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Different Rooms is a collection of songs and musical motifs we composed, edited, and collaged in the weeks between late 2024 and early 2025. Most of the recorded material was performed during that editing process, except for live performances taken from improvisations we recorded with Jeff Parker and Josh Johnson some time in 2023.
In our typical process, much of our material is collaged and combines moments of live improvisation, field recordings, and in-studio experimentation. This record, however, marks an evolution in our approach to studio production.
Our studios are side-by-side. When we were writing this album, you might have found us tracking viola stacks in one studio while, in the other, we were writing through-composed themes and rearranging the material. Granular synthesis and tape manipulation are key tools we use to create variation and movement in a composition. This process often yields surprising results, capturing the emotion but expressing it in unexpected ways. It feels essential that we embrace a bit of chance.
In contrast to our first album, Recordings from the Åland Islands, we wanted this music to feel very present. Where Recordings was intended to transport you to another place, Different Rooms is meant to meet you where you are. It’s a decidedly urban album. The field recordings were captured on train platforms, in city streets, in rooms at home, and intentionally paint a quotidian sonic image, blurring the line between what you hear in your own environment and what is on the record.
The song cycle is set in palindromic sequence, figuratively, with certain pieces (reflected) by a reprised or recurring motif that is often reimagined with new instrumentation.
The sonic and temporal abstraction between what is performed in real-time versus what is recorded, manipulated, and collaged reinforces our intent to collect the works under the title Different Rooms, which literally expresses the way the material was recorded in different rooms while reminding us that our shared experience of present time is also one that is asynchronous, historied, and complex.


currently the rediscovery of long forgotten japanese electronic, jazz and new age music is at a peak like never before. but although many re-issues already flood the record stores around the world: the large, diverse musical culture of japan still got some gems in store that are really missing.
for example, it is still quiet around the the work of japanese bass player, new-age and ambient musi-cian motohiko hamase. when the today 66-years old artist started to be a professional musician in the 1970’s, he quickly gained success as a versed studio instrumentalist and started to be part of the great modern jazz isao suzuki sextett, where he played with legends like pianist tsuyoshi yamamoto or fu-sion guitar one-off-a-kind kazumi watanabe.
he also was around in the studio when legendary japanese jazz records like “straight ahead” of takao uematsu, “moritato for osada” of jazz singer minami yasuda or “moon stone” of synthesizer, piano and organ wizard mikio masuda been recorded.
in the 1980’s hamase began to slowly drift away from jazz and drowned himself and his musical vision into new-age, ambient and experimental electronic spheres, in which he incorporated his funky medi-tative way of playing the bass above airy sounds and arrangements.
his first solo album “intaglio” was not only a milestone of japanese new-age ambient, it was also fresh sonic journey in jazz that does not sound like jazz at all. now studio mule is happy to announce the re-recording of his gem from 1986, that opens new doors of perception while being not quite at all.
first issued by the japanese label shi zen, the record had a decent success in japan and by some overseas fans of music from the far east. with seven haunting, stylistically hard to pigeonhole compo-sitions hamase drifts around new-age worlds with howling wind sounds, gently bass picking and dis-creet drums, that sometimes remind the listener on the power of japanese taiko percussions. also, propulsive fourth-world-grooves call the tune and all composition avoid a foreseeable structure. at large his albums seem to be improvised and yet all is deeply composed.
music that works like shuffling through an imaginary sound library full of spiritual deepness, that even spreads in its shaky moments some profound relaxing moods. a true discovery of old music that oper-ates deeply contemporary due to his exploratory spirit and gently played tones. the release marks another highlight in studio mule’s fresh mission to excavate neglected japanese music, that somehow has more to offer in present age, than at the time of his original birth.


Beautiful string drones drawn in longform by Belgian cellist Gwen Sainte-Rose, evoking the wide rolling natural landscapes of a region nestled between the Ardennes and French Lorraine.
‘Collines, Racines’ is the 5th presentation on By The Bluest of Seas, a new wing of the Okraïna label, renowned for their attention to detail in the packaging which is typically on point here to match the music. On two works reaching well over the 25’ mark Sainte-Rose coils her cello gestures via Loopstation and unfurls ribboning motifs that limn vast vantage points over green scapes of forests and fields.
She finds just the right balance of textured, biting point discord and harmonious sentiment as the pieces proceed to build upward and outward in the more melodramatic cadence of tension and release to ‘Collines’, whilst ‘Raciness’ feels more nocturnal in its development from sweeping, panoramic post rock intimations thru widescreen scope recalling Richard Skelton, to a magnificent passage of sustained lift into vertiginous heights.




