This week’s guide is by CF Smith and contributors Arifur Rahman, Words By Shoaib, and Benny Thomas.
Hello and welcome to our final Between the Cracks of 2025. We’re closing out the year with seven standout releases you shouldn’t miss. This edition spans neo-jazz, bluesy folk, abstract sound collage, psychedelic, and a few surprises we won’t spoil. Dive into our latest picks, and if something catches your ear, follow the buy link to make it yours. Enjoy the music!
Albums
Shay Hazan – When It Rains It Pours
Shay Hazan’s new album feels like someone turning a difficult chapter into a doorway. What began as a period of physical injury and creative uncertainty led him back to the electric bass, and that rediscovery becomes the emotional core of When It Rains It Pours. The record moves with a calm, confident kind of assurance, layered grooves, spiritual melodies, and dusty, synth-soaked textures that show how far Hazan has grown as both a producer and a multi-instrumentalist. The album doesn’t chase spectacle. It leans into curiosity and inner movement. Kolot, one of the early singles, sets the tone with Abate Berihun’s luminous vocals hovering over trumpet and sax, spiritual, open, and quietly gripping. Embrace, another standout, brings Hazan’s own voice to the front, wrapped around guimbri and live drums, and you can hear the tension of struggle turning into something grounded. Across eleven tracks, Hazan blends Gnawa roots, experimental jazz, and global rhythms into a work that feels both intimate and expansive. It’s his most personal statement yet, and his most rewarding. – WBS
Madala Kunene & Sibusile Xaba – kwaNTU
kwaNTU, the debut collaborative album by Zulu guitar legend Madala Kunene and his protégé Sibusile Xaba, is a masterclass in intergenerational musical dialogue. The album weaves finger-picked acoustic guitars, husky vocals, hand percussion, and subtle strings into meditative, cyclical grooves that feel deeply rooted yet forward-looking. Kunene’s decades of maskandi mastery meet Xaba’s inventive jazz-infused sensibility, creating a sonic space where mentorship and improvisation coexist seamlessly. The opening track, Umkhulu Omkhulu, is an ode to Credo Mutwa, blending Kunene and Xaba’s guitars into a reflective folk-jazz tapestry that honours ancestral lineage. The previously released single Izimpisi pulses with percussive energy, layered vocals, and Daniel “Stompie” Selibe’s bamboo flute, offering a lively counterpoint to the album’s more contemplative moments. Recorded in a week-long residency at Kwantu Village, the album captures the intimacy of a single-night session while allowing the musicians’ shared history to shine through. kwaNTU is both a celebration of Zulu guitar tradition and a forward-reaching statement on the vitality of South African music today, offering listeners a meditative yet endlessly engaging journey. – WBS
Roméo Poirier – Off The Record
French collage artist Roméo Poirier has gone spelunking in the dusty corners of the recording studio and returned with a treasure chest of count-ins, rewinds, test tones, studio chit chat, and sonic leftovers. Off The Record begins with a voice calmly announcing, “Here we are at the controller. What are we doing first?” — a perfect meta wink. No polished takes here, instead you get the warm hum of tape machines, the awkward throat‑clearing before a vocal, the ricochet of a snare mic being tested. Half meditative, half mischievous. One moment you’re floating in ambient bliss, the next you’re chuckling at some studio chatter. Four albums in, Poirier never ceases to astound. – CFS
JJJJJerome Ellis – Vesper Sparrow
