MUSIC

A 2026 release from Japanese sound artist Chihei Hatakeyama. Spanning six tracks and roughly 43 minutes, the album unfolds without dramatic shifts, letting subtle fluctuations and delicate changes in texture gradually expand across each piece.

A 2026 release from Japanese sound artist Chihei Hatakeyama. Spanning six tracks and roughly 43 minutes, the album unfolds without dramatic shifts, letting subtle fluctuations and delicate changes in texture gradually expand across each piece.

For years, Takuro Okada has carried a quiet question: how can a Japanese musician honor the music of African Americans without simply borrowing it? That search shapes his new album Konoma, a work guided by the idea of “Afro Mingei.” The Tokyo guitarist, producer, and bandleader has lived inside this tension since childhood, drawn to blues, jazz, and funk records that nourished him, yet hesitant in the face of the histories they hold. The concept of Afro Mingei, which Okada first encountered in an exhibition by artist Theaster Gates, gave him a way forward. Gates connected Black aesthetics with Japanese folk craft, both rooted in resistance — “Black is Beautiful” defying racism, the Mingei movement preserving everyday beauty against industrial erasure. That kinship became the compass for Konoma, a record attuned to echoes across cultures and time.

Konoma holds six originals and two covers, all shaped by this dialogue. The elegantly unhurried “Portrait of Yanagi” drifts like a standard half-remembered from another era, while the brief but potent “Galaxy” gestures toward Sun Ra’s late 1970s electric organ experiments, the fractured propulsion of Flying Lotus’s early beat tapes, and the shadowy atmospheres of trip-hop. Okada’s choice of covers sharpens the conversation: Jan Garbarek’s “Nefertite” shimmers with the cool austerity of 1970s ECM, reframing Europe’s own search for identity inside jazz, while Hiromasa Suzuki’s “Love” channels the electric vibrancy of 1970s Japanese fusion, when musicians fused psychedelia, funk, and folk into a distinctly local dialect. Together, they anchor Konoma in a lineage of artists who bent borrowed forms toward something new.

Okada’s life has been shaped by such crossings. He grew up in Fussa, where the Yokota U.S. Air Force base loomed large, learning guitar in rowdy clubs for American servicemen while teaching himself recording at home. That hybrid education led to collaborations with Haruomi Hosono, Nels Cline, Sam Gendel, James Blackshaw, and Carlos Niño, and to a body of work spanning film soundtracks, collaborative projects, and exploratory solo albums. Earlier this year, Temporal Drift released The Near End, The Dark Night, The County Line, which features selections from Okada’s expansive archive of recorded material, cementing his reputation as one of Japan’s most adventurous contemporary musicians. With Konoma, co-released by ISC Hi-Fi Selects and Temporal Drift, Okada delivers his most personal and expansive statement yet: a meditation on connection, influence, and the beauty that survives across cultures.

- Words by Randall Roberts

There are fewer great guitar trio records than you'd suspect. Guitar duo sessions are far more abundant, and these three players have all done their share of those. But the dynamics of a trio are more fickle. And when creating collaborative non-hierarchical music, maintaining a balance between three distinct voices is not easy. It requires rapt attention, a fearless approach to entering the unknown, and very good ears to do it successfully. Clearly, Connors, Vallera and Sharp display mastery of all of these conditions and then some. Recorded live at P.I.T. (Property Is Theft) in Brooklyn, When the Moon Is New documents the first meeting for the trio. Loren and Elliott, two of the best known experimenting guitarists on the planet, have a long shared history, dating back to the days of the legendary Chapel Arts Center in New Haven. Elliott appeared there regularly and often did some jamming with Loren on those occasions. Michael Vallera is from a different generation and came of age in a world where players like Loren, Ellliot, Keith Rowe and Derek Bailey had already blown apart any and all notions of the guitar's limitations. His work explores textures, colors and possibilities born from the knowledge that there are no limits to the guitar's sonic possibilities. Together, the three create a beautifully layered universe of sound, as wide open and cosmic as recent images from the Webb Space Telescope. Occasionally I think I can ID some complex pluckery as Sharp's, some blues-canted shimmer as Connor's or some mutli-valent sound sheet as Vallera's, but in truth, this is a excellent example of “fourth mind” creation in the Burroughsian sense. The individual parts played by each of artists combine themselves into something much larger than three commingled streams. There's a gigantic heft to the collective sound that will bowl you over in the best possible way. A truly magnificent record, When the Moon Is New, is an immersive and joyful example of experimental music at its most inviting and evocative. If it doesn't thrill you, I don't know what would. -Byron Coley, 2026

A collection of ten hypnotic guitar renditions that dive deeply into the traditional compositional musicality that underpins Harakami’s hallucinatory beatscapes before reconsidering them under a fresh, innovative and engaging new light. River: The Timbre of Guitar #2 Rei Harakami signals a new level of awareness and understanding of both Rei Harakami’s significance and Ayane Shino’s undeniable talent.