Shutting Down Here is a special work. Symbolically, it covers a period of thirty years, between two visits by Jim O'Rourke to the GRM, the first, as a young man fascinated by the institution and his repertoire, the second, as an accomplished musician, influential and imbued with an aura of mystery. Shutting Down Here is a piece shaped like an universe, a heterogeneous world in which collides the multiple musical facets of Jim O'Rourke: instrumental writing, field recordings, electronic textures and cybernetic becomings, dynamic spaces, harmonic spaces, silent spans . This variety of approach, strangely, does not in any way weaken the coherence of the whole and this is the talent of Jim O'Rourke, a talent, properly speaking, of composition, where all the sound elements compete and participate to stakes that exceed them and of a common destiny, that is to say of an apparition.


There’s no mistaking the sultry lilt of Eliana Glass—alternating between an offbeat, searching quality and her poignant, awe-inspiring range. Her piano playing also possesses this stirring push and pull between the otherworldly and painfully human—each melody its own unique, aching realm. Glass’ sparse, meditative music often captures, in her words, the “condensation of everyday life,” an image that suits the bittersweet, ephemeral, and abstract nature of her work. Glass’ debut album, E, arrives via Shelter Press, and not only is it a tender portrait of her lifelong relationship with the piano, it’s also a distillation of entire lifetimes into song.
The Australia-born, Seattle-bred, and New York-based singer-songwriter and pianist learned to sing and play piano by ear as a child. Glass took an immediate liking to her parents’ piano, frequently hiding underneath it and letting her imagination run wild. “I felt protected under the wooden beams, and I remember looking up at the legs, wires, and foot pedals and seeing the instrument in a new way—everything suddenly everted,” Glass recalls. “I like to think about E as recalling this memory in sound.”
Glass spent years learning jazz standards, and she also learned to sing in Portuguese after falling in love with Brazilian music. Glass studied jazz voice at The New School under teachers Andrew Cyrille, Ben Street, Jay Clayton, and Kris Davis, and she began singing in piano/bass/drums quartets around New York City. In the latter half of her studies, she started writing her own songs inspired by boundary-pushing artists like Ornette Coleman, Asha Puthli, and Jeanne Lee. During the height of the pandemic, she lived with her brother Costa (who now records as ifiwereme) and felt drawn to the piano again, and they wrote songs together for the first time. Then, over a four-year span, Glass teamed up with Public Records co-founder and producer Francis Harris (Frank & Tony, Adultnapper) and engineer Bill Skibbe (Shellac, Jack White) to record what became E in various studios in Nashville, Brooklyn, Memphis, and Benton Harbor, Michigan.
Glass’ experimental, improvisational works evoke the sensual minimalism of Annette Peacock, the joyful mysteriousness of Carla Bley, and the wistful intimacy of Sibylle Baier. Her reverence for leftfield jazz and free improv greats is evident, but it’s always filtered through her signature nascent, naturalistic sound. “Dreams” is a majestic take on Peacock’s spine-tingling 1971 track of the same name, “Sing Me Softly the Blues” is a minimal, arresting reimagination of Bley’s jazz standard with lyrics adapted by Norwegian vocalist Karin Krog, and “Emahoy” is a languorous tribute to Ethiopian pianist, composer, and nun Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou and her 2006 compilation Éthiopiques. Glass’ music rests on a tactile, mercurial sound and her vocal brawn and versatility. E’s slippery stabs of double bass and drums tickle the ear canal and accentuate the percussiveness of her distinctive low voice, which blends sonorous, androgynous poise with fluttering delicacy.
E also has an enigmatic electronic bent that heightens the blurry emotions of Glass’ songwriting. From background hiss and windy vocals to kaleidoscopic synths, these subtle, tasteful adornments often came from specialized analog equipment: a 1960s underground echo chamber, a Cooper Time Cube (essentially, the hardware equivalent of processing audio through a garden hose), and a 1940s AEA ribbon microphone. But that doesn’t mean E sounds dated—Glass’ songs bloom with a forward-thinking spirit and ultimately function as vehicles for her heady emotions and fragmented memories and dreams.
