Marja Ahti’s music rarely commands attention. Depending on the context in which it’s played, whether listening on speakers or headphones, during a time of day bustling with activity or in the dead of night, the Turku, Finland-based Swedish sound artist’s pieces may easily slip into the background and disappear completely beneath the threshold of perception. At the same time, her subtle electroacoustic strokes contain an invitation to listen deeply, leaving behind a trail of found sound, field recordings, synthesizers, amplified objects, and inchoate effects to be assembled into a rewarding sonic narrative.
Ahti’s recent collaboration with kindred sound artist Manja Ristić, Transference on Erstwhile, is a lovely example of this approach: a collage…
Archive for October 13th, 2025
In 2023, the UK producer Sammy Virji experienced his first real flash of success. During his viral DJ set at the DJ Mag office, he mixed around 50 garage and bassline tracks in a little over an hour. The raucous set, which, at the time of writing, sits at 2.3 million views, captures the quintessence of Virji’s appeal. As he spun everything from grime VIPs to Ewan McVicar remixes, each track somehow felt bigger than the last. But nothing was more climactic than the moment Flowdan emerged from the crowd, gripping the mic. As the grime MC yelled out the popular hook of the Virji-produced “Shella Verse” — “Pull up dat! Pull up dat!” — Virji, face plastered with his trademark wide and toothy smile, looked like he couldn’t believe how well everything was going.
Mud Morganfield, the acclaimed son and, to most ears, the vocal double of his iconic dad, Muddy Waters, makes his Nola Blue label debut with Deep Mud. Mud has been recording since 2008, keeping the flame of the Chicago blues alive on Severn or, most recently, in 2022 with Portrait on Delmark. Yet, this seems like a fresh start, a re-energized Mud as he delivers twelve originals of the fourteen, with the other two owing to his dad. Mud is a torch bearer of the tradition, as one would be challenged to find much difference between father and son. As Mud relates, “Listen, man. It is Chicago blues. No rock-blues here for Mud. I talk and I sing about real things, real live people, real situations…So, it’s Chicago blues at its best. They ain’t trying to do that no more, but that’s what it is.”
Like most country artists, the Louisiana-born, Arkansas-honed Dylan Earl reveres the outlaw era, its sainted names of Johnny, Waylon, and Merle. As a student of both their music and their anti-authoritarian temperaments, he’s rightly mystified at how far the genre has strayed from their light in the long, paradigm-warping aftermath of 9/11. “I’d rather be a bootlegger than a bootlicker,” Earl sings on “Outlaw Country,” his fiery ode to an alternate vision of the good old days — a time when you couldn’t listen to “Folsom Prison Blues” in a Blue Lives Matter-stickered truck without catching some well-deserved hell. With its “Subterranean Homesick Blues”-referencing video and refreshingly blunt political opprobrium, “Outlaw Country” has brought Earl some viral attention.
Named for a street in Birmingham, the site of Swordfish Records and where the teenage Jon Wilks would busk, while not rooted in his hometown, Needless Alley is formed from his musical influences of the time, among them Paul Simon, Pentangle, Nick Drake and Bob Dylan, whose Highway 61 Revisited sparked the idea of what might happen on the titular thoroughfare. Described as a patchwork of memories and marking a more autobiographical approach to his writing after previous trad folk-inclined material, he’s backed by his regular Grizzly Folk cohort of Jon Nice (keyboards, guitars), Rich Davies (bass) and Laurence Hunt (drums) with Albert Hansell on melodeon.
Jackie Oates and Joe Sartin on backing vocals,…
This is Octoberman’s seventh full-length long player. It was recorded live in the studio on analogue equipment, direct to two-inch tape, without the aid of click tracks or screens.
The result is a stripped-down and laid-back album. It also has fresh instrumental touches, such as accordion, banjo, and vibraphone, which haven’t previously appeared on Octoberman releases. Half of the tracks stem from rediscovered demos on an old hard drive, while the remainder are more recent compositions.
The album artwork makes reference to the title via the parachutes which are depicted within the letter which make up the record’s name. However, chutes are also used to move things from a higher place to a lower one, so the title could…
Running with Scissors immediately cuts through the gauzy chiffon of the glossed-over sound that Afternoon Bike Ride have become known for. Opening with the languid, back-pocket bass groove and key flourishes of the sparse, soul-indebted “20 Seasons,” frontwoman Lia Kurihara laments the end of an era of her life, while simultaneously beginning another for both herself and the shapeshifting Montreal-based trio.
Kurihara has been through a lot. She started writing the band’s sophomore album, 2022’s Glossover, after becoming the primary caregiver for her father amid his Alzheimer’s diagnosis — a five-year endeavour ahead of his death in recent months. Everything she and co-conspirators David Tanton and Éloi LeBlanc-Riguette have…
Kimatika, the 3rd album by the Slovenian audio-visual trio Etceteral, consisting of Boštjan Simon, baritone sax and electronics; Marek Fakuč, drums; and Lina Rica, visuals, is a visceral plunge into the raw undercurrents of futuristic jazz, motoric propulsion, free improv and elastic compositions.
…As often happens with instrumental music, especially jazz-based, the lead is taken by the sax which fills any void left by the absence of vocals. While jazz of a futuristic and improvisatory bent is part of their charm, it is modernised by the presence of motorik rhythms and blasts of techno, all making for an energising concoction. More than on their previous two albums, Kimatika has an emphasis on composition so that while the playing still has a wonderfully freeform feel,..
Groove in the Face of Adversity is Don Was’ very first solo album. The A-list producer, composer, arranger, bassist, radio program host, and Blue Note Records boss co-founded Was (Not Was) with David Weiss, but this is his thing. His Pan Detroit Energy Ensemble is composed of players from in and around the Motor City: saxophonist/flutist Dave McMurray, keyboardist Luis Resto — both were in Was (Not Was) — trombonist Vincent Chandler, drummer Jeff Canaday, trumpeter John Douglas, guitarist Wayne Gerard, percussionist Mahindi Masai, and vocalist Steffanie Christi’an (Inner City vocalist and Kresge fellow). The band’s M.O: “We are on a mission to promulgate the music of our hometown.” Was was approached by Detroit Symphony Jazz Creative Director…
9-disc box set featuring their groundbreaking first two albums alongside a wealth of previously unavailable material.
Everything is Now – Vol. 1: 1978-1982 collect the band’s first two LPs, Journeys to Glory (1981) and Diamond (1982); collections of 7″ and 12″ material from each album on CD; a rare full remix of Diamond issued on a 12″ box set edition of the album; two discs of BBC sessions and concert recordings (including an unissued 1982 set at the Paris Theatre in London); stereo and instrumental remixes of select tracks by Steven Wilson.
…Formed by guitarist/keyboardist Gary Kemp, his brother Martin on bass, singer Tony Hadley, saxophonist Steve Norman and drummer John Keeble, Spandau Ballet represented…
Well, in all fairness, he DID title it Self-Portrait...