MUSIC

Motohiko Hamase's 1986 ambient electronic jazz album "Reminiscence".

"Nusa"is the result of a dialogue between the photographer Masao Yamamoto and the composer and musician Akira Uchida, initiated by IIKKI, between April 2025 and March 2026. "Nusa" is the last part of a trilogy started in 2020 with Masao Yamamoto and Akira Uchida. A project that began with light (“Sasanami”, 2020), moved through darkness (“Kurayami”, 2023), and returned to the ambivalence of the two (“Nusa”, 2026), which ultimately sustain and complement one another in all their variations and complementarities. Both in terms of tones and in the humanity that runs through us in these times of such stark contrast. For this last part of the trilogy, Masao Yamamoto and Akira Uchida travelled to the island of Hokkaido at the beginning of 2026 to supplement the project with photographs and audio recordings of the ice and the surrounding landscapes

Black Truffle is pleased to announce a tenth anniversary reissue of Oren Ambarchi’s Quixotism, originally released on Editions Mego in 2014. Recorded with a multitude of collaborators in Europe, Japan, Australia and the USA, Quixotism presents the fruit of two years of work in the form of a single, LP-length piece in five parts. Quixotism takes the driving rhythmic aspect of works such as Sagittarian Domain to new levels, with the entirety of this long-form work built on a foundation of pulsing double-time electronic percussion provided by Thomas Brinkmann. Beginning as almost subliminal propulsion behind cavernous orchestral textures and John Tilbury’s delicate piano interjections, the percussive elements (elaborated on by Ambarchi and Matt Chamberlain) slowly inch into the foreground of the piece before suddenly breaking out into a polyrhythmic shuffle around the halfway mark, and joined by master Japanese tabla player U-zhaan for the piece’s final, beautiful passages. The pulse acts as thread leading the listener through a heterogeneous variety of acoustic spaces, from the concert hall in which the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra were recorded to the intimacy of crys cole’s contact-mic textures. Ambarchi’s guitar itself ranges over this wide variety of acoustic spaces, from airless, clipped tones to swirling, reverberated fog. Within the complex web Ambarchi spins over the piece’s steadily pulsing foundation, elements approach and recede in a non-linear fashion, even as the piece plots an overall course from the grey, almost Nono-esque reverberated space of its opening section to the crisp foreground presence of Jim O’Rourke’s synth and Evyind Kang’s strings in its final moments. Formally indebted to the side-long workouts of classic Cologne techno, the long-form works of composers such as Éliane Radigue and the organic push and pull of improvised performance, Quixotism is constantly in motion, yet its transitions happen slowly and steadily, often nearly imperceptible, the diverse elements which make up the piece succeeding one another with the logic of a dream. At the time of its first release, Quixotism was clearly a summation of Ambarchi’s work in the years leading up to it. Now, listening back a decade later, it also seems like an arrow pointing to the future, suggesting paths that would be explored further in works to come: the pulsating guitar layers of Hubris, the album-length collaboration with Jim O’Rourke and U-zhaan on Hence, Shebang’s joyous layering and percussive drive. Now sounding better than ever in a new remaster by Joe Talia, the time is ripe to rediscover its quixotic charms.

Born and raised in Kanagawa (Japan) Iu Takahashi is a sound artist based in Tokyo. She produces her own musical worldview mainly using synthesizers, ambient sounds, and voices. Previously, Iu Takahashi pursued a career as a singer and since 2018, she has focused primarily on creating ambient music and provides her tracks to serve as background music for exhibitions or promotional videos. Inspired by Japanese ambient music such as Hiroshi Yoshimura and Satoshi Ashikawa, Iu Takahashi creates some sounds works based on Japanese ambient music. As part of the "soundscape" concept, she always takes care to offer music that takes the listener’s thoughts and feelings into account, as well as music that resonates with the subconscious. This is her second release on LAAPS and LP.