For E, Glass challenged herself to channel full lifetimes within each track. Astonishingly, the seductive opening song “All My Life” manages this feat with just its three-word title. Songs like this one, the breathy ballad “Shrine,” and the spare, folky “On the Way Down” brood over past lives and reflect on memories as if disembodied and viewed from above. From missed connections to retired nicknames (“Good Friends Call Me E”), there’s a pervasive sense of disintegration and a fear of lost time. Other tracks like solo piano-and-voice numbers “Flood” and “Solid Stone” engage in more elusive storytelling, marked by brutal imagery and timeless characters. Then there’s “Human Dust,” a tranquil, rhythm-driven rendition of conceptual artist Agnes Denes’ 1969 text—a quite literal summary of a life.
Eliana Glass has come a long way since daydreaming beneath a towering keyboard. Glass’ peculiar vocal alchemy and vivid piano saunters are masterful and wholly her own, and her forthcoming debut full-length is a gift of resonant beauty and rewarding ambiguity. She now performs around New York City with bandmates Walter Stinson (bass) and Mike Gebhart (drums), in addition to solo shows perched in front of a 1979 Moog Opus organ. Also an accomplished visual artist in her own right, Glass is firmly in control of her inspired visions, even if E is spiritually adrift—though that’s kind of the point. As a musician and an improviser, Glass is enamored by and an adept wielder of the search—for meaning, for sounds, for newness, for connection. And just like Krog crooned on “Sing Me Softly the Blues” in 1975: “Life’s so thrilling / if you search.”

Khadim is a stunning reconfiguration of the Ndagga Rhythm Force sound. The instrumentation is radically pared down. The guitar is gone; the concatenation of sabars; the drum-kit. Each of the four tracks hones in on just one or two drummers; otherwise the sole recorded element is the singing; everything else is programmed. Synths are dialogically locked into the drumming. Tellingly, Ernestus has reached for his beloved Prophet-5, a signature go-to since Basic Channel days, thirty years ago. Texturally, the sound is more dubwise; prickling with effects. There is a new spaciousness, announced at the start by the ambient sounds of Dakar street-life. At the microphone, Mbene Diatta Seck revels in this new openness: mbalax diva, she feelingly turns each of the four songs into a discrete dramatic episode, using different sets of rhetorical techniques. The music throughout is taut, grooving, complex, like before; but more volatile, intuitive and reaching, with turbulent emotional and spiritual expressivity.
Not that Khadim represents any kind of break. Its transformativeness is rooted in the hundreds upon hundreds of hours the Rhythm Force has played together. Nearly a decade has passed since Yermande, the unit’s previous album. Every year throughout that period — barring lockdowns — the group has toured extensively, in Europe, the US, and Japan. With improvisation at the core of its music-making, each performance has been evolutionary, as it turns out heading towards Khadim. “I didn’t want to simply continue with the same formula, says Ernestus. “I preferred to wait for a new approach. Playing live so many times, I wanted to capture some of the energy and freedom of those performances.” Though several members of the touring ensemble sit out this recording — sabar drummers, kit-drummer, synth-player — their presence abides in the structure and swing of the music here.
Lamp Fall is a homage to Cheikh Ibra Fall, founder of the Baye Fall spiritual community. The mosque in the city of Touba is known as Lamp Fall, because the main tower resembles a lantern. Soy duggu Touba, moom guey séen / When you enter Touba, he is the one who greets you. After a swift, incantatory start Mbene sings with reflective seriousness. Her voice swirls with reverb, over a tight, funky, propulsive interplay between synth and drums, threaded with one- two jabs of bass. Cheikh Ibra Fall mi may way, mo diayndiou ré, la mu jëndé ko taalibe… Cheikh Ibra Fall amo morome, aboridial / Cheikh Ibra Fall shows the way forward, he gives us strength, he gathers his disciples… Overflowing with grace, Cheikh Ibra Fall has no equal.
Interwoven with Wolof proverbs, Dieuw Bakhul is a recriminatory song about treachery, lies, and back-biting. Over moody, roiling synths and ominous, lean bass, Mbene throws out fluttering scraps of vocal, as if re-running old conversations in her head. The music shadows her despair to the verge of breakdown, at one moment seemingly so lost in thought and memories, that it threatens to disintegrate. Bayilene di wor seen xarit ak seen an da ndo… Dieuw bakhul, dieuw ñaw na / Stop judging your friends and companions… A lie is no good, a lie is ugly.
