The South African/Swiss Ensemble Skyjack release their fourth studio album, Let The Sky Open Under Your Feet today, 3 July, via Kujua Records.
The quintet, split across two continents, features pianist Kyle Shepherd, bassist Shane Cooper and drummer Jonno Sweetman in South Africa, saxophonist Marc Stucki and trombonist Andreas Tschopp in Switzerland. They formed in Cape Town in 2013 and have built a sound that pulls South African groove and European improvisation into the same room.
The album takes its name from a line in “Cry Out in Your Weakness”, a poem by the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi, and holds two ideas at once: feet on the earth, and the sky opening below them. The title track is a good way in. It opens on a cycling, groove-led figure and keeps moving, Shepherd’s piano threading through the rhythm section before the theme glides back and settles. That balance of grounded and weightless runs through the record.
The band recorded the album’s twelve tracks in December 2025 at a secluded studio outside Stellenbosch. After trading sketches across two continents, they reunited in Johannesburg late last year, road-tested the new material on South African stages, then cut much of it live, in first takes, to keep the looseness.
“This record is a very articulate representation of our sound,” says Cooper, “having grown deep roots into the earth with high branches reaching upward and outward.”
Let The Sky Open Under Your Feet arrives just over a year after Light Cycle (2024), which came out on As-Shams/The Sun, and follows Skyjack (2015) and The Hunter (2019).
Let The Sky Open Under Your Feet (3rd July 2026) Kujua Records
Order/Save: https://orcd.co/letthesky