Thomas Blake

Jenny Sturgeon’s paths.made.walking is a wonderful chronicle of sound and a hopeful reminder that there are still places where escape is possible and a connection with the natural world is worth seeking.

The sixth instalment from The Folklore Tapes Ceremonial Counties series covers Cornwall and South Yorkshire. It passes the creative reins over to experimental-leaning guitarist David A Jaycock and Sheffield-based avant-psych drone merchants Slug Milk to present two very different faces of experimental folk music.

The Folklore Tapes Ceremonial Counties Vol. V covers Norfolk and West Yorkshire, courtesy of Pefkin and Dean McPhee. If this quality is maintained throughout the series, we will have a stunning and important body of work on our hands.

Chris Cohen’s Paint a Room is an absolute joy, but it’s the uncanny kind of joy, the kind which can challenge you, and perhaps make you see the world in a different way.

Jinxed by Being, the new collaboration from Shackleton & Six Organs of Admittance, is as uneasy as it is beautiful…Collaborations of this quality are vanishingly rare.

Trá Pháidín travel South Connemara’s 424 bus route, creating a musical map that incorporates elements of Irish traditional music, earthy psych, ambient, kraut, free jazz, post rock, field recording and just about anything else you care to mention.

On Midsummer, London, Kate Carr is content to let the streets do the talking, observing the pulses and rhythms which otherwise go unnoticed: the fluvial gulping of the Thames, the polyrhythmic interactions of commuters’ footsteps, the industrial ambience of roadworks.

Natalia Beylis is an artist uncommonly in tune with the physicality of her surroundings and extremely attuned to the politics and history of these landscapes. With Lost – For Annie, an unexpectedly moving album, she demonstrates examples of all of these qualities.

While Small Medium Large, the exploratory kosmische jazz debut from SML (Anna Butterss, Jeremiah Chiu, Josh Johnson, Booker Stardrum & Gregory Uhlmann) contains unexpected multitudes, even at its most complex moments, it remains bright and airy, reflecting an impressive and sincere unity to their playing.

The overall sound of The Key tends toward a hard-edged, rocky sub-species of post-punk, but in Chris Corsano’s hands, everything is up for grabs, and those genres become mutable and malleable…not a moment of it is anything less than engaging, and it is frequently astonishing.

With What Is Not Strange? Tashi Wada has announced himself as a truly distinctive voice, capable of creating experimental music on the most human level.

Theoretical in its conception and yet broadly humanist in its appeal, Black Decelerant’s Reflections Vol. 2 serves as a timely reminder that music of resistance doesn’t have to be overly simple or one-dimensional. This is art as nuanced argument, challenging and often beautiful.