Somewhere in the Wind is the third record that Loren Connors and I have made together. Of the three, it’s the first that consists exclusively of electric guitar duos and it’s the first that was recorded live. To me it feels very much like a live record; this music happened in crowded rooms in Brooklyn on two dates in 2025 and there’s an urgency to connect with others and a pleasure in doing so that can be heard on both of these tracks. On the first of our duo records (Arborvitae, 2003) I primarily play piano, and on the second (Evening Air, 2024) we switch off on piano and guitar. Both of those albums bespeak the privacy of the recording studio, where time is suspended and one can explore the quietest of sounds. By contrast, Somewhere in the Wind is the noisiest, most raucous and most free of our duo records. It’s the sound of us taking it to the stage. I became a fan of Loren’s playing from the moment that I first heard it, after happening upon a beat-up copy of In Pittsburgh circa 1992 in a used bin in the Dr. Wax record store in Chicago where my then-bandmate Bundy K. Brown worked. Everyone has taken a chance on a record because it looked interesting and wouldn’t set you back too much. In that regard In Pittsburgh was the find of a lifetime. I had just switched from playing in a postpunk power trio (Bastro) to making mostly drummerless respect-your-neighbors music (Gastr del Sol), and Loren’s pacing and touch and his lovely, unaffected compositions had me from the first listen. Not long after that, Jim O’Rourke and I reissued In Pittsburgh on our Dexter’s Cigar label, and I fondly remember first meeting Loren in New York’s Grand Central Station—so glamorous for this country mouse—and taking the train upstate with him where he shared a bill with Gastr del Sol. During soundcheck, Jim, Loren, and I played together for a bit and Loren’s approach to the instrument was something that one could instantly sink into, the kind of situation where there are no mistakes. I still feel that when we play together.

For Takuro Okada, this marks his first physical release since *Konoma*, which received high praise from media outlets and listeners both in Japan and abroad. This work was created for the campaign promoting the new “MT2” footwear line designed by TOKYO DESIGN STUDIO New Balance. The campaign video is available on New Balance T-HOUSE’s owned media platform. 　Side A, “Still Water,” features Shouei Ikeda (flute) and is composed of a minimalist ensemble that strips the arrangement down to the bare essentials while incorporating elements of folk and Afro-music. Recorded based on improvised performances and captured on analog tape, the track evokes the subtle fluctuations of sound and rich spaces reminiscent of a still water’s surface. 　Side B, “Dohman Sehman,” takes the mood of vintage funk as its starting point while weaving in a melodic sensibility and folkloric resonance reminiscent of Japanese folk songs and kayōkyoku. Featuring up-and-coming musicians such as Kei Matsumaru (alto sax), Mei Katsumaru (tenor sax), Yuma Koda (Wurlitzer / Farfisa), Yuka Konishi (bass), and Hayate Ebihara (drums), this track is marked by a powerful groove created by a spatial mix reminiscent of dub techniques and a robust rhythm section. 　With “Still Water,” which is imbued with serene stillness, and “Dohman Sehman,” which contains a powerful groove, these two contrasting tracks showcase the breadth of Takuro Okada’s creative evolution since *Konoma*.

Masayuki Takayanagi, having absorbed free jazz, offers a response that brings the tumultuous 1970s to a close. His return to his roots—a tribute to Lennie Tristano and Lee Konitz—serves as a rite of passage to reach new heights in the coming era.

Inventor of the “infinite guitar,” Canadian musician Michael Brook’s 1992 4AD record Cobalt Blue is a timeless and quietly stunning collection of instrumental pieces and shimmering dreamscapes, featuring contributions from ambient music pioneer Brian Eno, composer & multi-instrumentalist Roger Eno, and Grammy-winning producer Daniel Lanois.

Recorded later that year, Live at the Aquarium captures Brook’s rare solo performance in London, highlighting the hypnotic sustain and atmosphere that define his work. Beyond his albums, Brook has scored acclaimed films including Into the Wild, Brooklyn, and An Inconvenient Truth.