Khadim is a show-stopper; currently the centrepiece of Ndagga Rhythm Force live performances. The song is dedicated to Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba, aka Khadim, founder of the Mouride Sufi order. Serigne Bamba mi may wayeu / Serigne Bamba is the one who makes me sing. The verses name-check revered members of his family and brotherhood, like Sokhna Diarra, Mame Thierno, and Serigne Bara. Though Islam has been practised in Senegal for a millennium, it wasn’t until the start of the twentieth century that it began to thoroughly permeate ordinary Senegalese society, hand-in-hand with anti-colonialism. The verses here recall Bamba’s banishment by the French to Gabon, and later to Mauritania, in those foundational times. During exile, his captors once introduced a lion to his cell: gaïnde gua waf, dieba lu ci Cheikhoul Khadim / the lion doesn’t budge, it gives itself over to Cheikh Khadim. Deep, surging bass, steady kick-drum, and simple, reverbed chords on the off-beat lend the feel and impetus of steppers reggae. A reed plays snatches of a traditional Baye Fall melody; the dazzling polyrhythmic drumming is by Serigne Mamoune Seck. Mbene compellingly blends percussive vocalese, narrative suspense, exultant praise, introspection, and grievance.
Nimzat is a devotional tribute to Cheikh Sadbou, a contemporary of Bamba, buried in a mausoleum in Nizmat, in southern Mauritania. Way nala, kagne nala… souma danana fata dale / I call upon you and wonder about you… If I am overwhelmed, come to my aid. The town holds special significance for Khadr Sufism. An annual pilgrimage there is conducted to this day. The rhythm is buoyantly funky; the mood is sombre, reined-in, foreboding. Punctuated by peals of thunder, Mbene sings with restrained, intense reverence; huskily confidential, steadfast. Nanu dem ba Nimzat, dé ba sali khina / Let us go to Nimzat, to seal our devotion.











Thirty-two artists honor the extraordinary legacy of Suzanne Langille through interpretations of her vast songbook. Langille is best known as an acclaimed avant garde singer-songwriter and collaborator of guitarist Loren Connors. They ventured into electrified blues and abstracted artsongs across more than a dozen albums since the mid-1980s.
Langille’s songs, with Connors, solo, or other collaborators, are marked by distinct and captivating depth. Her evocative lyrics, layered with themes of loss, longing, and the natural world, defy conventional boundaries, blending poetry with potent melodies. Her work embraces the uncertainty of life and the delicate spaces between joy and sorrow.
Langille’s first published composition — “Grip My Hand” — kicked off Connors’ 1990 album Rooms. As her songs began to dot more of Connors’ albums, she led the spontaneous blown-out rock band Haunted House and collaborated with the trio San Agustin. Later, she released two albums with daf-player Neel Murgai.
“Suzanne’s songwriting defies easy classification. She bypasses essay-style lyrics and unsubtle emotion. Instead, she dives into the tenuous spaces between life, the unknown, and the shades of uncertainty lingering in between,” Family Vineyard's Eric Weddle writes in the album liner notes. “That’s the magic of Suzanne’s songs. A melody rises and pulls you in, like the relentless undertow of the Long Island Sound.”
The Suzanne Langille Songbook features a diverse array of artists who reinterpret her music, showcasing its timeless and transformative power.

Ellen Arkbro’s fourth album, Nightclouds, collects five improvisations for solo organ, recorded across Central Europe in 2023–24.
"Nightclouds is more unabashedly Romantic and introspective than her previous efforts, though it remains firmly rooted in the rigor and precision that have come to define Arkbro’s concept. Extending her previous explorations of spatialized harmony, tactility, and texture,
Arkbro draws equally on sacred music, ECM–style jazz, and downtown minimalism, conjuring a cool intimacy and tone. Her decelerationist chordal improvisations envelop the listener in dirge-like washes, while her close miking reveals the rough haptic grain of the reeds, bringing the listener both inside and outside the sound. Evoking Kjell Johnsen and Jan Garbarek’s duets, or La Monte Young and Tony Conrad’s take on Euringer and Harmer’s cowboy song “Oh Bury Me Not,” Nightclouds channels spiritual pathos through a rigorously restrained architecture.