Tearing apart the sound of the cello and zooming in to its atomic particles, Max Eilbacher and Lucy Railton muddle the real and the virtual on 'Indifferent Rocks...', dreaming up a mind-altering study of authenticity and isolation that constantly challenges aesthetic expectations. Originally commissioned by New York's ISSUE PROJECT back in 2022 for their "Distant Pairs" series, where the organisation matched two artists to consider the implications of isolation post-COVID, 'Indifferent Rocks are Rearranged into a Dam' uses the concept of distance to inspire almost every aspect of its construction. Railton and Eilbacher's separation is represented in the method itself, with mics placed in the middle of a quadraphonic setup; the gap between the acoustic source material and the preternatural result; the cello and the digitally re-synthesised simulation. Over almost half an hour, the duo engage in a surprisingly blithe deception, daring listeners to dissect the material and figure out what's actually going on. And for the first few minutes at least, that's not an easy task. Eilbacher's reduced, spectralised drones slowly reveal a familiar back-and-forth of a bow; might it be cello funnelled through some pedals, or a simulation? Or both? It doesn't get any easier to parse as the piece evolves, either. The sonic spectrum is enhanced with booming low-end and eardrum-piercing high end animations, but it remains cryptic, occasionally sounding like pure synthesis and occasionally close to Railton's bewitching last album 'Blue Veil'. Pattering rhythms materialise from the sidelines and in the stark middle section, raw staccato notes are spray-painted with digital gloss, then repeated, swallowed and regurgitated by unseen entities. Somehow, the process feels as mischievous, as rigorous and as texturally engaging as those vital early GRM experiments that posed the initial questions about electronic and acoustic music we're still attempting to answer. The aesthetic is very different, but the philosophy is the same - Railton and Eilbacher implore us to experience sound just like they do, not in one defined place or another, but in a third space where anything's possible.

Human Remains follows Creatures of the Deep and Black Sarabande as the final installment of a trilogy of piano based recordings by Robert Haigh for Unseen Worlds. The trilogy marks the end of the late era of solo albums by Haigh before he steps away from music production. The title, Human Remains, was initially based on a painting of the same name by Haigh that is suggestive of an ancient structure resolute in the wake of overwhelming forces. As a metaphor for our current times, it could be interpreted as human frailty in the face of nature’s unyielding dominion. Conversely, it could represent the persistence of human spirit and resourcefulness in the midst of catastrophe and upheaval. The album opens with 'Beginner’s Mind' – a semi-improvised motif develops into an impressionistic refrain. This is followed by "Twilight Flowers" and "Waltz On Treated Wire" – intimate, monochrome piano portraits. Later tracks such as "Lost Albion" and "Signs Of Life" build on skeletal piano motifs with subtle electronic washes, textures and field sounds. The album ends with the elegiac "On Terminus Hill" where a stately piano refrain explores a series of sparse harmonic variations evoking a sense of closure.

Black Sarabande expands upon pianist-composer Robert Haigh’s beguiling debut for Unseen Worlds with a collection of intimate and evocative piano-led compositions.  Haigh was born and raised in the ‘pit village’ of Worsbrough in South Yorkshire, England. His father, as most of his friends’ fathers, was a miner, who worked at the local colliery.  Etched into Haigh’s work are formative memories of the early morning sounds of coal wagons being shunted on the tracks, distant trains passing, and walking rural paths skirting the barren industrial landscape

The album opens with the title track — a spacious, plaintive piano motif develops through a series of discordant variations before resolving. On ‘Stranger On The Lake,’ sweeping textures and found sounds lay the foundation for a two chord piano phrase evoking a sense of elegy. ‘Wire Horses’ is an atmospheric audio painting of open spaces and distant lights. ’Air Madeleine’ uses variations in tempo and dynamics to craft the most seductively melodic track on the album.  ‘Arc Of Crows’ improvises on a single major seventh chord, splintering droplets of notes as ghostly wisps of melodic sound slowly glide into view. ‘Ghosts Of Blacker Dyke’ is a melancholic evocation of Haigh’s roots in England’s industrial north — intermingling dissonant sounds of industry within a set of languid piano variations. ‘Progressive Music’  is constructed around a series of lightly dissonant arpeggiated piano chords which modulate through major and minor key changes before resolving at a wistful and enigmatic refrain. In ‘The Secret Life of Air’, a nocturnal, low piano line slowly weaves its way through the close-miked ambience of the room, nearly halting as each note is allowed to form and reverberate into a blur with the next. The ambitious ‘Painted Serpent’ calmly begins with drone-like pads and builds with the introduction of counterpoint piano lines and an orchestral collage of sound underpinned by a deliberate bass motif. ’Broken Symmetry’ and ‘Lady Lazarus’ highlight Haigh’s gift for blurring the line between dissonance and harmony - opaque piano portraits of moonlight and shadows glancingly evoke the impressionistic palettes of Harold Budd, Debussy and Satie.