Newly remastered by Rashad Becker and presented as a 2XCD and crystal clear 2LP with artwork by Alison Fielding based on the original v23 designs, this set marks the first vinyl reissue of Cobalt Blue and the vinyl debut of Live at the Aquarium — a long-overdue celebration of an underrated gem in the 4AD catalogue.

Brook is known as a pioneer in the ambient music movement and a highly sought-after producer, especially in the arena of world music, for Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records. He has worked with a vast range of important artists, including Cheb Khaled, U. Srinivas, Mary Margaret O’Hara, and the Pogues, and toured with David Sylvian and Robert Fripp and with John Cale.

Brook was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1996 for his album with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Night Song, and for a Golden Globe in 2008 for the Into the Wild soundtrack. El Infierno won the 2011 Havana Film Festival award for best music. In 2024, Nusrat’s album Chain of Light, produced by Brook, was The Guardian’s World Music album of the year.

FEAR - the joint album from Jared Mattson of The Mattson 2 and Ruban Nielson of Unknown Mortal Orchestra - was recorded in June of 2024. All recording and mixing took place in Palm Springs. Mastered by Matt Colton at Metropolis Studios in London. --- I woke up around noon, disoriented, half-dreaming. Music was playing — unfamiliar, fully formed, the kind of sound you assume belongs to someone else’s life. For a moment I thought I was still asleep, hearing music I wished I’d made. Then it hit me: Ruban Nielson was already awake, in the studio, listening to what we’d made. We both knew it. There was something inevitable about the music — like it hadn’t been created so much as uncovered. We listened on repeat, laughing, shaking our heads. One track brought up a shared image: an evergreen forest by a lake at sunset. Ruban suddenly looked up, eyes wide, like he’d just been handed a message. “I’ve got the title,” he said. American Eagle. The name landed the same way the music had — clean, obvious, impossible to argue with. The American Dream: hot dogs, Cokes, sunset drives. We both lost it, tears in our eyes from laughing hard for minutes straight. We swam in his pool. The conversation never stopped. The flow stayed constant, nourishing, effortless. Then Ruban said it again — the line that had already become a principle: “Let’s make more that sound exactly like this.” So we did. Two days later, 'FEAR' was finished. - Jared Mattson

"Magic Hour" is the second album by Tokyo-based artist FeLid. He is known as a member of the post-hardcore band the north end and as a co-organizer of the festival platform MIMINOIMI. On this work, he combines improvisational and accidental guitar sounds, lyrical ambient drones, and high-definition sound editing. The result is an album that is both accessible and deeply experimental in its approach. ------------------------------------------- Bio: FeLid is the solo project of Kazutoshi Eguchi. Drawing on all available sonic materials—including instrumental sounds, electronics, fragments of recorded audio, and environmental sounds—he creates tracks and improvisational live performances through continuous processes of deconstruction and reconstruction. His practice is designed as a shared exploration of the relationship between sound and space, inviting audiences to experience and discover these connections together in real time. He is also a member of MIMINOIMI, an organizing collective dedicated to exploring ambient and experimental music from multiple perspectives, and is involved in the planning and production of the urban festival Ambient / Week.

Inventor of the “infinite guitar,” Canadian musician Michael Brook’s 1992 4AD record Cobalt Blue is a timeless and quietly stunning collection of instrumental pieces and shimmering dreamscapes, featuring contributions from ambient music pioneer Brian Eno, composer & multi-instrumentalist Roger Eno, and Grammy-winning producer Daniel Lanois.

Recorded later that year, Live at the Aquarium captures Brook’s rare solo performance in London, highlighting the hypnotic sustain and atmosphere that define his work. Beyond his albums, Brook has scored acclaimed films including Into the Wild, Brooklyn, and An Inconvenient Truth.

Newly remastered by Rashad Becker and presented as a 2XCD and crystal clear 2LP with artwork by Alison Fielding based on the original v23 designs, this set marks the first vinyl reissue of Cobalt Blue and the vinyl debut of Live at the Aquarium — a long-overdue celebration of an underrated gem in the 4AD catalogue.

Brook is known as a pioneer in the ambient music movement and a highly sought-after producer, especially in the arena of world music, for Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records. He has worked with a vast range of important artists, including Cheb Khaled, U. Srinivas, Mary Margaret O’Hara, and the Pogues, and toured with David Sylvian and Robert Fripp and with John Cale.

