This week’s guide is by CF Smith and contributors Words By Shoaib, Benny Thomas, and Irfan Ayaan.
Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Between The Cracks. If you’re looking for foundation-shaking soundsystem heaters, Shackleton has you covered. There’s also the unclassifiable sound of Robert Stillman. We welcome two new names to the site: avant-garde harpist Cassie Watson Francillon and composer Hiele. Last but not least, we have two Jabu-adjacent albums for you to delve into. Head below and enjoy digging between the cracks. Hopefully, you’ll find a few musical treasures you didn’t even know you were searching for. Happy reading and listening.
Albums
Shackleton – Euphoria Bound
Euphoria Bound finds Shackleton snapping back into sharp focus. This is some of his most urgent, physical work in years, built for the soundsystem but haunted by something inward and destabilising. The album moves like a ritual in motion, tracing the pull toward dissolution where clarity and delusion blur into the same heat. The opener, Elemental Dream, sets the tone immediately. Coiled percussion and low-end pressure creep forward with restraint, then tighten into a hypnotic march. It’s immersive without being indulgent, a slow ignition that locks the listener into Shackleton’s rhythm logic. Later, Crushing Realities leans harder into weight and tension. Its pounding pulse feels confrontational, almost claustrophobic, with textures that scrape and erode rather than bloom. There’s no release here, only momentum. Across ten tracks, Euphoria Bound favours directness over sprawl. Sounds accumulate, fracture, and disappear, reinforcing the album’s themes of memory loss and self-erasure. Mastered by Rashad Becker, every element hits with intention. This is dance music that doesn’t chase euphoria; it questions it, pressing forward until the self slips out of reach. – WBS
Robert Stillman – 10,000 Rivers
On his Steve Jobs-inspired meditation, multi-instrumentalist Robert Stillman collapses analog warmth and jazz abstraction into a reality distortion field of his own making. With each new work, he redefines his horizon, and this album marks a significant milestone in his evolving journey. Stillman channels smooth ’80s pop music and auto-tuned lullabies, with the melancholy paradise of Brian Wilson-esque California dreaming dismantled into uncanny free jazz freakouts. ‘Reality Distortion Field’ achieves Sufjan-like art-pop rapture, while ‘The Zentrepreneur (Carrots)’ slithers through fusion-era weirdness with playful ease. The melodic pop sensibilities of ‘Knowledge Is Free’ tip its cap to Jeff Lynne and ELO. Atmospheric and expressive, the hypnotic ‘The California Ideology (A Walking Meeting)’ is majestic. Elsewhere on the record, Stillman takes a wisful turn, as in ‘No Off’, where soft ambient sounds elegantly dance between his light vocal melodies. Playing nearly everything himself (Tom Herbert and Sean Carpio feature on some tracks), Stillman conjures a universe where 10cc, known for their clever songwriting and lush harmonies, Billy Ocean, celebrated for his infectious hooks and polished production, and Miles Davis, with his groundbreaking innovations in jazz, coexist. This realm is constantly expanding, gorgeously unconventional, and thrillingly unmoored from genre constraints, reflecting Stillman’s continuous growth and fearless exploration of new musical landscapes. – BT
Hiele – Emo Inhaler
Belgian composer Hiele constructs surreal sonic cathedrals through the intersection of ambient drone, experimental electronics, and wyrd folk aesthetics. Brumaire establishes haunting darkness through processed field recordings and minimal melodic intervention. The album’s untitled passages integrate Francophone cryptic poetry that addresses angels, shadows, and geometric dreamscapes, creating a conceptual framework that transcends mere instrumentality. Pastiche juggles delicate atmospheric manipulation with genuine melodic content, while Slink d’Ivy and Sea Foam explore liminal textural territories. Nog Molletje introduces folk-adjacent harmonic vocabulary, distinctly Northern European in character. The repeated mantra the signs started to sing lends almost liturgical cadence to the proceedings. Typische Benadering, Druiven, and Kleintje conclude with minimalist restraint. This deeply conceptual work occupies fascinating territory between experimental electronic composition and mystical folk practice, rewarding listeners who embrace ambiguity and sonic opacity. – IA
Cassie Watson Francillon – Bardo
From serving on the board of the New Orleans Chapter of the American Harp Society to being the principal harpist in a new-age opera to playing with the futuristic trio Shakespeare & The Blues, avant-garde harpist Cassie Watson Francillon’s latest album, the Buddhist-inspired Bardo, shows both confidence and a spirit of exploration. The album features a stellar lineup including bassist Bryan Webre, Charles Lumar II on tuba, Jelani Bauman and Aquiles Navarro on trumpet, Julian Addison on drums, plus saxophonist GLADNEY. Francillon opens with ‘Inter’; it’s the calm beginning you’d expect from a harp-led album, and ‘Don’t Explain’ featuring Navarro’s wandering trumpet is a shimmering, celestial meeting of string and wind. But, dig deeper, and you’ll discover more frenetic moments like on the breakneck freakout that is ‘Ain’t Nice or ‘Constellation of Symptoms’ which swings as a pendulum between hard-hitting drums, ecstatic trumpet cries, throbbing tuba, and heavenly harp plucks. The finale, ‘Operative Word’, gathers all the album’s energies, the calm, the agitation, the sudden accelerations and threads them into something more straight ahead. Francillon plays with clarity and serenity, but the wild edge remains, softened but not totally erased. An intoxicating listen. – CFS
Bird of Peace Orchestra – Bird of Peace Orchestra
Bird of Peace Orchestra feels like a room you quietly step into rather than a record you press play on. Born from an ad-hoc house band assembled for a Do You Have Peace? At The Cube, the project proudly carries that origin. These are one-take jams and loosely held moments, left mostly untouched, where atmosphere matters more than precision. The album moves with a late-night logic, stitched together by spoken confessionals, soft mantras, and melodies that sound half-remembered. ‘Ties’ is a clear emotional anchor, drifting on gentle guitar lines and hushed vocals that feel confiding rather than performed. It settles in slowly, like a conversation you don’t want to interrupt. ‘3am Blue Velvet’ wanders deeper into the fog, pairing woozy synths with a sense of worn tenderness that lives up to its title, capturing that hour when thoughts get heavy but strangely calm. Across the record, live guitars, synths, and vocals circle simple loops while Intel Mercenary’s MPC beats quietly ground everything. At its core, this is documentation of connection. Messy, warm, and honest, it lets the imperfections do the talking. – WBS
Teresa Winter, Birthmark, Guest, A.Childs – Teresa Winter, Birthmark, Guest, A.Childs
Do You Have Peace?, feels less like an album and more like an encounter. Recorded in a single autumn evening in a Bristol home studio, it captures Teresa Winter, Guest and A.Childs of Jabu, alongside longtime collaborator Birthmark, surrendering fully to the moment. No edits, no overdubs. Just sound drifting, colliding, and slowly dissolving. The opening piece, ‘1’, establishes the tone immediately: hushed, ritualistic vocals hover over a loose bass anchor and unstable synth drones. It feels ceremonial, like something summoned rather than written. Later, ‘2’, the longest stretch, deepens the spell. Voices intertwine in half-remembered phrases while pedals buzz and textures blur, creating a sense of time slipping sideways. As the record unfolds, everything grows softer, heavier, and more dreamlike. By the fourth and final track, structure has almost completely evaporated, replaced by feedback glow and fading refrains. This is nocturnal ambient-pop at its most fragile and human. Imperfect, intimate, and quietly luminous, it rewards deep listening and complete surrender. – WBS