A new album of piano driven ambient music from British composer Robert Haigh. Following in the path of his albums for the Japanese Siren label, Creatures of the Deep is an underground vantage of a meeting between the musical worlds of Harold Budd and Erik Satie. With a storied musical career that has ranged widely in style ― from his industrial-avant-garde works on Nurse With Wound’s United Diaries label as SEMA to his legendary ambient drum and bass records as Omni Trio on Moving Shadow ― Robert Haigh's work occupies a space between music and mystery. With Creatures of the Deep, Haigh is at the peak of his powers. Among noir, minimal, neo-classical landscapes are robust scatterings of bright reflection and a musical expression that is subtle and elusive yet uniquely Haigh’s in its voice and masterful execution. The closer we examine, the more is revealed, and the less is defined.

September 23rd is the first release in William Basinski’s new Arcadia Archive series. Recorded in September 1982 in his first loft in the pre-gentrified DUMBO neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, September 23rd is a recently unearthed early entry in what has become a hugely inspirational and influential catalog. Built from a piano piece that Basinski composed in high school in the mid-1970s, September 23rd quickly evolved into a vastly different work. As Basinski explains: “The original piano recordings were made on on a piano belonging to my downstairs neighbor, John Epperson – later known more famously as world-renowned drag artist, Lypsinka – at 351 Jay Street aka Casa Degli Artisti, our first loft in New York. It was recoded with a little portable (probably Radio Shack) cassette deck sitting on the piano as I improvised a piece I had been working on since high school. It was pretty terrible, but when I did the John Giorno/William Burroughs cut-up technique, suddenly I had something to put through the Frippertronics loop and feedback loop tape delay system – and boy did I get results. A very prolific time for a young, wacked-out queen in NYC.”

LIMITED EDITION OF 5000 180 GRAM OPAQUE DARK BLUE VINYLProduced by Brian Paulson at River North Recorders in Chicago and released by Touch and Go Records in April of 1991, the six songs on Spiderland methodically mapped a shadowy new continent of sound. The music is taut, menacing, and haunting; its structure built largely on absence and restraint, on the echoing space between the notes, but punctuated by sudden thrilling blasts of unfettered fury. It is a sound that no one had heard before and that no one will ever forget. The eerie, now-iconic black and white cover photo of the four-band member’s heads breaking the surface of the water was taken by their friend Will Oldham. Spiderland spawned a whole new genre, frequently called Post-Rock, and came to be regarded as one of the most important and influential records of the past thirty years. SLINT broke up shortly before Spiderland was released. Band members went on to play in Tortoise, the Breeders, Palace, The For Carnation, Papa M, Evergreen, Interpol, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Originally released in 1998, Boston emo outfit Jejune's shoegaze-inspired second album has been given the Numero treatment with a long overdue remaster. RIUYL Rainer Maria, Superchunk or Karate.

Jejune were only around for four years, but they left behind them a subtle trail of influence that's exemplified on their milestone sophomore album. Unlike their debut 'Junk' (that Numero remastered and reissued earlier this year), 'This Afternoon's Malady' began to subvert the emo template, shoring up Arabella Harrison and Joe Guevara's fragile, cracking vocals with thick, wall-of-sound production that betrayed the influence of MBV's 'Loveless' and Catherine Wheel's 'Ferment'. The band were saddled with accusations of being "emo" when the album originally emerged in the late '90s and the term had become a slur, and now we can visualize their influence a little more clearly. They were emblematic of the genre's refined, ultra-melodic second wave, and since they splintered in 2000 they've been referenced constantly online. Dashboard Confessional's Chris Carrabba called them one of his favorite bands, and Jejune neatly bridge the gap between hardcore punk and indie rock, foreshadowing the '00s boom.

Sooj — a collaborative project between members of Duster and Dirty Art Club. Picking up where their 2024 two-sider Anhedonia II b/w Ecstasy Cowgirl left off, Crusher sees Duster’s slowcore drift dissolve into Dirty Art Club’s sample-heavy, collage-minded production. The result is neither band, nor side project, but something more elusive — a third space built from tape hiss, chopped memory, and late-night signal bleed. Across its runtime, the album avoids the gravitational pull of nostalgia. Instead, it hovers in a liminal present — part collaboration, part escape route.