Brook was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1996 for his album with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Night Song, and for a Golden Globe in 2008 for the Into the Wild soundtrack. El Infierno won the 2011 Havana Film Festival award for best music. In 2024, Nusrat’s album Chain of Light, produced by Brook, was The Guardian’s World Music album of the year.

Sir Richard Bishop returns for a new spontaneous six-string meshing of people’s music, recollections and psychic intentions. Are y’all ready for some Hillbilly Erotica? Migration from last album’s Ragas to this new Erotica is another chapter in Bishop’s progress, drifting via songs into the further frontiers of his pappy’s hometown sounds, trancing over and out in their hand-me-down clothes. As with the ragas, the ‘rotica’s hung round the neck of John Fahey’s infamous dubbing of certain traditional American folk sounds as “American Primitive.” A perfectly good thought, but Sir Richard picks his own axe and chose a separate path. Rushing through gutters & picking pickled brains in the saucy headwaters of the down-low & literal American primitive, his hillbilly music is a mash of brined cultural inheritance, mini-ragas and moonshine-drunk savagery breaking out on the frets. As a conception for Sir Rick’s acoustic guitar music, it’s a dynamite means and frame, centering his improvisations in a place overflown with pagan desire and unbound in deliverance. Here he flies up and down the neck, his manner less pristine, yet more exquisite, a flailing, flowing-on-the-river medley through stubborn whitewater turbulence, post-grass and folk’s classical gas. Anybody who takes a snort of this here Hillbilly Erotica will find a frankly spellbinding richness of intent and execution in their ear-mouths. And may thereafter find brain and blightness. It’s fine! As Sir Richard reminds us, Hillbilly Erotica is: “…still exploring the areas around these parts with a similar type of aggression [as Hillbilly Ragas], but as morning light approaches, a clearing or two present themselves, with hills and valleys viewable in the distance inspiring a slightly different sonic landscape. One could be forgiven for feeling a sense of relief from finally arriving from out of the night-time woods to a place which may seem less threatening in the daylight, but it’s a trap - the darkness of night is always right around the corner. Enjoy the postcoital smoke but tread carefully!” Like with Hillbilly Ragas, Sir Richard plays one acoustic guitar on all eight Hillbilly Erotica cuts, no overdubs and, but for the closing “Postcoital Serenade,” improvised entirely. The not-so-sexy ‘sexy’ angle of song titles like “Lick Skillet,” “Sweet Lips,” “Hookers Bend,” and “Finger, Tennessee” is actually actual names for dots on the map in rural TN, each one just five minutes removed – by horse, of course – from Richard’s dad's remote Enville homestead, its town name purloined previously for a song on 2020’s Oneiric Formulary. This ancestral interzone’s a venue of interest for Rick, allowing him to ask the deep questions, like “What the hell has been going on around here with place names like these?” while running down the changes like no one else before. Hillbilly Erotica promises unspoken wonders of the world around each and every dark corner, revelations of legacy, a new spyglass to sight your forebears! Imagined American music at it’s most gorgeous and violent, simply achieved by Sir Richard Bishop through a powerful application of steel-stringed instrumentation and delightfully exhaustive flights of speculative thought.

