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In the early ‘90s, Corin Tucker and Tracy Sawyer were living in Olympia, Washington, barely out of high school and finding themselves in the very heart of the just-forming riot grrrl scene. Inspired by the feminist politics and exciting rethinking of what punk rock was capable of that defined the riot grrrl movement, the duo formed Heavens to Betsy, an emotionally furious and musically raw group consisting of Sawyer on a spartan drum kit and Tucker on guitar and vocals.
From 1991-1994 Heavens to Betsy performed and recorded steadily, disbanding after releasing multiple singles and a sole album, with both parties quickly forming new bands (Heavens to Betsy was Tucker’s first band before co-founding the wildly popular and influential…

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His profile elevated for the world to see and hear as Brian Eno’s creative partner on Fourth World, Vol. 1: Possible Musics (1980), trumpeter-composer Jon Hassell went on to make a name for himself with a litany of increasingly ambitious projects work, not only under his own name, but in other collaborative scenarios such as Dressing for Pleasure (1994). Hassell even deigned to perform live as the years wore on and Music Is Invisible is just one of those instances. And in reality, this album is taken from his final stage appearance, recorded with Rick Cox and John von Seggern at St. John at Hackney church, London on 23 May 2015. The 40-plus minutes was carefully edited and mixed by Jeff Rona in such a way that themes, motifs and riffs occur throughout…

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25-year-old German saxophonist Jakob Manz’s live album Supernova, recorded in front of 2,600 listeners in the Grand Hall of Frankfurt’s Alte Oper, makes clear: today’s jazz generation can still produce stars capable of captivating a large audience. At the same time, it proves that contemporary jazz from Germany can be exhilarating without sacrificing musical complexity or intensity. Above all, the album documents Manz’s extraordinary talent. Born in this century, he already possesses remarkable assurance and a strong sense of artistic identity – as well as the compelling ability to rise to the biggest occasions.
And the big occasion this certainly was. The concert on 27 January 2026 was the main event during Manz’s period as the youngest…

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It has now become a sort of tradition for artists from Sweden to come up with some high-quality to excellent power pop and pop rock.
Is it something in the water, or something else, makes no difference. We are regularly treated with the pop-oriented sounds that are oh so easy on the ear.
Count in former frontman of power poppers The Merrymakers David Myhr in, who has just come up with his third solo album, Everything Is All About You. Now, The Merrymakers were able to make quite a name all around with their take on power pop, but here, Myhr takes a bit of a different approach.
That difference is that Myhr leaves a lot of that power element in the shadows and…

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“Feels so good to play my blues for you again…I took some time off now I’m back on the scene” sings Bernard Allison on the roots/funky “Blues Thing,” the closer on this, his first album of originals in four years. While it might have been better positioned as an opening statement, the intent remains; Allison has returned after taking time off.
The ten tracks on Loving You capture the diversity Allison has concentrated on since 1994’s debut. Even though the son of Chicago blues great Luther Allison released an album collecting various performances of his father’s songs (2024’s appropriately titled Luther’s Blues), the younger guitar slinger tilts his focus into a lighter but still powerful amalgam of funk, soul,…

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In the small town of Bomarzo in central Italy lies the Parco dei Mostri, a 16th-century garden filled with enormous, grotesque sculptures that have been carved directly into the rock. Also known as the Sacro Bosco (“Sacred Grove”) it was commissioned by Pier Francesco Orsini and stands apart from the more ordered ideals of Renaissance garden design. Among its many sculptures, the Orcus Mouth — a huge stone face with an open mouth leading into a small chamber — has become its most recognizable image.
Its cavernous jaws have also found their way into music: Anna von Hausswolff used the sculpture for All Thoughts Fly, Italian prog band Taproban had featured the same image on their 2002 debut album, and now Mexican trio…

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La-La Land Records, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Universal Music Enterprises present the 55th anniversary remastered and expanded 2-CD re-issue of renowned composer John Barry’s original motion picture score to the seventh James Bond film, Diamonds Are Forever.
…For the sixth and last outing with Sean Connery as 007 (who sat out the previous film, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service), Bond sets out to Las Vegas on the trail of a diamond smuggling ring tied to his longtime enemy, the fiendish SPECTRE mastermind Ernst Stavro Blofeld (this time played by Charles Grey). Composer John Barry’s as-yet unbroken streak of scores in the series was punctuated by a title song with lyrics by Don Black, featuring vocals from…

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Discontinuity was conceived as a response to the deteriorating conditions in the U.S. I examined on my previous album Continuity. Media capture, heightened surveillance, and the consolidation of control over our information have reshaped our world, and I wanted to see what resistance might look like by gathering a polity of remixers.
Where Continuity traced how systems designed for transparency instead function as tools for manipulation, Discontinuity responds by presenting the remix as an analog for personal resistance: the individual act of reclaiming control through deliberate obfuscation.
In a landscape like this, resistance can take many forms: privacy tools that create gaps in data collection, platform exodus…

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“Creative inspiration is often like vapor, appearing and dissipating quickly” says Vicky Mettler, aka Kee Avil, an artist who has already made waves with her first two albums (Crease from 2022 and Spine from 2024), and whose two-year release tempo seems to continue with this year’s Vapor.
The idea of inspiration as vapour might be the reason Mettler decided to originally release her new album song by song, as a form of a sonic diary – essentially, capture the moment the idea appears and recorded; it disappears. Yet, instead of making this album a collection of disparate ideas that came at the spur of the moment, there is a backbone here, a basic concept/idea that becomes audible when Vapor got its release as a collection of songs/compositions.