Following up on last year’s Sounds While Waiting (W.25TH, 2024), a selection of stereo mixes documenting Arkbro’s spatial organ installations, Nightclouds shifts direction, focusing on instant composition and improvisation. Elegant, simple chordal scaffolds support rich, ever-shifting textures; listening closely necessitates surrender to sustained irresolution. Bookending a collection of short pieces are two variations on the titular composition, “Nightclouds,” which is a sly nod to British jazz guitarist Allan Holdsworth: The first take slows down and stretches out a continuously modulated harmonic progression, while the short closing version simply loops three chords. Situated between these tracks are “Still Life” and “Chordalities,” two short works recorded at the Temple de La-Tour-de-Peilz in Vevey, Switzerland. The second half of the album is given to “Morningclouds,” a sprawling work recorded in the reconstructed Gedächtniskirche (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church) in Berlin. Arkbro’s concise musical vocabulary and formal architecture evoke a sense of emotional ambivalence, simultaneously uplifting and mournful, guiding the listener through a spectrum of feeling with a cool and distant beauty. Nightclouds stands as a profound statement in Arkbro’s evolving body of work, at once introspective and expansive, the album reaffirms her singular ability to transform harmonic simplicity into deeply affecting sonic landscapes, inviting listeners into a space of contemplation and emotional depth.


In the vibrant streets of Tembisa, South Africa, amidst the sprawling urbanity connecting Johannesburg and Pretoria, the story of Moskito began. Formed in 2001 by Mahlubi “Shadow” Radebe and the late Zwelakhe “Malemon” Mtshali, the group first emerged as a powerhouse of pantsula dancers. However, their undeniable passion for music soon led them down a new path—one that would cement their place in kwaito history. Spending countless hours on the street corners of their township, where they were born and raised, Shadow and Malemon danced and sang with an infectious energy that attracted crowds. It wasn’t long before the duo decided to channel their talents into a kwaito group, and after adding friends Patrick Lwane and Menzi Dlodlo, Moskito was born.
(Pantsula dancing emerged in the 1950s among Black South Africans in townships and continually evolved until it became intertwined with kwaito music culture. The stylized, rapid foot movements and characteristic low-dancing became associated with kwaito as it took over South African urban culture into the early 2000s.)
With limited resources, the group displayed immense creativity, recording demos using two cassette decks and instrumental tracks from other artists. They would rap and sing over an instrumental playing on one deck while the second deck records their performance. Their determination paid off when they submitted their demo to Tammy Music Publishers, who were captivated by Moskito’s style.
“Kwaito was the thing ‘in’ at the time. If you did music you did kwaito. We wanted to fit in and actually it was easy,” says Radebe. “We didn’t have engineers in the group, so the first time in a real studio was with Percy and Thami to record Idolar.”
That same year, the group released their debut album, Idolar, under Tammy Music. The album was an undeniable success reaching gold status selling over 25,000 units and earning them a devoted fan base across South Africa and neighboring countries like Botswana, Swaziland, Namibia and Zimbabwe. Moskito collaborated with industry legends such as Chilly Mthiya Tshabalala, who was known for his work with Thiza and Spoke ”H.” They drew inspiration from Thami Mdluli a.k.a Professor Rhythm, who had dominated the disco scene back in the 80s and 90s. Mdluli helped with musical arrangements and executive produced the album and signed on producer-engineer Percy Mudau, while Shadow and Malemon took pride in composing most of their songs. Like many of the rising kwaito artists of the time, they didn’t have music production or engineering backgrounds so they required support from engineers together their ideas down on tape.
They were inspired by South African kwaito icons like Trompies, Mdu, Mandoza, and Arthur Mafokate, alongside international heavyweights like Snoop Doggy Dogg, Dr. Dre, 2Pac, and R. Kelly, Moskito created a sound that was uniquely theirs—a perfect blend of local flavor and global influence.


Very different from Biosphere's last AD 93 offering, 'The Way of Time' is a freewheeling set of atmospheric vintage synth jams, dubby ambient techno experiments and decelerated electro workouts that's inspired by American poet and author Elizabeth Madox Roberts' 'The Time Of Man'. Essential listening for fans of 'Patashnik', then.
On 2021's 'Angel's Flight', Geir Jenssen focused his gaze on Beethoven's String Quartet No. 14, tweaking and stretching it to tease out its essence. He's on more familiar ground here, using Joan Lorring's voice, from a 1951 radio adaptation of 'The Time Of Man', to guide us through a spruced-up spread of his signature sounds. If you've kept up with his releases, then you'll know that the last few albums have been made with restored keyboards and drum machines - a marked shift from his period using samples and software.