Sir Richard Bishop returns for a new spontaneous six-string meshing of people’s music, recollections and psychic intentions. Are y’all ready for some Hillbilly Erotica? Migration from last album’s Ragas to this new Erotica is another chapter in Bishop’s progress, drifting via songs into the further frontiers of his pappy’s hometown sounds, trancing over and out in their hand-me-down clothes. As with the ragas, the ‘rotica’s hung round the neck of John Fahey’s infamous dubbing of certain traditional American folk sounds as “American Primitive.” A perfectly good thought, but Sir Richard picks his own axe and chose a separate path. Rushing through gutters & picking pickled brains in the saucy headwaters of the down-low & literal American primitive, his hillbilly music is a mash of brined cultural inheritance, mini-ragas and moonshine-drunk savagery breaking out on the frets. As a conception for Sir Rick’s acoustic guitar music, it’s a dynamite means and frame, centering his improvisations in a place overflown with pagan desire and unbound in deliverance. Here he flies up and down the neck, his manner less pristine, yet more exquisite, a flailing, flowing-on-the-river medley through stubborn whitewater turbulence, post-grass and folk’s classical gas. Anybody who takes a snort of this here Hillbilly Erotica will find a frankly spellbinding richness of intent and execution in their ear-mouths. And may thereafter find brain and blightness. It’s fine! As Sir Richard reminds us, Hillbilly Erotica is: “…still exploring the areas around these parts with a similar type of aggression [as Hillbilly Ragas], but as morning light approaches, a clearing or two present themselves, with hills and valleys viewable in the distance inspiring a slightly different sonic landscape. One could be forgiven for feeling a sense of relief from finally arriving from out of the night-time woods to a place which may seem less threatening in the daylight, but it’s a trap - the darkness of night is always right around the corner. Enjoy the postcoital smoke but tread carefully!” Like with Hillbilly Ragas, Sir Richard plays one acoustic guitar on all eight Hillbilly Erotica cuts, no overdubs and, but for the closing “Postcoital Serenade,” improvised entirely. The not-so-sexy ‘sexy’ angle of song titles like “Lick Skillet,” “Sweet Lips,” “Hookers Bend,” and “Finger, Tennessee” is actually actual names for dots on the map in rural TN, each one just five minutes removed – by horse, of course – from Richard’s dad's remote Enville homestead, its town name purloined previously for a song on 2020’s Oneiric Formulary. This ancestral interzone’s a venue of interest for Rick, allowing him to ask the deep questions, like “What the hell has been going on around here with place names like these?” while running down the changes like no one else before. Hillbilly Erotica promises unspoken wonders of the world around each and every dark corner, revelations of legacy, a new spyglass to sight your forebears! Imagined American music at it’s most gorgeous and violent, simply achieved by Sir Richard Bishop through a powerful application of steel-stringed instrumentation and delightfully exhaustive flights of speculative thought.

After a two-decade interlude, Jim O’Rourke’s Moikai returns with Spectral Evolution, a major new work by Rafael Toral. Making his name in the mid-1990s with influential guitar drone platters like "Sound Mind Sound Body" and "Wave Field" (both reissued by Drag City in recent years), Toral has never been one to rest on his laurels repeating his past glories. In the early years of the 21st century, Toral laid the guitar aside, along with the focus on extended tones that had defined much of his music until that point. He began his ‘Space Program’, a thirteen-year investigation of the performance possibilities of an ever-expanding set of custom electronic instruments, played with a fluid phrasing and rhythmic flexibility inspired by jazz. Dedicated to honing his skills on these idiosyncratic instruments, Toral has performed with them extensively both solo and in many collaborations, including in his Space Quartet, where his mini-amplifier feedback integrates seamlessly into the frontline of a classic post-free jazz quartet rounded out with saxophone, double bass, and drums. Since 2017, Toral’s work has been entering a new phase, often still centred around the arsenal of self-built instruments developed in the Space Program, but with a renewed interest in the long tones and almost static textures of his earlier work; he has also, after more than a decade, returned to the electric guitar. Spectral Evolution is undoubtedly Toral’s most sophisticated work to date, bringing together seemingly incompatible threads from his entire career into a powerful new synthesis, both wildly experimental and emotionally affecting. The record begins with a brief ‘Intro’ that sets the stage for the unique sound world explored throughout the remainder of its duration: over sparkling clean guitar figures, Toral stages a duet between two streams of modulated feedback, seeming less electronic than like mutant takes on a muted trumpet and an ocarina. This segues seamlessly into the stunning ‘Changes’, where a dense array of Space instruments solo with wild abandon over a thick carpet of slowly moving chords, growing increasingly chaotic over the course of eight minutes yet always fastened to the lush harmonic foundation. On these and many other moments on the record, Toral manages the almost miraculous feat of having his self-built electronic instruments (which in the past he had seen as ‘inadequate to play any music based on the Western system’) play in tune. In an unexpected sidestep away from any of his previous work, the chord changes that underpin many of the episodes on Spectral Evolution are derived from classic jazz harmony, including takes on the archetypal Gershwin ‘Rhythm changes’ and Ellington-Strayhorn’s ‘Take the “A” Train’, albeit slowed to such an extent that each chord becomes a kind of environment in its own right. Threading together twelve distinct episodes into a flowing whole, "Spectral Evolution" alternates moments of airy instrumental interplay with dense sonic mass, breaking up the pieces based on chord changes with ambient ‘Spaces’. At points reduced to almost a whisper, at other moments Toral’s electronics wail, squelch, and squeak like David Tudor’s live-electronic rainforest. Similarly, his use of the guitar encompasses an enormous dynamic and textural range, from chiming chords to expansive drones, from crystal clarity to fuzzy grit: on the beautiful ‘Your Goodbye’, his filtered, distorted soloing recalls Loren Connors in its emotive depth and wandering melodic sensibility. The product of three years of experimentation and recording, and synthesizing the insights of more than thirty years of musical research, "Spectral Evolution" is the quintessential album of guitar music from Rafael Toral.