JJJJJerome Ellis wants to build a sonic bath house, well with ‘Vesper Sparrow’, he’s built the foundations. On his second album, Ellis has strung together yet another expressive collection of magical melodies. JJJJerome Ellis uses the term “speech block” (or glottal block stutter) to describe the involuntary pauses in his speech, which he transforms into a central artistic and philosophical theme. The entire album flows in reflection of Ellis’ unique view of the physical world and its musical interpretation. The captivating blend of tenor saxophone, hammered dulcimer, pipe organ, and various vocals (Ronald Peet and S T A R) creates a transcendental experience for the listener, a real treat for the musical philosophers and theorists. The title track is 8 minutes and 43 seconds of harmonic bliss where the steady emergence of electronic organ, followed by calming piano notes and the gentle timbre of sung and spoken words, creates an enchanting ambience, leaving the listener with a sense of tranquillity and aching nostalgia. The track continues the sentiments of the previous track, ‘Evensong, part 2’. It continues the four-part story that the album is split into, as intended by the artist. The rich melodies of the saxophone, accompanied by the rhythmic hammered dulcimer, kindle unique feelings and thoughts, recalling memories once held dear but now forgotten. The highlight is the sprawling free-jazz improvisation ‘Savannah Sparrow (For and After Kenita Miller)’. Shifting between quiet reflection and intense bursts of sound. It’s sonic storytelling and then some. In practice, Ellis always ensures that their music circles back to their stuttering, making the disability a strength and a singular form of musical creativity and self-expression. They paint a forgettable picture and leave their unmistakable signature through music by combining art with life experiences. – AR
Florian TM Zeisig – A New Life
It’s always worth checking in with STROOM.tv, just in case a new release has slipped by without notice (this one almost did). Released in August, A New Life transcends traditional ambient boundaries, offering a deeply meditative journey through grief, stillness, and transcendence. Berlin-based sound artist Florian TM Zeisig weaves eight years of contemplation (2017-2025) into layered textures, enriched by the improvisations of Lia Mazzarri, Roísín Berkeley, and Cathal Berkeley on cello, harp, and saxophone. The lush spiritual jazz of ‘Thank You Pharoah’ and the new age bliss of ‘Earth Loop’ are standouts. The album’s centrepiece, ‘Eternal Shore’, exemplifies its expansive yet intimate character. Eschewing genre constraints, Zeisig creates a vulnerable, human work that invites presence over consumption. This release from Zeisig is raw, integrated, and spiritually resonant. – CFS
JMMR – Resistance is Fertile
Jordan McLean plays with dance-music tempos to devastating effect on JMMR’s (Jordan McLean’s Musical Resistance) debut album Resistance is Fertile. First-take improvisations collide with synthetic alchemy, yielding an ‘avant-rave’ where Antibalas’ pedigree tangles with digital decay. Stuart Bogie and Cochema Gastelum add their incredible talents to the project. Track titles read like a 2025 anxiety playlist: ‘Dancing on the Precipice,’ ‘Climate Wars,’ ‘Right to Die.’ There’s a lot to be f—–g anxinous about, but we have music! Anyway, resistance proves deliciously fertile—machines don’t replace humanity here; they fertilise it, growing raucous jazz fusion creations. – BT
Jonah Parzen-Johnson and Lau Nau – A Few We Remember
Jonah Parzen-Johnson and Lau Nau tell eight beautiful stories on their collaborative album, A Few We Remember. Parzen-Johnson’s baritone saxophone breathes fog while Lau Nau sculpts vapour like live-sampled hauntings. Eight improvised transmissions where stories become sensation, and where the stranger’s glance illuminates more than years of knowing. The quiet and ethereal soundscapes of ‘Longtime Resident’ kick things off. From there, the mysterious and ominous textures that permeate from ‘Flight Attendant’ seep into the mind. Meanwhile, ‘Apologetic Inquirer’ leans heavily into Lau’s live-sampled, processed, and re-synthesised sounds. A special highlight for us is the previously released single ‘First Time Viewer’, where a cloud of ethereal fragments forms into a lattice of melody and texture strong enough to support the entire track. You cannot separate Jonah’s fragility from Laura’s ethereal re-synthesising; they’ve become a single organism speaking in knotty ambiences and innocent tinkerings. First takes, no overdubs—just two artists creating perfectly in sync. – CFS