'The Way Of Time' seems to follow the same path: opener 'Time Of Man' is barely more than a brassy analog lead and Lorring's smudgy voice, while the title theme (that repeats in various forms), with its acidic plucks and sequenced repetitions takes us back to Jenssen's milestone album 'Patashnik', when he set the bar for ambient techno. It's a welcome return to familiar sonics; unlike his last couple of synth-heavy albums, that sounded like fun diversions and jams, 'The Way Of Time' holds neatly together as a unit, well braided by its journeyman theme. Lorring's voice is the anchor, and Jenssen's able to refresh his most referenced material with contemporary processes and techniques.

January 2nd, 2023. Aside from being the second of a new year, it was a pretty ordinary night at ETA in Los Angeles, where guitarist Jeff Parker - alongside his ETA IVtet with saxophonist Josh Johnson, bassist Anna Butterss, and drummer Jay Bellerose - had been holding down a regular Monday gig since 2016. At the time, nobody knew it was the first gig of the last year that ETA would be open for business.
Over seven years of holding down that residency, Parker’s ETA ensemble evolved from a band that played mostly standards into a group known for its transcendent, long-form (sometimes stretching out for 45 minutes or more) journeys into innovative, often uncharted territories of groove-oriented, painterly, polyrhythmic, minimalist and mantric improvised music.
With that musical growth, the crowds for Parker and his band at ETA grew across the years too. What started as a sparse gathering of weeknight drinkers, friends, family, and Chicago expats (coming to get a shot of nostalgia for the atmospheres Parker used to create at Rodan across the ‘00s and early ‘10s) grew into a Los Angeles nightlife staple with a packed house and a line down the block for every show.
By January 2023 interest in Parker’s music was stronger than ever, coming off successes with the December 2021 International Anthem/Nonesuch release of Forfolks – a collection of solo guitar works – and the October 2022 Eremite release of Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy, a double LP chronicling the ETA IVtet’s distinct, expansive approach to improvisation across four side-length tracks recorded and mixed live by engineer Bryce Gonzales.
Mondays introduced the world to the ETA IVtet’s signature sound with a gathering of unnamed recordings from dates between 2019 and 2021. Parker’s new ETA IVtet offering stays true to that formula in some ways – as he returns to Gonzales’s archive of analog captures to gather four long recordings totalling around 80 minutes – while zooming in on a more particular moment in his journey. The Way Out of Easy provides us a macro-lens view of the ever-refining, infinite organic essence of the ensemble as they stretch out across a single night of soundmaking on January 2nd, 2023.
The engineer Gonzales is well known for the high-end audio gear he builds as Highland Dynamics, and even designed a custom mixer to be able to record the ETA IVtet, specifically, while only taking up a single space at the bar. In his liner notes for The Way Out of Easy, he colors his process and approach: “There are many different ways to make recordings and they all have their place. But for this band, the most important thing to consider is: not doing anything to get in the way of what they are saying to each other.” He refers to the simple schematic he used for capturing these performances – “basically only 4 level controls for one microphone per player” – which allows us an incredibly pure, honest, transparent and transporting experience of the music as it unfolds and is created in real time.
The set begins with an extended take on Parker’s composition “Freakadelic” – a tune he originally recorded for his 2012 Delmark release Bright Light in Winter. The B-side piece “Late Autumn” finds Parker swaying in alliterative, arpeggiating cycles, using just a few plucked notes as he lays the compositional foundation. At first it almost sounds like an echo of the humble tunes he wrote alone with his guitar on Forfolks, but in this space his ensemble joins him to help build a beautifully multi-textured, gently-shifting four-dimensional construction out of a simple idea. On “Easy Way Out,” Butterss’s bobbing bass line leads, paddling the ensemble into a placid expanse of tender psychedelia while Bellerose dusts off the drums like an archaeologist unearthing ancient artifacts.
It had become customary for the IVtet to end their shows every week with a standard or a tune – a practice that Parker embraced for wanting to give the audience something warm and familiar to take home after a long night of taking them out on creative limbs. Some of Parker’s more common calls were “This Guy’s In Love With You” by Burt Bacharach, “1974 Blues” by Eddie Harris, or “Peace” by Horace Silver. In this set, the IVtet closes not with a familiar song, but a familiar sound in the form of a dub/reggae groove (given the name “Chrome Dome” by Parker in post), developing spontaneously out of lyrical ad libs by Johnson on solo saxophone.
In early December of 2023, ETA co-owner Ryan Julio was forced to make a sudden announcement that the venue would permanently shutter at the end of the year. On December 23rd, Parker and the band played at ETA for the last time.