In 1987, RAFAEL TORAL began making his own compositions and solo recordings. 30 years later, these recordings sound remarkably prescient and perfectly timeless—almost fresher today than when they were first released. Rafael has spent the time since then developing his conceptions, with continued explorations in the many records that have followed. On the 30th anniversary of his start, Drag City is reissuing Sound Mind Sound Body and Wave Field, his first two long out-of-print albums, on vinyl for the first time. Sound Mind Sound Body was partly inspired by exploring some of the working principles of Brian Eno and Robert Fripp, extrapolated by Rafael via a unique signal path leading out of his guitar. He paid notice to the massive impact of discreet gestures, creating slow-moving tones and spacious orchestral resonances, drifting and droning with glacial majesty, hardly recognizable as guitar much of the time. The first of these pieces were recorded in 1987, and in 1994, they were released on Portugal’s AnAnAnA, with material evolved in the years between, producing a remarkable equilibrium over an hour’s listening. Further evidence of the necessity for gradual development exists in subsequent reissues: for the 1998 Moikai reissue, “AE 1” was recorded, and for this edition, “AER 7 E” was rerecorded and the material for “AE 2” was recorded for the first time ever—all from original processes as noted, and none of which will cause the listener to notice a change in the otherworldly atmosphere.

In 1987, RAFAEL TORAL began making his own compositions and solo recordings. 30 years later, these recordings sound remarkably prescient and perfectly timeless—almost fresher today than when they were first released. Rafael has spent the time since then developing his conceptions, with continued explorations in the many records that have followed. On the 30th anniversary of his start, Drag City is reissuing Sound Mind Sound Body and Wave Field, his first two long out-of-print albums, on vinyl for the first time. Sound Mind Sound Body was partly inspired by exploring some of the working principles of Brian Eno and Robert Fripp, extrapolated by Rafael via a unique signal path leading out of his guitar. He paid notice to the massive impact of discreet gestures, creating slow-moving tones and spacious orchestral resonances, drifting and droning with glacial majesty, hardly recognizable as guitar much of the time. The first of these pieces were recorded in 1987, and in 1994, they were released on Portugal’s AnAnAnA, with material evolved in the years between, producing a remarkable equilibrium over an hour’s listening. Further evidence of the necessity for gradual development exists in subsequent reissues: for the 1998 Moikai reissue, “AE 1” was recorded, and for this edition, “AER 7 E” was rerecorded and the material for “AE 2” was recorded for the first time ever—all from original processes as noted, and none of which will cause the listener to notice a change in the otherworldly atmosphere.

