Amoeba Music

Another fantastic album from this modern group that crafts classic sounding mambo and salsa for a large ensemble. The arrangements are as classy as ever, and the tunes, playing, and recording are top notch too. Classic Cuban flavors a la Perez Prado, Beny Moré, Tito Puente, and so many other all-time greats. Bueno! Read more

Two spectacular new albums packed with classic crime soundtrack vibes, from Guillermo Scott Herren. Like a chameleon, he keeps changing his sound to reflect his current interests and inspirations, and these new volumes are some of the best work he's done yet. Read more

Great new psychedelic rock grooves, combined with nods to vintage soundtracks, library music, acid-folk, classic funk, and more. Sounds both retro and current, this pleasantly trippy voyage is a really great listen from start to finish. Read more

Beautiful mellow neo-soul from this lovely Indian-American singer. Hints of other genres make this an interesting listen, but it's her sweet, soulful vocals that steal the show here and tie it all together beautifully. Read more

Magnificent new LP by this producer from Georgia (the one in Eastern Europe). Mellow organic grooves with nice ambiance and some global elements (scales, rhythms). For me, already a big fan, this is his best release yet! Read more

Now dropping both his last name (Hutchings) and his previous main instrument (sax) to primarily focus on flute & clarinet, this revered UK jazz man travels to new terrain here on this solo LP. With plenty of guests such as Carlos Nino, Jason Moran, Esperanza Spalding, & Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, he creates a softer, floatier, more global vibe than his previous work with Shabaka & The Ancestors, Sons of Kemet, & The Comet Is Coming. Read more

This one caught me by surprise... I usually dig everything on the mighty International Anthem label, but this quintet's debut is next level! Covering ground from funky Herbie Hancock type zones and Fela-ish afrobeat grooves to wilder modern electronic terrain and the soulful side of Art Ensemble of Chicago's bluesy freeform improv, this is a masterpiece of modern music. Referential and reverential but never sounding cliché, this is a fantastic debut from bassist Anna Butterss, synthesist Jeremiah Chiu, saxophonist Josh Johnson, percussionist Booker Stardrum, and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann. Read more

Another terrific release by this Leeds trio, blending their funky influences to create the perfect hybrid of Afrobeat, Ethio-funk, classic US soul, library exotica, and sweeping 1970s soundtrack vibes. Non-stop grooves with exotic harmonies and memorable melodies... Nice! Read more

A couple living on an island off the coast of Washington crafted this earthy, rustic folk gem indebted to classic UK folk, old ballads, and mythology. It's truly lovely, their boy/girl harmonies just the right amount of raw and polished. Wonderful stuff, for mellow moods when you have a craving to hear a pair of voices interlock in beautiful harmony. Read more

Brand new debut that spotlights the timeless traditional folk music from Tanzania. Created by this mother and daughter duo (who are a daughter and granddaughter of Tanzanian musical legend Hukwe Zawose), there's a real magic to this material. Ancient African zones rich with history and substance, and released on Peter Gabriel's Real World label. Read more

Back in print hopefully for a long time, Rowland S. Howard’s first shining moment as a bandleader is finally here for all to waste away in. While some prefer him as a guitar hero, in my opinion RSH’s post-Birthday Party songwriting outshines the majority of Nick Cave’s solo material. Seriously, this album is a gothic masterpiece with miserific Edgar Allen Poe level lyrics to match, presumably written in smack-ridden London squats and left to marinate for years in ash-covered leatherbound notebooks. This version of Get Lost (Don’t Lie!) has received a pretty significant remaster that lets one pick apart it's punky, bluesy musical chaos a bit better, really highlighting each band member's contribution to the record. In particular, Genevieve McGuffin’s keys take center stage, sounding like a ragtime player hammering out notes on a piano ice sculpture while Rowland croons over it, singing about ectoplasmic stains and dangerous solutions. Swell Maps’ Epic Soundtracks and Rowland’s brother Harry make up the rest of the band, and with this trusted group Rowland eschewed his title of evil genius guitarist and became a full-on songwriting giant, leaving listeners to wrestle with the weight of songs like I Ate the Knife or Marry Me (Lie! Lie!). This album and its follow up I’m Never Gonna Die Again are essential, but it’s the underlying uncertainty of Howard proving himself and the feeling that things may come apart at any moment that make this one the best. Read more

Coming hot off of the success off of “ILLINOISE,” the Broadway adaptation of his album “Come On Feel The Illinoise” from 2005, Steven has put out a 20-year anniversary revisitation of “Seven Swans,” Illinois’s predecessor and arguably where Stevens began to put his style down into cement. His fourth studio album, the original pressing of “Seven Swans” is poetic, obsessively biblical, literary, and often nonsensical in its lyrics; “Abraham” and “The Transfiguration” recount bible stories while “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” takes its name from the famous Flannery O’Connor story. Stevens’ songs are an intricate puzzle of references and spirituality (both universal and personal to him). Up until the release of his latest album “Javelin” which he dedicated to his partner Evans Richardson who had recently passed, Stevens’ songs were infused with a quiet queerness which both intoxicated and infuriated listeners. Like the track “Size Too Small” which refers to the narrator’s tuxedo while being the best man at your best friend (and ex-lover’s?) wedding. The 20th anniversary reissue includes two bonus tracks not on the original album, “I Went Dancing With My Sister” and “Waste What Your Kids Won’t Have,” two quiet and genuflecting songs which feel quintessentially Sufjan. Read more

Dreamy and utterly spectral, the artists on the “I Saw The TV Glow” soundtrack had an almost impossible task: to make music that matched a film which was at once nostalgic and futuristic, full of choppy discordance while still lulling listeners into the spell of the Pink Opaque along with its main characters. The film pulls off the lost 90s-teen-movie-style art of having a real-life band perform their songs in the soundtrack in a scene in the movie, like Letters to Cleo in “Ten Things I Hate About You” or the Offspring in”Idle Hands.” In director Jane Schoenberg’s take, indie darlings Sloppy Jane and Phoebe Bridgers perform an original song from the soundtrack at an otherworldly, edge-of-town dive bar, serenading the characters of the film: “I think I was born bored; I think I was born blue; I think I was born wanting more; I think I was born already missing you” Mostly comprised of original tracks, the soundtrack also includes a cover of the Broken Social Scene’s “Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl” which is pitch-shifted and put through a glitchy electronic filter which produces a version of a familiar favorite which just feels a little off in a deeply unsettling way, exactly what it seems like the movie is trying to achieve. With Florist, Bartees Strange, Caroline Polacheck, Jay Som, and Maria BC, the soundtrack is kind of an X-Men situation of indie powerhouse artists. It would have been nearly impossible to make a bad album. Read more