On July 22nd, 2024, the ETA IVtet gathered to perform together for the first time since then, playing for a sold-out crowd of several hundred listeners – a smiling Ryan Julio among them – at Zebulon in Los Angeles. Gonzales was there, recording with his compact analog setup just behind the band on stage. The space may be gone but its spirit lives and the music moves forward into new vessels.


'Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes' is the debut album from Gregory Uhlmann (SML, Anna Butterss, Duffy x Uhlmann, Perfume Genius), Josh Johnson (SML, Jeff Parker ETA IVtet & New Breed, Meshell Ndegeocello, Anna Butterss, Leon Bridges), and Sam Wilkes (Sam Gendel, Louis Cole, Chaka Khan). The three improviser/arranger/producers’ impressive individual credits encompass such a wide stylistic pendulum swing that a collection of group music from the trio could mine any number of musical territories with masterful results. In these 11 instrumental songs, the trio explores a spacious lyrical curiosity that could be described as a jazz-informed take on progressive electro-acoustic chamber music.
Conceived during two live shows at ETA and a session at Uhlmann’s house in Los Angeles, the album maintains a focus on beauty, melody, and movement as the pieces unfold, with the trio pushing their instruments and highly-dialed effects to sculpt otherworldly sounds with the collective sensibility of a rhythm section. The ethos of these instant compositions is arrangement-minded improvisation that showcases the mournful beauty of Uhlmann’s fingerpicked electric guitar, the hybrid rhythm-lead of Wilkes’ bass chording, and the textural harmonic worldbuilding of Johnson’s effect-laden alto saxophone.
The trio’s explorations are rooted in more than just musicality, though. The arc of the group’s story is one of friendship and mutual admiration. Uhlmann and Johnson have known each other since their formative days as teenagers studying jazz. Shortly after first meeting in an educational setting, they would connect for nascent musical probing via low-stakes get-togethers back home in Chicago. They didn’t even know at the time that they had both taken lessons from a mutual guiding light – legendary guitarist/composer Jeff Parker.
After high school, they headed in separate directions – Johnson to Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana; Uhlmann to Cal Arts in Santa Clarita, California – but reconnected quickly upon migrating to LA, where shared opportunities for studio work as well as revolving-cast free improvisation at small clubs around the city naturally cemented their loose partnership. Uhlmann was both playing and programming, creating platforms for collaboration at the Bootleg Theater, while Johnson’s transition from student-of to collaborator-with Jeff Parker was well underway via their weekly gig at Highland Park’s ETA. In the immediate periphery of all of this was bassist Sam Wilkes, a serial collaborator well known in the LA creative music scene’s cross-pollination trenches.
“I was playing with some musicians who went to Cal Arts,” says Wilkes. “I started going up there regularly, and Greg had this great band called Fell Runner. A group I was in split a bill with them at the old Bootleg Theater and it really solidified my appreciation and deep respect for the band and for Greg’s playing. They were doing things that were completely unique. We’ve been friends ever since.”
Wilkes and Johnson’s first collaboration came after years of knowing one another in LA, but the musical connection and respect was similarly instantaneous. “It was a session for Louis Cole Big Band,” recalls Wilkes. “Everyone went around on this one tune and took 4 bars, and Josh took this really, really unique 4-bar solo that really stood out. After the session, Louis looked at me and said ‘Josh Johnson!’ and I was like ‘I know!’
In 2021, even before Uhlmann and Johnson began working on what would become SML, Wilkes and Uhlmann played together on an album by Miya Folick, which left them feeling like there was more music to be made together. Uhlmann suggested booking a live date as a trio with Johnson at ETA. With engineer Bryce Gonzales at the controls, the group worked through a short list of prepared material, augmented with passages of improvisation. “We all agreed that it was important to have a nice melodic repertoire to use as a starting point to freely improvise,” says Wilkes. “Landing zones, essentially, while we’re out in the field.”
Those landing zones include a stunning cover of “The Fool On The Hill,” perhaps the eeriest McCartney ballad in The Beatles’ songbook. Johnson’s tender rendering of the classic vocal melody unites the raindrop-leslie-plonk of Uhlmann’s electric guitar and the quietly grooving drone thump of Wilkes’ bass so comfortably that any move could feel natural by the time the trio opens it up for improvisation at the two-minute mark. What follows is a sublime take on the purring consonance only occasionally found in the best moments of the ECM or Windham Hill catalogs. Even more incredible is the fact that this particular recording of the tune documents the first piece of music this trio played together, from the opening moments of their first performance at ETA.
