so loud, we thought we were the Beatles.”
Fender put out three John 5 signature Telecasters, and he releases “The Phantom” the same day
Two from the Fender line and one from the Custom Shop, all with DiMarzio humbuckers and a Floyd Rose. “I don’t know if the Telecaster picked me or I picked it.”
Dieth bring in Tobias Cristiansson in place of David Ellefson and sign with Fireflash Records
The Swedish bassist comes from Grave, Necrophobic and Dismember. “Pound Of Flesh”, the first track off the band’s second album, lands on 16 October.
The Comet Is Coming gather all of “Channel The Spirits” into a box set with four unreleased tracks
Out 20 November through The Leaf Label: the Mercury-shortlisted debut, both EPs and four songs never released, one of them from 2013.
Alcest release “Live at Hellfest 2022” on 4 December, billed by Nuclear Blast as their first live album
Eight tracks recorded at Hellfest in June 2022, on digital and limited double vinyl. The preview is “Protection”, with video of the performance.
Faith No More and Judas Priest headline Copenhell 2027, from 23 to 26 June in Copenhagen
The third European date announced for the Faith No More return, after Mystic in Gdańsk and Rock For People. Tickets go on sale on 9 October at 10.00.
Brian May rules out touring again and shelves the Queen immersive show over AI
He tells “The Times” the decision is eighteen months old. He had a Sphere show sketched out and has let it go because of AI.
Rise Above Dead get their original singer back and release “Voidmass” on 27 November
Andrea Rondanini sings on it again and the first advance track is “Drowning Slowly”. Six tracks through Argonauta Records.
Wage War put out “God Complex” three days before releasing “Landfall”
The album is out on Friday through Fearless Records and on 25 October they start the “Emergency Broadcast” tour with We Came As Romans, Varials and Cane Hill.
A 1974 demo with Mark Stone on bass will be the earliest Van Halen recording ever officially released
It is called “Glitter” and it comes on a seven-inch sold only with the signed edition of Alex Van Halen’s book: fifteen hundred numbered copies.
Joan Wasser sings “Save Me” with Iggy Pop, his vocal cut in a hotel room in New Zealand
The song is from “Real Life Evolution”, which came out in June. The twentieth anniversary tour adds a Barcelona date that still has neither venue nor day.
Ice Nine Kills butcher eight Christmas carols on 9 November and announce “The Silver Scream 3” for 2027
The EP was born for Art the Clown’s Terror Tram at Universal Studios. The new album will be called “The Silver Scream 3: Every Flick In The Book”.
Mercury Rev reissue “Boces”, the last album with David Baker, remastered at AIR Studios
It is out on 13 November through Beggars Banquet in a UK and European edition. It was the band’s second album and their first for a major.
Dom Flemons records an album on twenty-two Smithsonian instruments, among them the guitars of Elizabeth Cotten and Mississippi John Hurt
“Making American Music: The Smithsonian Sessions” is out on 22 January and is the first roots record made only with pieces from the museum. Twenty-one songs.