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The Felice Brothers is celebrated in the album Felice County Fair, a tribute album exploring and reimagining the band’s back catalogue, released via Free Flight Records/Sun Mountain Records. “A couple of years ago, a friend and advocate of the band named Brandy Schultz called us with a vision to create a tribute record to our band and wanted to ask for our blessing,” comments Ian Felice in a note to fans. “Brandy is a uniquely powerful force of nature who usually has the ingredients to make margaritas in a cooler in her car. It’s two years later now, and somehow, by her sheer will and the devotion of many wonderful musicians and producers, her vision has become a reality. The fact that so many artists have contributed to this project simply out of a love for our music…

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…includes three new acoustic versions of previously released songs as well as two entirely new tracks including previously released single ‘Pity,’ and fun, rocking indie folk anthem, ‘Fell in Love (Couldn’t Get Out)’ featuring Cat Clyde.
Cowboy hats and colorful shirts can be a deceiving thing for musicians. For a general set of listeners that rely on musical snippets it would immediately indicate that who they have in front of them is your regular cow poking country singer whose life dream is to end up in some Nashville studio leading her/him to Billboard country charts.
Yet in these modern times, classic country (and western) is just one stream, and country pop, roots, Americana, and Canadiana are not only the terms in vogue, but very real genres or…

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Tears may well up for those with endearing memories of organ master Joey DeFrancesco’s live performances. DeFrancesco sounds so warm and convivial in his stage banter, and the music is compelling and superb throughout. It’s a shame that this is a posthumous release, made just weeks before his untimely passing at age 51 in August 2022. He just seemed so full of soul and musically alive! Fittingly, jazz legend Todd Barkan, owner of Baltimore’s Keystone Korner, booked this searing date, which is not only a lasting memory for DeFrancesco but perhaps one of his best albums: Live at the Keystone Korner.
In his late career, the ever-restless DeFrancesco had long taken up the trumpet and, more recently, the tenor saxophone. He led a versatile…

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Chicago has always been one of the prime movers as far as all things jazz are concerned, from all the ‘classic’ jazz forms to those that border on other musical genres or go in any experimental direction you can imagine.
So it might be no wonder a prospective composer, drummer and producer like Jeremy Cunningham would move from Cincinnati to Chicago, collaborating and working with a myriad of different artists, and covering the complete musical ground that had even a remote connection with jazz. That covers his complete work so far, from early singles since 2015 to formally his first solo album, The Weather Up There, released in 2020, and A Better Ghost, that followed in 2022. For Passing Fires, his latest, you could…

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Released in 1974, Zuckerzeit marks a clear turning point in Cluster’s work, introducing shorter formats and a more defined rhythmic framework. The increased use of drum machines and structured sequencing sets it apart from the duo’s earlier, more diffuse recordings, while maintaining a focus on texture and tone. Developed in close proximity to Michael Rother and under increasingly independent production conditions, the album establishes a more direct and accessible approach without simplifying its underlying ideas. This standard edition makes the album available again on CD and vinyl following the previous limited anniversary release. A key recording in Cluster’s catalogue, capturing a pivotal moment of transition and refinement.

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The Art of Space Disco (1977-1978) presents Space’s most iconic tracks and sums up two fruitful intense years of musical innovation.
The French synth-pop band Space had international hits with their 1977 dance numbers “Carry on Turn Me On” and “Magic Fly,” leading to a deal with Casablanca Records and gold records for the band’s songwriter and leader Didier Marouani. The dance group was formed by keyboardist Marouani in 1977. The group’s biggest international success came later that year with the previously mentioned singles, both appearing on charts in a number of countries. Space toured and recorded for the next few years and continued to make well-received records, although no singles duplicated the success of “Magic Fly.”

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…The deluxe version of Appalachia includes 6 live tracks recorded at a sold-out show in April 2026 at The Grey Eagle in Asheville, North Carolina.
When it was time to record her new album — the follow-up to 2021’s excellent American Siren — country-folk singer-songwriter Emily Scott Robinson chose to do so at Dreamland Recording Studios, housed in a 130-year-old church sanctuary hidden in the trees outside of Kingston, New York. But the setting and the spiritual center of her work can be found hundreds of miles to the southwest of that location: “Oh, my heart for Appalachia/ Oh, my heart for these blue hills,” Robinson sings in “Appalachia,” the album’s bluegrass-y title track. “Oh, my heart forever captured, beating still.”

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Live Heart: My Bluegrass Heart at the Ryman is a 3LP set that captures one legendary night in bluegrass. On January 8, 2022, in the aftermath of a Nashville blizzard, Béla Fleck was joined by three generations of renowned players who together brought the fire: Sam Bush, Michael Cleveland, Jerry Douglas, Stuart Duncan, Sierra Hull, Edgar Meyer, Justin Moses, Mark Schatz, Billy Strings, Bryan Sutton, Tony Trischka, and Molly Tuttle.
The celebrated banjo virtuoso and musical adventurer has both dug deep into his instrument’s complex global history and unlocked the breadth of its possibilities. He has earned 19 Grammy awards, and his acclaimed studio album My Bluegrass Heart, was a homecoming in sound. The music Fleck composed for his GRAMMY…

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Beirut City Pop brings together ten tracks from Lebanon’s private press cassette scene of the late 1970s and 1980s, when short-lived bands and studio projects moved freely between disco, pop, soul, jazz, bossa, rock and AOR.
Many of the musicians belonged to the same extended circle around Ziad Rahbani and his Bypass Studio, rehearsing, recording and contributing to one another’s projects. Often copied at home and circulated among friends and musicians, many of these recordings remained within small local circles. This limited distribution was closely tied to the fragmentation of Lebanon during the civil war, when movement between neighbourhoods and different parts of the country was often difficult. Some tapes existed in…

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