Oren Ambarchi’s “Cooked” is two side-length pieces of mysterious beauty in which he goes further through the looking glass. This is ensemble improvisation at its most accomplished, with an international cast of master abstractors. In Drag City, Ambarchi has found a larger platform to bring his mutant blues to the masses. This is a public service which should be applauded because, 100-plus releases in, he’s rarely sounded better.

Martin Simpson talks to KLOF about “Some Kind of Jubilee”, the double album that marks fifty years since his debut. He talks about hope through nature, the power of instrumental music and more. “I feel like I’m a better musician now than I’ve ever been,” he says. “My chops are as good as they’ve ever been, although I’m not as flash as I used to be.”

Following last year’s scarily accomplished debut album, New Thing, Avery Friedman returns with her new single “You Move”, a song about savouring the unexpected fruits that reveal themselves amid times of uprootedness. Watch the accompanying tomato-themed video directed by Dylan Friese-Greene. Friedman kicks off her first UK/EU shows this month.

Jason Dungan (aka Blue Lake) and Johan Carøe’s “Routine” is like a shared creative diary, its ideas growing slowly as their friendship developed. Real life imprints itself on the music, so this ostensibly ambient album explores different moods and shifting modes. Slow music that is rarely imposing and never overly showy, yet contains genuine emotional heft. It is also unabashedly enjoyable, from start to finish. 

Garefowl recorded “Things That Vanish” at night on Hirta, the main island of St Kilda. There are no synths this time: field and hydrophone recordings and X-ray diffraction drones take their place. In this Track by Track, the band introduce the seabirds behind the tunes. “It is not too late to learn the lessons of the past.”

Shovel Dance Collective’s “Everything in Readiness” is due 23 October on Glitterbeat’s tak:til imprint. “Jer the Rigger” is their third single, part of an opening suite that is accompanied by a video from Tim Plester and Rob Curry featuring footage from the Doc Rowe archive. The band say the arrangements were constantly tinkered with on the road, sometimes paying off, sometimes not.

We spoke with Ohtis after his End of the Road set. He wasn’t having the best of days; it was the kind that would have pushed even the most chilled artists into stress overdrive, but he played and spoke to us anyway. He talked plainly about his new album, a friend’s stories he’d played on repeat during a dementia period, the gospel band he’d love to start, and more.

Kahil El’Zabar’s “Sketches For Trane” is an astonishing suite in tribute to John Coltrane, released for the centenary of his birth. At 72, the Chicago drummer has gone back to the future to propagate Coltrane’s message of expanded human potential to a new generation of listeners. Alex Neilson calls it one of the best albums he has reviewed for KLOF.