Welcome to our latest ‘Between The Cracks’. You can read a bit about each album and play it on the website via the Bandcamp player. As always, please support the artists by purchasing their music. We hope you enjoy reading and listening!
Albums
Designers – Designers
The debut from the worldwide trio led by Joachim Florent (Belgium), alongside Will Guthrie, and Aki Rissanen (both based in France), is a stunning, unique-sounding slice of minimalist, postmodern piano jazz inspired by geometry and architecture. Piano, double bass, and drums interplay telepathically over seven tracks.
Kuma – Honey & Groat
Swiss jazz quartet Kuma unveil their new album ‘Honey & Groat’. Consisting of Matthieu Llodra (keys), Arthur Donnot (saxophone), Fabien Iannone (bass) and Maxence Sibille (drums). Classically trained and highly skilled, the young band play with tradition and innovation, challenging their boundaries and exploring the intersection of jazz, hip hop and house.
Bokoya – Hausensession
Bokoya is a four-piece jazz/hip-hop band from Cologne that plays improvised beat music. The quartet improvises, shapes, and develops beats in the electric field of repetition and variation. It’s impossible to put a tag on their music. You will find something here if you’re a krautrock, ambient and dub music fan and love BADBADNOTGOOD and Dilla.
Danny Scott Lane – Wave to Mikey
Those who follow this feature regularly might remember LA musicians Nick Malkins’ blue-lit, nocturnal compositions on “A Typical Night in the Pit”. Wave to Mikey, the fourth album from the Los Angeles-based actor, musician, and photographer Danny Scott Lane, operates in a similar nocturnal space. Both benefited from a talented cast of experimentalists, with E Talley II, Joseph Shabason and John Carroll Kirby alongside Scott Lane for the ride. It’s an equally chameleonic and cohesive album, offering tracks ranging from instrumental city-pop to ambient, cosmic jazz and Fourth World music. This album may be right for you if you enjoy lush and wonderfully relaxing music infused with sophisticated musical details.
Tokio Ono – Individuals
It’s no secret that we love a bit of fourth-world ambience. So we’re happy to get acquainted with the mediative sounds of Yokohama multi-instrumentalist Tokio Ono. Written and performed by Ono and assisted by Victor Leclercq on production, his debut album Individuals is a collection of 13 compositions woven from field recordings, percussion, various keys, samples, and a sense of being “far away.” Overall, a great debut release that gets better with every listen.
Muriel Grossmann – Universal Code
A new Muriel Grossmann is always worth investigating. I was immediately hooked by the music on Universal Code, which features deft instrumental dexterity around Grossman’s shimmering sax. Awe-inspiring stuff from Grossman assisted on guitar, Hammond organ, drums and upright bass in her quest to create something completely original. It is a carefully crafted combination of styles and surprises, neatly wrapped in a colourful package. Don’t miss out on this!
tyroneisaacstuart – S!CK
A new release from the freshly minted label New Soil is always a good day, and their latest offering from tyroneisaacstuart is an intriguing body of work that encompasses jazz improvisation, left-field hip-hop, experimental tape loops, contemporary dance, and visual art. Guest musicians on this album include some of the leading lights of the UK’s contemporary jazz scene – Moses Boyd, Theon Cross, Shirley Tetteh, Nikos Zarkias, and more.
Compilations
V/A – Blue Note Re:imagined Volume Two
If you want to know where UK jazz and soul is at and where it’s heading, check out Blue Note Re:imagined Volume Two. the series returns for a second volume featuring reworked and newly recorded Blue Note classics from an array of rising UK stars including Maya Delilah, Nubiyan Twist, Cherise, Theon Cross, Daniel Casimir, Ego Ella May, Yazz Ahmed, and Oscar Jerome among them.
EP’s
Amane – Moments Of Solace
Turn off the lights and listen as hypnotic beats, eclectic electronica, haunting ambient, and airy synths work converge in this lovely and warm EP from Amane. Out now on Música Macondo.
Singles
Nick Walters – Ranakpur
What else can we say? Our definition of Nick Walters is fresh sounds and exceptional musical talent. That’s a given. He returns to his D.O.T. imprint with a limited edition 10″, featuring a selection of two ragas recorded in collaboration with Pakistani musicians Kashif Ali Dhani (tabla) and Muzamil Hussain (sarod). Highly recommended.
