Wesley Stace – One Last Heist
Stace leaves folk-rock behind for the groove of the CTI records: eleven songs arranged with David Nagler, from mambo to samba, cut at Studio 1935 in Philadelphia.
New Releases Radar
Stefano Panunzi – Caravaggio
Two and a half hours, twenty-four tracks and more than twenty guests (Torn, Bowness, Travis, Jakszyk, Edwin) on a double album where Panunzi keeps his own keyboards out of the light.
Mantra Machine – Echoes Forest
Six tracks and thirty-four minutes of Dutch instrumental psychedelia, with a Mellotron new to the line-up. It builds well for two thirds and then finishes in a hurry.
Juzz – Juzz II
The second album from the Pontevedra group: polished, melodic jazz rock, with a Metheny-leaning guitar solo at the centre of the long track and little to contradict it.
Peninsula – Revelation Space
Three December 2024 improvisations shaped into pieces of fifteen, fourteen and nineteen minutes. The Scottish quartet puts the drums up front and keeps the synths in the background.
Henry Threadgill – Cut You Where You Was
Ten tracks and thirty-six minutes with Zooid: one past twelve, five that do not reach two. Jose Davila’s tuba carries the bottom again, and the ending dissolves into sketches.
Celeste – Prince Of One Day
The seven tracks of the 1976 debut, same beds and same running times, sung again in English by Siobhán Owen. A comfortable way in, and not much more.
Alessandro Florio – Controra Avenue
The Italian guitarist returns to the Hammond organ trio and runs two classic Neapolitan songs through it: forty-one minutes of midday stillness and not much of his own material.
Mike Catalano – A Trio Affair
The pianist closes a trilogy begun in 1989 in sixty-six minutes, with Steve Gadd, Eddie Gomez and Randy Brecker sharing eleven tracks between New York and Brazil.
Hibushibire – Phantom Fuzzy Exotica
Five tracks and thirty-seven minutes from the Osaka quartet, with a thirteen-minute medieval Occitan folk song sitting at the centre of the record.
Square Wild – Otherling
Eleven tracks of debut from the Manchester quintet, swinging from vaudeville to a shot of NWOBHM without asking: energy to spare and no thread running the whole way through.
Paul Yonemura – First Flight Home
A 1984 demo tape that ended up on vinyl in 1985 and now reaches digital with two recovered Rick Helzer pieces and guests Kim Richmond and Mary Fettig.
Las Instancias – Las Instancias
Debut from the Argentinian trio of Shantala Ferreyra, Fermín Suárez and Gonzalo Goicoechea: clarinet, double bass and drums between tango, free improvisation and a debt to Monk.
ESP Project – Extra Sensory Perception
Tony Lowe, Peter Coyle and Mark Brzezicki meet again for seven pieces of melodic prog, impeccably produced and cut almost entirely to the same pattern.
Amour – The Space Before the T of Time
Two tracks and twenty-two minutes from the Namur instrumental trio: fifteen minutes of prog with a Latin pulse and a “Setsubun” that never stops changing tempo.
Remote Viewing – STATE VIOLENCE
Seven tracks and forty minutes of noisy sludge from London, with cello and acoustic guitar in the middle of «HUMAN RIGHT$». The band’s fourth record, out on Human Worth.
Todd DelGiudice – Mas Alto
Alto sax, double bass and drums, with no instrument fixing the chords: seven contrafacts and three standards in jazz’s most stripped-down format, cut with two different drummers.
Krallice – Scour Order
Eight tracks and sixty-three minutes of avant-garde black metal, with Colin Marston back at the desk. The New Yorkers’ first full-length since «Inorganic Rites».
Pete Roth Trio – Group Chat
Bill Bruford, Pete Roth and Mike Pratt live: nine pieces recorded between late 2025 and early 2026, with Dvořák taken apart and a «Summertime» that’s hard to recognise.
Arthur Brown – Nature
Eight tracks and thirty-five minutes with Dan Smith on electronics. At eighty-four, Arthur Brown returns to his usual dislocated cabaret with a shorter record than he tends to make.
Josh Berman Trio – Everybody Else’s Life, Too
Cornet, double bass and drums, cut live at Chicago’s Constellation. Josh Berman returns to the trio he first tried in 2015, bop always close at hand and the risk kept well in check.
L’eveil – Wars of Abstraction
Forty-one minutes of solo acoustic guitar, no layers, no effects. Matthew Nichols brings metal phrasing to four ten-minute pieces, and sometimes runs short of air.
Pattern-Seeking Animals – Grimalkin
Sixth album in six years from Ted Leonard and John Boegehold’s quartet, with brass, strings and a bare piano ballad. The craft is impeccable and the ending falls short.
Blueneck – Moonlighting
Ten years, the producer’s illness, the pandemic and a stroke partway through the vocals. The sixth Blueneck album is eight tracks of piano, electronics and guitars moving from dark to light.
Warren Haynes – Dreams & Songs: A Symphonic Journey
Sixteen songs from the Allman Brothers, Gov’t Mule and the Grateful Dead with the Asheville Symphony’s sixty-four players, recorded in 2019. The orchestra wins out wherever the jam used to be.
Raphael Weinroth-Browne – Empyrean
Raphael Weinroth-Browne builds a 44-minute record out of a single looped, layered acoustic cello — hypnotic at first, formulaic by the second half.
Blood Red Shoes – Stay Lonely
Blood Red Shoes self-produce their seventh record — direct and sharp in its best moments, sanded down by glitch effects across the rest.
Beck – Ride Lonesome
Beck’s stripped-down fifteenth album, recorded with Nigel Godrich, hypnotizes for half an hour before its own reverb-soaked cohesion becomes a limitation.
Green Carnation – A Dark Poem, Part III: The Messiah Complex
Green Carnation close their Rimbaud-inspired trilogy with three band tracks and a 17-minute orchestral suite performed with no distortion, bass or vocals at all.
Boy Harsher – Get Mean
Boy Harsher’s first album for Atlantic Records turns their own break-up into twelve tracks that swing from dark synth-pop to western.
This Is Lorelei – The Singer in My Band
Nate Amos (Water From Your Eyes) releases «The Singer in My Band» as This Is Lorelei: American pop written in fragments, from a tour van.
Russian Circles – Nine
Russian Circles’ ninth album, «Nine», produced by Kurt Ballou: deliberate instrumental post-metal, no surprises but no cracks either.
Lonely Robot – An Ending
John Mitchell closes the Lonely Robot cycle with «An Ending», sixth and last album of the Astronaut saga, with Craig Blundell on drums.
SUBMASQ – Spirit Animal
SUBMASQ’s (formerly Subterranean Masquerade) seventh album: Israeli progressive metal with oud, bouzouki and a guest solo from Ron «Bumblefoot» Thal.
Ølyp – I(m)MORTAL
Debut instrumental album from French duo Ølyp: atmospheric post-metal about ecological crisis without a single sung word, with a guest string quartet.
New Releases: July-August 2026
Seven July-August 2026 releases reviewed: Mono, Satoko Fujii Orchestra Kobe, Anthony Phillips and more, plus what’s coming this autumn.
New Releases: June 2026
Eleven June-July 2026 releases reviewed: Ayreon, Snarky Puppy & Metropole Orkest, The Samurai Of Prog and more.
New Releases: March 2026
Five March 2026 releases reviewed: Frost*, Agent Fresco, Wheel, Meer and a Krokofant live album.
New Releases: July
Eighteen July releases in brief: Rivers Of Nihil, Styx, Impureza, Crown Lands and more.
New Releases: June
Fourteen June releases in brief: Katatonia, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Fallujah and more.