This week’s guide is by CF Smith and contributors Words By Shoaib, Neil G, Gavin Senaratne and Irfan Ayaan.
We return with our weekly dive into the music that move leftfield rather than right! As always this week’s Between The Cracks is all about artists who thrive in the margins – the ones who stretch form, bend genre, and make the underground feel like the only place worth listening from. This edition gathers six releases that refuse to sit still: sax-led explorations, cosmic spiritual jazz, psychedelic soul pop sensibilities, improvisational hip-hop jazz and more… Dive into the full selection, and if something resonates, feel free to show some love via the buy or share links. Enjoy the sounds and have a wonderful weekend ahead.
Albums
Dina Ögon – Människobarn
‘Människobarn’, the latest album by the Swedish soul-pop quartet Dina Ögon, is, without a doubt, their most expansive work yet. Oozing with confidence and their signature “dreamy Scandinavian soul,” the album blends retro soul, psychedelic pop, jazz, soft rock, and bossa nova. But the kicker with Människobarn is that it fully capitalises on these genres with ease and a maximalist approach. Fluidly shifting gears from insightful ballads to more charged grooves, there is a warm and fuzzy feeling that perfectly reflects the band’s musical identity. The unhurried melodies and adventurous arrangements that convey a wide range of emotions are evident in the title track and in Verdandi, Juvel, Hack i häl, and Orden brann, which showcase the rich, tight chemistry of Dina Ögon as a musical unit. This album could and should be high on many end-of-year lists. – NG
Owelu Dreamhouse – Owelu Dreamhouse
Fresh off celebrating their 16th birthday with last year’s Sweet 16 Mixtape, Melbourne label Hopestreet Recordings now lifts the curtain on the debut album from Owelu Dreamhouse. The group didn’t appear on the celebratory mixtape, a quiet omission that, in hindsight, feels like a deliberate move to keep this new project tucked away and have their own moment in the spotlight! Owelu Dreamhouse reunites Saskwatch vocalist Nkechi Anele and multi-instrumentalist Nic Ryan-Glenie after a five-year hiatus, with Nkechi returning to music specifically to explore her Nigerian heritage through a sonic blend of cinematic soul, psychedelia, and Afrobeat. The album includes the contemplative recent single ‘Niger River’, and the Manu Debango-influenced dance anthem ‘Stutter’ is a go-to. The band’s name plays on the Nigerian village of Nkechi’s grandmother, Owaelu. Growing up as a woman of colour in predominantly white Australia, she often felt hesitant to express her Africanness. ‘Tourist’ channels that third‑culture tension, drawing on real experiences abroad to explore the complicated pull of returning home while still feeling slightly out of place. A superb debut and totally recommended. – CFS
Błoto – We Remember J Dilla
“For many of us, J Dilla’s music was, and still is, more than just sound; it is emotion, memory, and constant inspiration. Because James Dewitt Yancey equals hip-hop.
We remember Jay Dee.”
With We Remember J Dilla, Błoto don’t approach tribute as nostalgia. They treat it as a living conversation. Recorded on the final night of their 2025 Dilla Month tour, the album captures a band fully inside the spirit of J Dilla while refusing to imitate him. Instead, they rebuild his legacy through jazz improvisation, electronic textures, and raw, physical groove. This record breathes like a club set, not a museum piece. You can hear the room, the risk, the collective momentum. Beats stretch and fracture. Sax lines spiral. Synths pulse like unstable heartbeats. It’s reverent, but never polite. The track, ‘Y’all Ain’t Ready’, shows this approach perfectly. The familiar rhythm becomes elastic, pushed and pulled by drums and bass. At the same time, the horns turn Dilla’s swing into something volatile and thrilling. What this album really proves is that influence isn’t about preservation. It’s about movement. Błoto honours Dilla by keeping his ideas restless, curious, and alive. – WBS
Muriel Grossmann – Plays the music of McCoy Tyner and Grateful Dead
You may wonder what McCoy Tyner’s harmonic world has to do with the expansive spirit of the Grateful Dead. Well, quite a lot actually. The Dead’s founding member Bob Weir has cited McCoy Tyner as one of his foundational influences. In a 2024 memorial tribute to his bandmate, bassist Phil Lesh, he wrote: “At the age of seventeen, I listened to the John Coltrane Quartet, focusing on McCoy Tyner’s work, feeding Coltrane harmonic and rhythmic ideas to springboard off of – and I developed an approach to guitar playing based off of it. This happened because Phil turned me on to the Coltrane Quartet.” On her new album, Muriel Grossmann, the Ibiza‑based saxophonist originally from Austria, explores how Tyner’s influence weaves through Weir’s work, using it as an invitation to revisit these compositions with fresh eyes. The jaw- dropping, ‘Walk Spirit, Talk Cosmic’ gets things started, and what a start. Grossman and crew summon the spiritual jazz continuum, and we’re all over it! ‘Contemplation’ is reframed into a spiralling, hypnotic and spacious wall of sound. Elsewhere on ‘The Music Never Stopped’ finds Grossmann at her most aggressive yet agile, pushing the tempo just enough to create lift-off. On closing track ‘The Other One’, Grossman refracts the energy of the original into a spiritual jazz exploration, splintered sunlight through a modal prism. I really need to catch her live, I bet it’s a wild trip! – CFS
Shake Stew – TEN ONE TWO
Vienna-based jazz ensemble Shake Stew celebrates its tenth anniversary with their landmark double album ‘TEN ONE TWO’. This record is part of a larger three-part project (with ‘TEN THREE’ due later in the year) that takes the band in a whole new creative direction. Shake Stew originally formed in Vienna in 2016, and has since gained a reputation for hypnotic, groove-driven jazz that defies easy categorisation. The group also stands out for its unusual lineup: two drummers, two bassists, and a three‑horn frontline. At its core, TEN ONE TWO remains rooted in modern jazz, but embraces influences from Krautrock, Afro-jazz, and trance-like minimalism. The lead single of TEN ONE, ‘Ascendance’, is a wonderful showcase of the band’s approach to music, as it starts energetically and keeps up the intensity for a runtime of over 6 minutes. Compared to TEN ONE, TEN TWO takes a different approach, focusing on building trance-like atmospheres. Tracks like ‘Free Your Eyes’ exemplify the experimental approach taken here, blending acoustic instruments with electric sounds and even field recordings like cicadas and industrial noise. For listeners familiar with Shake Stew’s earlier work, TEN ONE TWO feels like the next chapter. It harks back to their history and is daring in its execution, while remaining deeply rooted in the collective energy this ensemble has built over the past 10 years. – GS
Nicole McCabe – Color Theory
On Color Theory, alto saxophonist Nicole McCabe treats rhythm like a palette. She splashes grooves, colors, and motifs across eleven tightly sculpted pieces. Air Sign opens with breezy propulsion. McCabe’s lines dart in and out of the ensemble like quick strokes of pastel. Hues leans into a deeper pocket and stretches its 5:55 runtime with evolving horn voicings and a low-slung rhythmic sway. Twister and Cent Cinq twist bebop energy into knotty, contemporary shapes. To You turns reflective and almost ballad-adjacent without losing its pulse. The back half of the record pushes further into syncopated self-interrogation. Sifting, Shifting and Pause feel like two sides of the same thought experiment, one restless and one suspended in air. Hope and Hype Meter bring a kind of ecstatic release with sharp contours and elastic time-feel. Assumption and Altadena close the album on a more contemplative, sunset-lit register. Color Theory becomes both a statement of band dynamic and a personal chromatic journey of becoming. – IA
