This week’s guide is by CF Smith and contributors Arifur Rahman, Words By Shoaib, Imran Mirza, and Irfan Ayaan.
Welcome back to Between The Cracks, our weekly dive into boundary-pushing sounds that deserve your ears. While we’re settling into 2026 quite nicely, the underground is still whispering secrets from 2025. You know how it is, there are always records that slipped past the radar, surfaced too late, or needed a little more time to find us. This week, we have overlooked treasures from Flur, Ben Marc, Deep Patterns, anaiis and more. Listen closely, and if it resonates, support the artists and labels behind these releases to help keep this music alive.
Albums
Flur – Plunge
Flur’s debut Plunge arrived in September last year like a tidepool at dawn, quietly shimmering, deceptively deep, and full of small, luminous discoveries. Drawing on ambient drift, spiritual jazz, and improvisational curiosity, the London trio shapes a sound that feels both ancient and startlingly new. Plunge is built around harpist Miriam Adefris’s processed, spiralling lines, which act as the album’s gravitational centre. Around her, Isaac Robertson’s saxophone exhales in long, breathy arcs, while Dillon Harrison’s percussion skitters and murmurs beneath the surface. The result is a record that moves with the logic of water, eddying, refracting, slipping between forms. Tracks like Nightdiver and Larking drift in on soft-focus ambience, only to bloom into intuitive improvisations. Elsewhere, the two-part Trimaran suite stretches out into something more exploratory, a meditative voyage that hints at the trio’s roots in London’s experimental jazz scene. Even the brief, The Improve, and Hold Fast Old Kelp carry a sense of distilled intention, like sketches left in the margins of a notebook. It’s not quite jazz, not quite ambient, not quite spiritual music, but a porous blend of all three, a sound “lovingly out of time,” as one review put it. You can hear the trio’s shared history at Goldsmiths, their years of playing in shifting formations, their collaborations with artists across London’s fertile experimental landscape. Yet the album never feels academic. It feels lived-in, intuitive, and quietly daring. Take the plunge, you’ll feel better for it. – AR
Ben Marc – Who Cares Wins
Ben Marc’s collaborative debut unfolds as a genre-agnostic statement piece where jazz fundamentals meet contemporary electronic textures and hip-hop vernacular. The Blues announces the project’s ironically minimalist stance before Love expands into lush, intricate bass work supporting ethereal atmospheric layers. Take Control and Own It showcases Marc’s ability to navigate between supporting role and compositional centrepiece, while Cheddar Man injects quirky thematic material into the experimental framework. The feature with Wahid on But Why marks the album’s most collaborative moment, blending London’s multicultural energy with international perspectives. Lets Move Things Forward embodies the album’s utopian aesthetic. Throughout, Marc’s Trinity-educated double bass articulates complex counterpoint against layered production. This is sophisticated club-adjacent experimentation rooted in jazz literacy, a remarkable debut that establishes Marc as a crucial voice in London’s forward-thinking improvisation scene. – IA
Deep Patterns – Completely Deep Patterns
Bristol-based musician and producer Ben Dubuisson has long displayed compelling, almost chameleonic qualities that find him immersed within a variety of different genres and styles across the expansive array of projects he has unveiled over the years. With High Noon Music serving as his enthralling musical playground, Dubuisson first introduced himself under the guise of Hundred Strong and through a 2010 album release entitled ‘Stylin Free’. The album’s varied and dynamic productions paired Dubuisson’s hip-hop-inspired backdrops alongside some excellent vocalists, including Pete Simpson, Holly Backler, J. Malik and featuring no less than three vocal contributions from the dearly departed Detroit hero, Amp Fiddler. ‘Completely Deep Patterns’ finds an inspired recontextualising of Dubuisson’s music to date. While still boasting elements of the hip-hop and soul that are synonymous with his music so far, the album embraces a range of additional influences from jazz to cinematic soul soundscapes which, on several tracks, are further enhanced by the presence of The Epoch House Choir who soar on tracks like ‘Remember the Time’, ‘Thirteen’ and ‘The World is Just the Way That it is’. An album that is nothing short of a triumph, Deep Patterns is indicative of its architect’s boundless talents and fascinating vision. – IM
Mohammad Reza Mortazavi – Nexus
Latency had a stellar year in 2025. With releases from Flur (see up top), goat (jp), and Nรญdia & Valentina catching our attention. Mortazavi’s solo percussion debut on the label shatters the boundaries of traditional tambour and darbuka playing, reimagining the instrument through layers of vocal processing, electronic effects, and psychedelic textures. From the meditative opening of Zendegi to the murky depths of Swamp, the album unfolds as a hypnotic journey through temporal abstraction. Cendres Volantes showcases his ability to generate vast tonal palettes from acoustic strikes, while Hidden Current demonstrates intricate polyrhythmic scaffolding that rivals algorithmic composition. The album’s centrepiece, Kimiya, exemplifies Mortazavi’s signature elastic rhythms enhanced by otherworldly treatments. Silent Return and Dornรข conclude the experience with decompressed, almost liturgical restraint. What emerges is less a percussion album and more a complete sonic ecosystem, meticulous in its tonal dimensions, jaw-dropping in its textural vocabulary. This is essential listening for anyone navigating between contemporary classical and experimental electronic territories. – IA
KAKUHAN & Adam Golebiewski – Repercussions
KAKUHAN haven’t released much, but what’s out there is some of the most astonishing hybrid electroacoustic music that’s emerged in the last few years. Three improvisers walk into a Krakรณw studio and architect a phantom percussion ensemble from pure intuition. Or something like that! KAKUHAN’s sampler sorcery and cello alchemy collide with Goลฤbiewski’s gestural drumming, bowed cymbals with strings and digital beats. It’s oddly hypnotic, undeniably unsettling, and utterly unique. Who’s making what? Irrelevant. This is firestarting through friction, each numbered track a combustion event where materials conspire against their own identities. Repercussions isn’t just wordplay, it’s sonic mitosis, splitting intentions like knives through water (love the cover art), leaving textured overtones where instruments once were. A single-session sรฉance that conjures credible worlds from disciplined chaos. Trust the repercussions. – CFS
anaiis โ Devotion & The Black Divine
Devotion & The Black Divine finds London-based polymath anaiis stepping into a wider emotional and spiritual frame. The album feels guided by curiosity rather than control, shaped by new motherhood and a willingness to sit with uncertainty. Her songwriting moves gently but with purpose, drawing from progressive R&B, soul, and gospel tones without ever settling into a fixed genre. The early highlight ‘Deus Deus’ captures that intent clearly. Built around a slow, ritualistic pulse, it feels devotional without being rigid, carried by layered vocals that rise more like breath than melody. ‘Moonlight’, another standout track, leans toward intimacy, its warm harmonies and restrained production giving space to reflection rather than drama. Across the record, anaiis writes from a collective emotional space, where personal moments open outward into something shared. Interludes, spoken reflections, and soft shifts in tone help the album flow like a conversation rather than a statement. Devotion & The Black Divine is calm but not passive, expansive yet grounded, a deeply human record that rewards patience and repeated listening. Easily one of the best albums of the last year. – WBS