A band that played so loud their entire fan base went deaf and never spoke of them again. Formed in 1993 in the go-nowhere exurb of San Jose, California, Super Static Fever played only a handful of gigs in their brief two year existence, punishing spectators with a tinnitus-inducing wah-wah wall of Marshall-stacked distortion. Their sound was a mix of Melvins-esque sludge, Swervedriver’s melodic crunch, and latter-day Black Flag’s penchant for volume, as heard from the stock stereo of a hot-boxed 1985 Ford Econoline. Unfinished tapes from two ear-bleeding sessions are all that survived the ensuing 25 years since their indifferent break-up, mixed by the exacting Steve Albini as the band’s one condition for reissue. The package reeks of the ’90s computer-crippled D.I.Y. aesthetic, with VHS blur and opaque white screened on chipboard. A record that just barely does, and probably should not, exist.

Before Robert Johnson, before Lead Belly, even before Bessie Smith, Gertrude “Ma” Rainey defined what it meant to sing the blues, belting out lusty, downhome songs with a charismatic force that comes through loud and clear today. A century after her landmark music, Mother of the Blues, The Complete Paramount Recordings 1923-1928 captures this powerhouse artist in all her glory with a five-CD, 118-track set that blows away the cobwebs, bringing these electrifying works into the present in irresistible fashion. Born in 1882, Rainey was a touring performer who starred in tent shows and theaters, singing in a variety of styles, including minstrel songs and vaudeville material. For underdog Paramount Records, she was a blues artist whose sensual presence infused every note of her songs. While Paramount discs have a reputation for substandard sound quality, Mother of the Blues does a remarkable job of cleaning up the music without losing any of its earthy immediacy. Among the highlights are songs that would inspire a diverse array of performers in decades to come, such as “See See Rider,” “Walking Blues” and “Stack O’ Lee Blues,” as well as a handful of previously unreleased takes. Numerous players who would emerge as major jazz and blues artists in their own right provide backing, including Louis Armstrong, Fletcher Henderson, Tampa Red and Coleman Hawkins. There’s also a large-format, hundred-page book with a slew of information and photos. Mother of the Blues is a remarkable document, but you don’t need to know any history to get the picture. Just listen and feel the heat.

THE PLAIN TRUTH=we drifted through it, arguing.every day a new war crime, every day a flower bloom.we sat down together and wrote it in one room,and then sat down in a different room, recording.NO TITLE= what gestures make sense while tiny bodies fall? what context? what broken melody?and then a tally and a date to mark a point on the line, the negative process, the growing pile.the sun setting above beds of ashwhile we sat together, arguing.the old world order barely pretended to care.this new century will be crueler still.war is coming.don’t give up.pick a side.hang on.love.

The inimitable GYBE returns with another soundtrack for our times. As the heretical anarcho-punk spirit of the title implies, Godspeed harnesses some particularly raw power, spittle and grit across two riveting 20-minute side-length trajectories of noise-drenched widescreen post-rock: inexorable chug blossoms into blown-out twang, as some of the band’s most soaring, searing melodies ricochet and converge amidst violin and bassline counterpoint. Field recordings and roiling semi-improvised passages frame these fervent epics, and two shorter self-contained 6-minute pieces find the band at its most devastatingly beautiful, haunting and elegiac. Poignant atmospherics, noise-drenched orchestration, drone, hypnotic swingtime crescendos, inexorably-layered towers of distorted clarion sound: STATE’S END encapsulates every beloved facet of the band. Twenty-five years on, this new album is as vital, stirring, timely and implacable as any in Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s storied discography. Recorded and mixed by Jace Lasek, the veteran award-winning indie producer (and co-founder of The Besnard Lakes) who works with Godspeed for the first time on this recording.

This long-playing record, a thing we made in the midst of communal mess, raising dogs and children. Eyes up and filled with dreadful joy - we aimed for wrong notes that explode, a quiet muttering amplified heavenward. We recorded it all in a burning motorboat. 1. UNDOING A LUCIFERIAN TOWERS - Look at that fucking skyline! Big lazy money writ in dull marble obelisks! Imagine all those buildings much later on, hollowed out and stripped bare of wires and glass, listen - the wind is whistling through all 3,000 of it's burning window-holes! 2. BOSSES HANG - Labor, alienated from the wealth it creates, so that holy cow, most of us live precariously! Kicking at it, but barely hanging on! Also - the proud illuminations of our shortened lives! Also - more of us than them! Also - what we need now is shovels, wells, and barricades! 3. FAM / FAMINE - How they kill us = absentee landlord, burning high-rise. The loud panics of child-policemen and their exploding trigger-hands. With the dull edge of an arbitrary meritocracy. Neglect, cancer maps, drone strike, famine. The forest is burning and soon they'll hunt us like wolves. 4. ANTHEM FOR NO STATE - Canada, emptied of it's minerals and dirty oil. Emptied of it's trees and water. A crippled thing, drowning in a puddle, covered in ants. The ocean doesn't give a shit because it knows it's dying too.