That instantaneous cualidad simpático is what makes this trio special. What we’re hearing is a friendship between high-level improvisers translated into musical moments and executed with such curious precision that the lines between supposed opposites – composition and improvisation, jazz and chamber music, ennui and contentment – are delightfully blurred.
“Frica” is, perhaps, the track on which that blur is most evident. The tune incorporates the staccato stutters and repetitions heard throughout the album, but doubles down with a subtly disorienting post-production chop by Johnson, which accentuates the trio’s live trance by introducing a floating phrase cut-and-mix. The fact that these concepts are employed intuitively, pre-edit, throughout Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes is precisely what makes the post-production shine. It can be difficult to discern what is a slip of the sampler and what is live, turn-on-a-dime action, and it’s exactly that mystery which draws us in.
“Marvis," the album opener, makes that clear from the jump. This fresh spin on a tune from Johnson’s solo album 'Unusual Object' checks many of the same boxes as “Frica” on the production level, but it’s all in service of a truly demented low-key groove. The trio is in lock step here, but it’s unclear how many legs are doing the stepping and just whose legs are taking which steps.
Conversely, the Uhlmann composition “Arpy” is a slow-paced, descending four chord meditation teeming with the life provided by the guitarist’s causally precise reverberated triplet repetitions and held down by Wilkes’ sturdy bass chording, which occasionally wanders into flamboyant high register flourishes. Johnson’s soft alto treatment morphs in tonality throughout, eventually settling into something more aurally reminiscent of an Ondes Martenot or some gently twisted echo of Clara Rockmore.
All told, 'Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes' is a beautiful snapshot of three endlessly interesting players at the top of their game, rendered in such a skilled manner that its inherent mastery flows effortlessly, making passive atmospheric immersion as pleasant and stimulating as deep focused listening.


Ambre Ciel is a composer and singer who hails from Montreal, Canada and is a purveyor of dreamy, expansive, spacious music that draws influence from contemporary classical influenced artists, as well as the impressionist world and American minimalists.
Ambre who sings in both English and her native French, hails from a family of singers and artists, “I started my journey learning violin at six and began experimenting with pedal effects and looping melodies later on”. University followed with a focus on composition and recording. “That’s when I started exploring composing and songwriting more deeply—both the world of sounds in itself and songs built mostly with layers of violin and voice. It was also during this time that I returned to my ‘first’ instrument, the piano, which opened more harmonic possibilities.”
Her debut album still, there is the sea, represents a beginning, a first and imperfect attempt to create this other world that was living in her mind. She has crafted a beautifully refined album making a lot of space for strings arrangements and other acoustic instruments, as well as her own beautiful voice.


“Phi-Psonics is a spiritual exploration of being together and connecting,” says acoustic bassist Seth Ford-Young of the immersive project he initiated in East Los Angeles in 2016. For his third long-player under the Phi-Psonics banner, Ford-Young marshalled a series of live recordings at Healing Force Of The Universe records in Pasadena, sculpting fourteen tracks, largely composed in the moment with a fluctuating cast of players, which wonderfully transmit his ideals of community and inner peace.
Ford-Young says of Expanding to One..."We live in increasingly dark times and while I intend our music to be a balm to those who connect with it, I also want the context of our musical conversations to include the outer as much as our inner worlds. The music we make doesn’t exist in a vacuum and the backdrop of injustice and tragedy in our world has to be part of our music.”
Performers:
Seth Ford-Young - acoustic bass, percussion
Sylvain Carton - tenor saxophone, baritone saxophone, flute, alto flute, bamboo flute, percussion
Randal Fisher - tenor saxophone, flute
Mitchell Yoshida - Wurlitzer 140b electric piano
Zach Tenorio - Wurlitzer 200a electric piano
Gary Fukushima - Wurlitzer 140b electric piano
Dylan Day - guitar
Dave Harrington - guitar
Rocco DeLuca - pedal steel guitar
Minta Spencer - harp
Sheila Govindarajan - Voice
Spencer Zahn - acoustic bass
Josh Collazo - drums
Jay Bellerose - drums, percussion
Mathias Künzli - percussion
Produced by Seth Ford-Young
Recorded February 7, 21 March 6, 20, April 3,17 - 2024
Live at Healing Force of the Universe Records, Pasadena California
Engineered by Seth Ford-Young
Mixed by Seth Ford-Young