This weekโs guide is by CF Smith and contributors Words By Shoaib, Benny Thomas and Irfan Ayaan.
Weโre in 2026, but the echoes of 2025 are still too good to ignore. So, we have six picks this week, two from 2026 and four that have us tripping over the past. This edition as always is all about boundaryโpushing artist, including Istanbul Sessions, Pullman, DoomCannon, and more. Lend an ear to the music, and if it strikes a chord, show some love to the artists and labels by supporting them.
Albums
Istanbul Sessions – Istanbul Sessions: Mahalle
Istanbul Sessions: Mahalle features eight outstanding tracks, each with its own story to tell. The highly acclaimed project, started in 2008 by saxophonist Ilhan Ersahin, has released stellar albums. Istanbul Sessions’ six releases trace a line from their 2010 selfโtitled debut through Night Rider, Istanbul Underground, Solar Plexus, Bir Zamanlar ลimdi and now Mahalle, each one sharpening their hypnotic, grooveโdriven pulse. Alongside Ersahin are Alp Ersonmez on bass, Izzet Kizil on percussion and Turgut Alp Bekoglu on drums. The new work represents the band’s most cinematic offering yet, guiding listeners through a sonic exploration of Istanbul’s diverse neighbourhoods (the title literally means “neighbourhood”). We already covered ‘Yeditepe’, the spacious, groovy opener. ‘Asmalฤฑ’ has a tighter, more percussive feel. Tracks like ‘Galata’ and ‘Karakรถy’ pulse with the city’s ancient-modern duality – hypnotic, atmospheric, and utterly transportive. Labelling “Entropy” as just another album would be a grave disservice to the band’s artistic genius. This music is a force of nature, bold and exploratory. It masterfully weaves together a cross-genre of influences. Highly original yet refreshingly accessible, it’s the first must-have album of 2026. – CFS
Pullman – III
After Istanbul Sessions, welcome to the second must-have album of 2026. Actually, this is the first, released on January 9th, a week before Mahalle. Anyway, who really cares? I do have one complaint, I wish it were longer! At just 35 minutes, that’s my only gripe with III by Pullman. Anyway, aside from that, we are not going to complain too much, as it has been over twenty years since their last album. ย So, we’ll take what we’re given and lap it up. Pullman made their debut on Thrill Jockey in 1998 with Turnstyles & Junkpiles. Three years down the road, Viewfindermade its entrance. Pullman “became a touchstone for acoustic, song-adjacent instrumental music: folk in spirit, post-rock in method, and timeless in tone.” The new album erupts from the twenty-five-year silence with a shocking cloud of fuzz; the two-minute blast of ‘Bray’ finds the quartet back and raring to go. After the dense assault of ‘Bray’, we’re suddenly suspended in light and shimmer. ‘Weightless’ with its high, clean guitar lines tangle and shift around cool percussion and occasional soft bass notes, moves with a riverโcurrent sway. For nearly seven minutes, time feels suspended. The gentle and intimate meditation that is ‘Thirteen’ is a thing of beauty. First, it expands slowly like memories of a cherished life. Then, halfway through, everything stops. The song transforms into a delicate ambience, soft drones that exist somewhere between Fennesz’s Endless Summerย and John Fahey’s more playful, bucolic soundscapes. The last three minutes peter out into near-silence, an extended ambient drone that fades directly into the next track, ‘October’. The album’s crowning achievement and longest track slowly emerges from the silence that ended “Thirteen,” beginning with a patient slide guitar fade-in and delay-stunted shimmers. Crisp reverb guitar mixes with dreamy synths and waves of distortion. The album closes with swirling, echo-laden banjo textures of ‘Kabal’. A glorious return that proves some things are worth the wait. Welcome back, gentlemen. – BT
DoomCannon – Somewhere In Between
Somewhere In Between sits right in that liminal place its title promises. Somewhere In Between feels like a deep breath taken mid-transformation, unsteady, hopeful, and sharply honest. You can hear the shift from the fire of the Renaissance into something more internal. The jazz vocabulary is still there, the hip-hop pulse still kicks, but the emotional centre is softer and more vulnerable. DoomCannon leans into nuance this time: warm keys, thoughtful horn arrangements, and rhythms that move with a lived-in clarity. The album works because it never hides the turbulence. Take The Truth, one of the lead singles. It’s six minutes of slow-burning honesty, unfolding like a conversation with yourself you can’t avoid. It’s steady, soulful, and grounded in that trademark DoomCannon depth. Vain, the other standout single, opens the album with a fragile sort of confidence. The Souly Ghost’s vocals float over spacious production, marking the first step into this in-between world. What this really means is that DoomCannon isn’t chasing spectacle. He’s documenting a shift in real time, and the result is a record that feels human, hopeful, and beautifully unfinished, in the best way. – WBS
caroline โ caroline 2
Another album from last year that almost slipped through our fingers, but thanks to Martin at In Search Of Media, it’s now happily on our radar. caroline 2 marks a clear leap forward for the London-based eight-piece. Where their debut lingered patiently in repetition and restraint, this record feels more restless, more open to friction. The band leans into contrast, letting acoustic instruments blur into electronics, and quiet moments rupture into sudden emotional release. The lead single, “Tell Me I Never Knew That,” released ahead of the album, sets that tone perfectly. Caroline Polachek’s voice doesn’t dominate so much as float inside the arrangement, bending around warped textures and communal harmonies. It feels fragile and ecstatic at once, a song constantly on the verge of dissolving. “Total Euphoria,” another early release, lives up to its name in a more physical way. It builds slowly, stacking rhythm and melody until the track feels almost weightless, like momentum finally tipping into joy. Across the album, caroline sound more confident in letting songs stretch, collide, and breathe. caroline 2 doesn’t abandon its patience, but it rewards it with colour, tension, and moments of unexpected clarity. – WBS
Eyal Talmudi – Sonolodge III
Talmudi’s third Sonolodge iteration blends world music textures with Tel Aviv’s experimental electronics sensibility, creating a genre-fluid artefact. Dalma and Jasmine Dance establish the album’s intricate reed work against minimal percussive scaffolding, while Kshana expands the palette into extended composition territory, introducing layered arrangements that evoke Middle Eastern tonality filtered through jazz sophistication. Sonomok featuring Nomok operates as a brief, hyperlocal vignette before Rega 23 transforms the album’s momentum into abstract textural navigation. The inclusion of Queneau’s philosophical French poetry suggests conceptual ambition beyond pure musicality. Tulik the Brave concludes with infectious groove-consciousness. This collection crystallises Talmudi’s position as Israel’s most inventive reed voice, bridging ambient, jazz and improvisational sophistication into a coherent sonic ecology. – IA
EP’s
Al Wootton – CRUX
Al Wootton can do a hell of a lot in 29 minutes. His music can seep into your brain like sentient fog. The four tracks on CRUX congeal rather than progress, each rhythm a patient stalactite dripping in dubwise time. Opener ‘Essene’ feels hypnotic, slightly threatening, and inexplicably erotic all at once. By ‘Cloister’ you’re locked, being percussed, gently beaten by deep echoes and heart-pounding reverb. The dub here isn’t reggae-descended; it’s techno chatting dub language. Twenty-nine minutes that feel like three hours in the best way, like that liminal space between sleeping and waking where even the glass of water on your bedside table looks a tad suspicious. A really killer project that takes dub techno to a whole new level. Highly recommended. – CFS
Oh, and do check out Wootton’s December drop, Glorias, here.