A full decade ago, Godspeed You! Black Emperor released Yanqui U.X.O. with no publicity or press availability, no marketing plans, no cross-promotions or brand synergies, driven by word-of-mouth from a passionate and committed fanbase galvanized by the group's sonic vision and its dedication to unmediated, unsullied musical communication.To suggest that such simple principles and goals have become harder to maintain and enact a decade later is an understatement, but Godspeed is looking to try all the same. The band wants people to care about this new album, without telling people they should, knowing full well that these days, anti-strategy risks being tagged as a strategy.The band has been blazing its own path again since 2010. We think they have made a new record that maintains if not exceeds the standards of their previous work. After almost two years of post-hiatus practicing, playing and touring, Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! delivers two mighty sides of music that are definitively stunning, immersive and utterly true to the band’s legacy. The future looks dark indeed, but on the evidence of this new recording, Godspeed appears wholly committed to staring it down, channeling it, and fighting for some rays of sound (and flickers of light) that feel hopeful and true.

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.

14 short melancholy tape-loops from the early eighties. Remastered and now available on conventional pressed CD in Trim-Pak (previously available as a very limited CDR. "Melancholia is probably the best Basinski's record until now, even if this is hard for me to say given my love for each one of his releases. Contrarily to his 'continuing' projects such as Disintegration Loops and Water Music, this is a sort of a sketch album, made of short pieces all created with tape loops and some synthetic wave here and there. This music is so beautifully delicate and sad in its auto-reflective moods, it stands right there with everything ranging from the usual suspects in the 'ambient' field, to a distorted damp ghost of Claude Debussy or Maurice Ravel put into a time machine. Just ravishing as you can imagine, William's almost suffocated loops celebrate the burial of any enthusiastic thought, to make room to the most difficult introspection -- the one growing you in a hurry and leaving you alone, observing from a safe distance. This beauty is for any human being who's not afraid to understand life's happenings -- maybe the hard way, but who cares?" --Massimo Ricci, touchingextremes.org.

Spearheaded by songwriter Dylan Young, ‘Massive Shoe’ is Way Dynamic’s third foray into alt-folk pop coloured by his own creative fingerprint. In the past year, Way Dynamic have released their sophomore LP ‘Duck’ to excellent reviews, toured with Waxahatchee and MJ Lenderman & The Wind, and are now already returning with another full length release ‘Massive Shoe’, resuming Young’s exploration into minimalist folk-pop, baroque pop and art rock. Yellow Green Red in their album review for ‘Duck’ aptly describe Way Dynamic as; “Brian Wilson’s lust for pop perfection brought back to earth by Randy Newman’s silliness and Christopher Cross’s knack for an original melody that already feels familiar”. Adding a touch of Neil Young balladry, Massive Shoe continues this formula, as they lyrically dive into topics such as navigating relationships, struggling to communicate, mistakes and humanity, while maintaining a sense of ambiguity that washes over you rather than slaps you in the face. Although Way Dynamic can draw parallels to many of the artists above, the album never falls into songwriting tropes of that era, instead Young manages to bob and weave in the face of any typical motif, keeping the album engaging and lighthearted, and maintaining a sense of adventure in his music. ‘People Settle Down’ sets us off with a groove and backing vocal hooks, before we shift into more tender songs such as ‘Miffed It’ which floats above a guitar melody that may be the earworm of the year. Before you can settle into the tender songs, the album shifts again with absurd pop song ‘My Visit (To Hell)’, lyrically chronicling Dylan’s journey through hell over a bouncy beat and progression. The album title ‘Massive Shoe’, alludes to one always having bigger shoes to fill. Despite Way Dynamic’s brilliant past releases, and the “massive shoe” left to fill after each album, Young consistently manages to outdo himself as he patiently builds a distinctive and impressive discography.

