New album: This delicate, beautiful debut by the Italian singer from Milan with a jazz background infuses her songs with folk and classical and eastern elements in an LP inspired by the Greek myth of Amethyst who defies the patriarchy
Read moreBADBADNOTGOOD: Talk Memory
New album: Mind-bending, mesmeric and complex but also accessible sixth album of jazz and prog by the band from Toronto, much via improvisation but also with a collaboration by legendary Brazilian composer Arthur Verocai
Read moreKit Sebastian: Melodi
New album: A magical, mesmeric second album by the London-based French and Turkish pair of Kit Martin and Merve Erdem is a unique fusion of vocals, jazz, funk, psych, featuring zithers, harpsichords, congas, bongos, bulbul tarang, balalaikas, organs, and saxophone
Read moreJordan Rakei: What We Call Life
New album: A smooth, sophisticated silky and intimate fourth LP by the New Zealand-Australian multi-instrumentalist, high-voiced singer, producer, and songwriter that gradually moves from a soul and R&B to increasingly ethereal and experimental
Read moreLady Blackbird: Black Acid Soul
New album: Exquisite, slow, elegant jazz and soul in this beautiful debut by singer Marley Munroe, who has smoky power and control reminiscent of Nina Simone, in an 11-track album including seven covers, including, upright bass and Miles Davis’s pianist Deron Johnson
Read moreLittle Simz: Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
New album: London’s Simbiatu Ajikawo returns with her fourth album, a triumph of intelligent, tough-attitude socio-political lyrics and charisma, backed with epic orchestral soundtrack with old friend and longtime producer Inflo Sault), hopefully to propel her into world stardom
Read moreBendik Giske: Cracks
New album: An extraordinary second album by the classically trained Norwegian saxophonist, who undermines the instrument’s showy jazz cliches by employing contact microphones around his tenor to amplify noisy fingers clicking against the keys and keypads for a new world of sound
Read moreIshmael Ensemble: Visions of Light
New album: Excellent, evocatively fluid follow-up to 2019’s A State of Flow by the Bristol band of Pete Cunningham and co whose mix of harp, saxophone, upright bass, vocals, percussion and more create a mesmeric mix of electronica, folk and jazz
Read moreLeon Bridges: Gold-Diggers Sound
New album: Delicate soul mixed with R&B, Afrobeat, late-night jazz and even a dash of country come in this third LP by the 32-year-old singer, songwriter and record producer, filled with heartbreak and hope stemming from events of the past year
Read moreL'Rain: Fatigue
New album: This second album by the Brooklyn-born multi-instrumentalist and singer Taja Cheek is an entrancing mix of keyboards, synths, and haunting vocals, a woozily wonderful and unique style of dream-like delicacy
Read moreHiatus Kaiyote: Mood Valiant
New album: This wonderful third album by the Melbourne band is a free-flowing beauty - like a butterfly garden of jazz, soul as well as Brazilian influences from time spent with veteran composer Arthur Verocai and Amazonian indigenous Varinawa communities
Read moreÌxtahuele: Eden Ahbez's Dharmaland
Album review: Serene, strange, magical a wonderful collection performed by the Swedish experimental band of newly discovered sheet music of instrumentals and songs by the composer best known for Nature Boy, written for Nat King Cole
Read moreGreentea Peng: Man Made
Album review: The debut album by the south Londoner is has woozy, easy, hazy, lazy summer feel, a mix of languid hip hop, reggae, jazz, and soul with a dash of dub, a dribble of drum’n’bass and even psych with a hippie sprinkle
Read moreblack midi: Cavalcade
Album review: The British quartet’s second album after 2019’s Schlagenheim continues their boundary-pushing direction of frenetic, eclectic mix of the avant garde – jazz, funk, prog in a skilled delirium of wonderful compositions
Read moreSons of Kemet: Black to the Future
Album review: A wonderful return by the pioneering UK-based jazz quartet after 2018’s acclaimed Your Queen is a Reptile, here with fuller compositions and arrangements, and featured vocalists including Kojey Radical, Moor Mother, Angel Bat Dawid, Joshua Idehen and D Double E
Read moreSophia Kennedy: Monsters
Album review: An unholy, beguiling and at times mischievously brilliant mixture of pop, Tin Pan Alley, vintage showtunes, hip hop, abstract electronica and horror film culture, the Baltimore-born, Hamburg-bred artist is just as impossible to define as to not enjoy
Read moreTony Allen (and various): There Is No End
Album review: Entertainingly diverse posthumous album bringing together recordings by the great drummer and Afrobeat pioneer with Femi Kuti, here matched here with guests from soul to hip hop, including Sampa The Great, Skepta, Damon Albarn, and Lava La Rue
Read moreAlfa Mist: Bring Backs
Album review: A mellifluous weave of jazz, soul, poetry hip hop by the east London rapper, producer and instrumentalist aka Alfa Sekitoleko with a nod to his various musical influences, especially the capital's vibrant jazz scene
Read moreCaoilfhionn Rose: Truly
Album review: Sounding like a sunlit landscape of whispering grasslands, this beautiful mix of folk, jazz, ambient electronica and gentle psychedelia comes with the pure, soft, soaring voice of the Manchester singer-songwriter
Read moreMatthew E. White and Lonnie Holley: Broken Mirror: A Selfie Reflective
Album review: This first collaborative release between the Virginia songwriter, producer, and founder of Spacebomb Records and the Alabama sculptor is an experimental fusion of jazz, funk, electronica and exclamatory spoken-word observation
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