Albums

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.

Listening now to Lee Underwood’s California Sigh and its overriding mood of tranquillity, it’s hard to see how this album went unnoticed back in the eighties, being chock full of dynamic playing and interesting musical decision-making.

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.

‘When I’m Called’ is Jake Xerxes Fussell’s finest set and his most delicately arranged. Let this one bed in after a few listens and allow its delicate layers to slowly emerge; you’ll feel grateful for such beautifully performed and arranged music.

Irish duo Rezo’s new album, The Age of Self Help, applies the lessons that need to be learned in an era where being heard has never been more challenging. Watch their new video for Circle Closed.

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.

Celebrated Scottish fiddle player Laura Jane Wilkie’s debut album ‘Vent’ screams confidence from start to finish. There are surprises and delights throughout its nine tracks that will demand many listens, each bringing something new.

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.