A sequel to last year's sublime 'Spectral Evolution', 'Traveling Light' is a suite of weightless, uncannily beautiful jazz standards, transformed into orchestral drones and electronic chirps by Toral and his virtual band. It's flawless material that draws a clear line from Billie Holiday through Clara Rockmore, Fripp & Eno and Alvin Lucier to MBV and Gastr del Sol and beyond. Unmissable gear, from one of the scene's unassailable legends. Culture never emerges from a vacuum. It accumulates and evolves, building on what occurred before and gleaning influence from what happened nearby; the more cultural threads converge, the more complex, nuanced and developed the resulting braids become. Toral acknowledged this fact quite brazenly on last year's 'Spectral Evolution', bringing over a decade of impenetrable off-world experimentation to a halt and shoving his bare hands into the creative soil that inspired iconic tomes like 1995's 'Loveless'-inspired masterpiece 'Wave Field' and the meditative Éliane Radigue-cum-Rhys Chatham 'Violence of Discovery And Calm of Acceptance'. Taking a dip in the pool of concepts that eddy underneath rock music's labyrinth of caverns, he referenced Duke Ellington and George Gershwin, turning vintage progressions into idiosyncratic contemporary gestures. And on 'Traveling Light' that basic theme is expanded again; here, Toral takes six recognizable early 20th century standards and applies a very similar treatment, augmenting them with additional "canonical jazz sounds" from clarinetist José Bruno Parrinha, tenor saxophonist Rodrigo Amado, flügelhorn player Yaw Tembe and flautist Clara Saleiro. Playing guitar and bass with his self-built ensemble of electronic devices (that includes a modified theremin), Toral lets his influences float even closer to the surface here, picking out familiar jazz and exotica flourishes, early electronic echoes and organ-esque polyphonic sustained tones that stretch across hundreds of years of musical history. On opener 'Easy Living', a Ralph Rainger composition from 1937 that's been recorded by Billie Holiday, Bill Evans and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, among others, the original chord sequence is slackened by Toral's sustained guitar tones and sine waves, but not blurred completely into impressions. This time around we're treated to more tangible shapes: Toral's cheeky, expertly rendered riffs, horizontal exotica-inspired rhythmelodic chimes, intimate woodwind breaths that pull us back to the '30s and squealing pitches that can't help but remind us of Clara Rockmore's Robert Moog-produced milestone 'The Art of the Theremin'. It feels like being chucked in the American cultural petri dish while new organisms mutate around you - everything's recognisable somehow but novel, peculiar. Lovingly valve saturated strums, bent by Toral's whammy, introduce 'Body and Soul' (a 1930 standard that's best known for being recorded by Frank Sinatra) before they're met by alien chirps from his arsenal of generators. But it's the willowy harmonies that buoy this one, echoing the haunted choral drones that prop up centuries of European sacred music. Toral's very specific with his references; when Amado's tenor moans whisper around the dense polyphonic hums, there's a tacit acknowledgement of the enduring influence of African American spirituals and gospel on folk, blues, jazz, country, rock 'n roll and R&B. The album's most affecting segment comes at the conclusion though, with 'My Funny Valentine' and 'God Bless the Child', easily two of the most conspicuous compositions of the era. On both, Toral hovers between clarity and abstraction, overlaying bone-dry fingerpicked improvisations on the former that scrape over Chicago's musical timeline, from "hot jazz" to post-rock, and finishing the album with Fennesz-like distortions that crack and dissolve into Saleiro's levitational flute tones. It's astonishing stuff, honestly - maybe not as immediately startling as 'Spectral Evolution', but refined, polished and concentrated in every way. You're unlikely to find a more moving set this year, that's for sure.

Quickly following on from last year's 'Ghosted II', the third Reichian kraut-jazz session from Oren Ambarchi and his long-time collaborators loosens the screws a little, inviting in Americana, dream pop and blues influences and zeroing in on the tiny details.

Ambarchi, bassist Johan Berthling and percussionist Andreas Werliin are familiar with each other at this stage to fully let rip. 'Ghosted III' is their third recorded set in four years, and although they're still led by the jazz-taught instincts that guided their subtle, minimalist-inspired folk-jazz-rock debut, they've unclenched their muscles and let rip this time around. There's a new-found, liberating slackness to opener (and lead single) 'Yek', where Ambarchi daubs his chiming guitar notes over Werliin's jerky rhythms and Berthling's unraveled bassline. Catching the desert dust at first, it hardens into a Tangerine Dream-cum-Philip Glass nu-new age shimmer before it comes to a close. And 'Do' pulls back the bluster even further, reducing Weliin's drums to a faint patter, and filling the gaps with Ambarchi's cosmic pad-like guitars. After the 'TNT'-era Tortoise in dub Leslie-powered euphoria of 'Seh', the trio get back into the groove with 'Chahar', pulling Ambarchi's fictile notes into an orbit of ratcheting drums and repeating bass plucks that concludes with a splatter of xenharmonic guitar tones.

They venture into Americana territory on the long, plodding 'Panj', padding the low end with Ambarchi's swirling organ-esque tones that transform into concertina-ing zaps, and the best is saved for last - 'Shesh' is a dream-pop/post-rock melter that's among the best tracks Ambarchi, Berthling and Werliin have recorded, falling somewhere between Labradford and Talk Talk. Gorgeous.