Influenced by the minimal music of the 60s and 70s, baroque music, and experimentation in studio environments, Canadian artist Sarah Davachi creates music using a variety of sounds including analog synthesizers, piano, electronic organ, pipe/reed organ, vocals, tape samplers, and orchestral music. Sarah Davachi, a Canadian artist who creates music with a variety of sounds, including piano, electronic organ, pipe/lead organ, vocals, tape sampler, and orchestral music, has released her latest album "Two Sisters" on her Late Music label. The album features a chamber ensemble and a pipe organ solo. A variety of instruments are used, including carillon (a keyboard instrument composed of very large cast-iron bells), chorus, string quartet, bass woodwinds, trombone quartet, and sine tones and electronic drones. The pipe organ is a 1742 Italian tracker organ, now located in the deserts of the American Southwest, and contains the sounds of a very rare pipe organ.

Music From Memory presents 'Spacious Heart', the debut solo album from Los Angeles-based musician Anthony Calonico. Known for his work as part of the trio Total Blue, Calonico steps forward here with a collection of songs and instrumentals that invite the listener into his lush, expansive and deeply personal world. Written and recorded gradually between 2020 and 2024, 'Spacious Heart' emerged through a slow and open process, allowing the music to develop without rigid expectations. The album’s sonic landscape sits in a somewhat similar zone to Total Blue, with warm keys, synthesizers and rich production creating spacious environments where melodies and textures open up naturally. ‘Spacious Heart’ effortlessly straddles the transcendental qualities of spiritual jazz, the restraint and space of minimal composers such as Harold Budd, and the quiet intensity and dynamics of songwriters like Mark Hollis and John Martyn, ultimately arriving at something wholly its own. Where ‘Spacious Heart’ diverges mostly clearly from Total Blue is through the presence of Calonico’s voice, the emotional anchor of the record. Smooth, luminous and quietly expressive, his singing carries a sense of earnestness and vulnerability while remaining delicately restrained. The album unfolds as a conversation between song and atmosphere, with vocal pieces drifting in and out of focus, intimate and inward-looking. The surrounding instrumentals open up space for these emotions to breathe, settle and expand, creating a world where feeling, texture and nuance move softly together. ‘Spacious Heart’ will be released digitally, on vinyl and CD through Music From Memory on May 21st. Sleeve art and design by Michael Willis.

Paris, 1978. Don Cherry walks into a French studio with a suitcase full of instruments nobody expected and meets Ustad Ahmed Latif Khan for the first time. No rehearsal, no plan, just two musicians who recognize each other immediately as kindred spirits. What happens next is one of Cherry's best efforts - an album only hardcore fans know about, recorded in Paris, released only in France in 1981, disappeared, and now back again in a special edition that demands attention. This is what "world music" should have been before the term got watered down into airport lounge background noise.

Don Cherry - the man who stood next to Ornette Coleman in Los Angeles and New York, playing trumpet and cornet through the birth of Free Jazz, that final structural revolution of American improvisation based on melody rather than harmony. But Cherry never stopped there. He had a voracious musical appetite and boundless imagination that pulled him toward India, Brazil, Africa, Indonesia, China - not as a tourist collecting sounds, but with deep personal engagement. His commitment ran deeper than novelty. This wasn't about exotic decoration. This was about a global vision of art and the human condition.

Ustad Ahmed Latif Khan - Delhi gharana lineage, new generation tabla master who extended what his predecessors had built, gained recognition as a soloist, ventured onto the international scene. Irregular rhythmic patterns, highly syncopated, rich in variety and originality. The kind of percussionist who could grasp Cherry's intentions immediately, warm up his fingers at astonishing speed, tune Cherry's entire diverse instrument collection - concert piano, Hammond B3 organ, chromatic orchestral timpani - with perfect pitch and no hesitation.

They had never met before the recording session. But they recognized each other immediately. Calm, focused, full of laughter. Cherry knew what he wanted to create. Latif posed no challenge - he was the answer. The result is an incredible mixture of jazz and Indian music that doesn't feel like mixture at all - it feels like the music that was always supposed to exist when these two worlds met at the right moment with the right people. Not fusion for fusion's sake. Not "exotic instruments" as decoration. This is two masters speaking the same language for the first time and realizing they'd been having the same conversation in different rooms for years.

Recorded 1978 in Paris. Released only in France in 1981. Disappeared. Forgotten except by those who knew. First reissued by Honest Jon's years ago. Now back in special edition format because some records refuse to stay buried.

Essential for anyone who thinks Don Cherry's best work ended with Ornette, or that "world music" has to choose between authenticity and imagination. This is both. This is neither. This is what happens when boundaries dissolve because they were never really there.