Thomas Blake

Steve Gunn’s “Daylight Daylight” creates songs that are light as air but carry with them the weight of imagination. The music skirts genre, moving from chamber-folk to art-rock and jazz, evoking Nick Drake and John Martyn. Gunn builds compelling atmospheres through layered instrumentation, enveloping strings, and quiet, soulful singing. These songs stretch out, replacing gimmicks with sustained intensity. An engrossing album of dignified beauty.

Goblin Band’s A Loaf of Wax is a stirring and often spectacular live recording. The quartet can whip up a frenzied sandstorm of sound and transition to delicate sensitivity with consummate ease. They capture the kinetic energy and shared joy of folk music, a medium that thrives not only on shared space and collaboration, but also on shared feeling and companionship. Goblin Band are the best of all possible companions.

For their debut EP, daisy, Leilani Patao does things differently, refusing streaming platforms to foster a personal connection. The music is a compelling high-wire act, balancing experimental, glitched-out hyperpop with perfectly structured, dreamy pop-rock. Patao’s immense songwriting talent shines through the lo-fi, grungy production, creating a release that feels both diaristic and wonderfully detached.

On How You Been, SML perfect their collaging technique. Tracks sound more complex and intuitive, and they instinctively work a groove, moving from space-age synths to gritty, organic minimalism. Variety is key, from creeping percussion to soft-focus krautrock. This is improvised music at its most engaging and immediate. SML have created another special album, one that forges bright new pathways in American jazz.

Fiddles screech and swirl, a pump organ sighs and groans. Child-Lanning’s dulcimer is indebted to Jean Ritchie, and at points, an autoharp conjures the spirit of Maybelle Carter. A total of ten musicians contribute… and then there are the electronics, the decayed tape loops, the environmental recordings. The individual musical strokes are loose and expressionistic…Weirs’ Diamond Grove is hypnotic, bucolic, meditative, jarring, melancholic, jubilant: an exceptional musical document.

Folklore Tapes visits Gloucestershire and Hampshire. Zandra explores Painswick’s yew tree legend with a beautiful, melancholic and uncanny incantation using ghostly vocals and acoustic guitar. Edd Sanders and Jamie McQuilkin tackle Hampshire with a sustained, organic drone and improvisational textures inspired by church bells. Both sides complement each other and shine a light on the eccentric corners of England, which should be celebrated but are in danger of being forgotten.

on “a little death”, claire rousay creates something that is akin to ambient music, but unlike the majority of what falls under that banner, her music is made for a more engaged kind of listening. There is always something going on around the edges, a constant tension between comfort and disquiet. Tranquil as it may sometimes appear, this is nonetheless music for troubled times.

Troubadour, the new full-length from Tiberius on Audio Antihero, sees them perfecting their “noughties emo and the much more general aesthetic of country music”. Blending twangy alt-country and pedal steel with shoegaze and post-hardcore dynamics, it’s a highly original, resonant, and expertly structured album that balances pastoral daydreams with cathartic, complex songwriting.

On their self-titled album, The Cosmic Tones Research Trio construct vibrating pathways of sound that lift you clear of contemporary concerns. It’s not zeitgeisty; it’s expansive spiritual jazz, mystical yet grounded, profoundly improvisational. The Portland trio crafts condensed pieces under five minutes that expand into timeless, textural soundscapes. Like Coltrane, this is music that paints a picture of what peace might look and sound like.

On Inner Day, Jim White expands on his percussive solo debut, creating a fuller, more detailed document. Keyboards, guitar, and even White’s own playful, semi-spoken vocals come to the front. It’s an impressive balancing act —a “clever, controlled use of tension” — between intricate drums and uncanny melodies. While White navigates wonder and trepidation in a mightily refreshing way, you still get the feeling that this is just the start.

On Old Segotia, Seán Mac Erlaine and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh engage in an intense musical conversation. Rather than compromising between folk and jazz, they create a new palette, crafting varied tracks that shift from smoky grooves to avant-garde improvisation. Augmenting traditional instruments with electronics and field recordings, the duo create a complex, surprising map of new musical terrain.

Emily A. Sprague’s “Cloud Time” is one of the most stunning ambient records in recent memory. Recorded live in Japan, it draws from the “naturalist” school of modular synthesis, engaging with the Japanese tradition of environmental music. Sprague whittled hours of recordings into a suite that is both deeply contemplative and refreshingly human, a “sonic wonderment” of texture and off-the-cuff creativity.