Noise titan Anthony Di Franco (Ramleh, JFK) returns to his perennially influential and long dormant AX project for the first time since 1997's 'Astronomy', pitching into pure, beat-less feedback/amp-worship on a crushing and expansive new album of manacled, atonal guitar + synth + FX slowly edged into oblivion. Big boned, highly recommended listening FFO Kevin Drumm, Stephen O’Malley, Kevin Richard Martin, Mika Vainio, E.A.R. Di Franco was just 21 when he started the AX project in 1993. He'd been a member of Matthew Bower's influential noise rock band Skullflower since he was 16 and was their full-time bassist by that point, playing on classic sides like 'IIIrd Gatekeeper' and 'Obsidian Shaking Codex' before being tapped by Gary Mundy to join Ramleh. The idea for AX was to create music without drums that was just as heavy as the extreme noise and sludgy rock that surrounded Di Franco at the time. And so, using a cheap 4-track, an arsenal of guitars and a few synths and effects to strip out the rhythm and focus solely on the weight of the sound, the project produced three albums - 'AX II', 'Nova Feedback' and 'Astronomy' - records that have remained cult touchstones for dedicated drone fanatics ever since. One year since the mighty, psyched-out return of Ramleh with ‘Hyper Vigilance’, Di Franco appears clearly gassed on a new energy in ‘Vulcanalia’, wherein he revives the alias with the benefit of lessons learned since that last album three decades ago. For the duration, he touches scorched grass in his most elemental guise, sustaining combustible harmonic overtones and biting-point distortion thickened with re-thought production techniques, from mic placements to amp sorcery and FX, factored by obsessive, extramusical cues from Roman mythology and religion. The results live up to his intention - to plunge users in the midst of the lushest tempest - in order to overwhelm himself and us. Nothing exceeds quite like excess, and this one delivers in glacial spades. Numbed drones grow in shivering intensity to a vision-blurring electromagnetic stormfield on ‘Elagebal’, culminating in a keeling, blackened wave that never breaks, whereas ‘Jupiter Best and Greatest’ allows for more harmonic colour in the sustained density of his synths and axe, rising and dashing souls on distant noumenal, isolationist shores. ‘Aedes Saturnus’ evokes a necessary lull in the storm, dialling everything down to a sort of still water depth and dread that builds from below, boiling waters that turn to caustic treacle one the 12 minute titular closing, set to immure the senses in a style of doom wrangling that hears the influence of his Ramleh and Skullflower works which also fed into E.A.R., SoMa, and Kevin Richard Martin, returning home to roost.

lovesliescrushing's Bloweyelashwish is an ambient masterpiece, originally recorded in 1992 with a 12-string guitar, 4-track recorder, looping pedal, and boundless reverb. Scott Cortez’s project, alongside the haunting vocals of Melissa Arpin Duimstra, transformed bedroom daydreams into a serene, moonlit journey on a timeless sea. This expanded and remastered double album features five additional tracks, each distortion-laden and hypnotic, alongside lyrics and a replica postcard to guide listeners deeper into its world. Blindness, not eyewash, is the intended experience.

Original soundtrack recording to the film Zerzura, the first ever Saharan acid Western, telling the story of a nomad’s search for a magic city of gold. Evoking the desert journey with free form guitar improvisations, the soundtrack is a meditation on the mysteries of the Sahara. Composed by writer and actor Ahmoudou Madassane, the instrumental score takes the familiar Tuareg guitar tradition into new directions, transforming desert blues into ambient soundscapes.Recorded in studio while watching footage from the film, the score was recorded in live and spontaneous takes. Heavily based around the electric guitar, Madassane also plays a handful of other in-studio instrumentation (prepared piano, Moog, Timpani) and is joined by a number of collaborators, including guitarist Marisa Anderson.A prolific and backing artist in a number of groups (Mdou Moctar, Les Filles de Illighadad), Madassane is well versed in Tuareg guitar folk and draws inspiration from this tradition before veering off into uncharted territory. Pieces fluctuate in timing and break free from standard rhythm, moving from melancholic serenity to blurry psychedelic fury. An experimental foray for Tuareg guitar, Zerzura is the first of its kind.

The transcendental guitar master's 1971 debut, remastered for all your sabbath needs. 37 minutes of ambient guitar witchcraft and the perfect soundtrack for third eye awakening, light alchemy, or human sacrifice. You could start a cult with this thing.

Written between tours with Tristeza, One Day I’ll Be On Time finds The Album Leaf exploring a spacious blend of ambient music and post-rock. Delicate guitar figures, piano motifs, soft synths, field recordings and steady percussion drift through the album, gradually building from hushed passages into more driving rhythms. Across its instrumental pieces, the record reflects on time and change, balancing fragile details with wide-open atmosphere. This 25th anniversary edition presents the album in remastered form, replicating the original release with new liner notes by Adam Gnade and previously unpublished photographs revisiting an early chapter in The Album Leaf’s catalogue.