This week’s guide is by CF Smith and contributors Arifur Rahman, Words By Shoaib, Gavin Senaratne and Irfan Ayann.
Every Friday at Twistedsoul, we wrap things up by sharing six releases that caught our ears, brilliant, wide‑ranging picks we believe shouldn’t slip past anyone. Among our selection today are albums by Visible Cloaks, aja monet, Rosa Brunello, Jeff Parker ETA IVtet, alongside a handful of other brilliant finds. We hope you’ll find some music you love and feel excited to hit the buy button. Happy listening and have a lovely weekend.
Albums
Visible Cloaks – Paradessence
Paradessence is Visible Cloaks‘ first full-length since Reassemblage, and it deepens their interest in the border between natural and artificial sound. The duo treat acoustic playing and virtual synthesis as parts of the same ecosystem. Apsis introduces the palette with flickering tones that seem to appear and vanish on their own. Balloon builds on that with a more playful, buoyant motion. Melodies float upward and then slip out of focus. Capgras hints at unease and doubled realities, which fit an album that constantly asks what is real and what is simulated. Across fourteen tracks, the details matter. Fragments of voice, room noise, and digital artefacts are blended so tightly that edges disappear. The music feels generative even when it is carefully composed. Paradessence often plays like wandering through a lush garden and slowly realising much of it might be projection. It is precise, softly dazzling, and very easy to live inside for a long time. – IA
Jeff Parker ETA IVtet – Happy Today
No one can accuse Jeff Parker ETA IVtet of false advertising. Their new album, Happy Today, is a burst of light, music that lifts, brightens, and refuses to dim. I’ve played Happy Today a few times now, and what keeps getting me is how unhurried it feels without ever turning sleepy. It’s only four tracks, recorded live at Lodge Room in Los Angeles, but it doesn’t feel slight at all; it feels roomy and patient. Happy Today is one of those improv records that feels deceptively low-key until you realise how completely it’s pulled you in. Jeff Parker, Anna Butterss, Josh Johnson, and Jay Bellerose don’t really “build” these pieces in the big dramatic jazz way so much as they ease into them, and then suddenly you realise everyone is locked into the same beautiful thought. ‘Like Swimwear‘ especially got under my skin after a couple of listens. The first time through, I liked it; the second or third time, I started noticing how sneaky the momentum is. The title track might be the one I actually love more, though, because it’s even more patient and a little weirder around the edges. It circles itself for a while, almost like it’s trying not to announce what it is too early, and then it gradually slips into this warm, lightly cosmic drift. People call this band hypnotic, which is true, but that word can make the music sound blurrier than it is. What’s impressive here is how alert everything feels. Nobody is zoning out. Everybody is listening so hard that even the repetitions feel alive, like they’re being tested in real time. It’s worth checking out the live performance video for ‘Like Swimwear (part two)’ to really get a feel for what they’re, the looseness, the chemistry, the whole vibe. What I like most, honestly, is that the album’s title could have come off as corny if the music hadn’t earned it. But Parker framed the record as a “statement of joy” after a brutal period that included his family’s displacement during the Eaton fires, and that context does make the album hit differently. – CFS
Yu Su – Foundry
Foundry is Yu Su‘s fully fledged second album and a big step outward from her earlier work. It folds DJ sensibilities, ambient techno, and hazy songcraft into one coherent language. A Jewel, featuring Miyako Koda of Dip In The Pool, opens in a swirling and poised fashion. Their voices and synths drift together like reflections on dark water. Sunless, with Memotone, digs into dusky minimalism and dubby low end, a piece partly inspired by Chris Marker’s film Sans Soleil. Cul De Sac glows with sun-kissed affirmation, while the title track Foundry stomps forward on a tougher acid groove. Midway through, One Place After Another, featuring Seefeel, wraps Yu’s voice and Sarah Peacock‘s around Mark Clifford‘s gauzy guitar. It feels like dream-pop melted into techno. Later, Wanli and Os Cionn explore more ominous and aerial spaces before Ripe Fruits closes with a reflective, processional pulse. The record feels like a shared workshop where different traditions are melted down and cast into something quietly futuristic. – IA
aja monet – the color of rain
On the color of rain, aja monet sounds less interested in fitting poetry into music than letting both dissolve into each other completely. The album moves like a storm rolling in slowly, unpredictable, heavy with feeling, but never collapsing under its own ambition. Co-produced with Meshell Ndegeocello and Justin Brown, the record blends jazz, soul, blues, and spoken word into an intimate, spiritually restless whole. What stands out most is how alive everything feels. The music breathes around monet’s voice instead of simply supporting it, giving every line room to ache, drift, or burn. ‘say it with your chest’ opens the album with sharp urgency. The drumming feels almost ceremonial, pushing monet’s words forward with controlled intensity as she speaks about truth, fear, and conviction. There’s power in how direct the track sounds, but also vulnerability underneath it, especially in the pauses where silence says as much as the poetry itself. ‘working class musicians’ hits differently. The jazz arrangement is raw and restless, full of movement and tension, while monet reflects on labour, art, exhaustion, and survival. The repeated chants and layered instrumentation make the track feel communal rather than performative, like a late-night conversation between artists trying to hold onto purpose in a collapsing world. The record works beautifully as a complete sweep, but ‘skinfolk‘, ‘for the Congo‘, ‘to sister‘ and ‘indigo‘ are the tracks that stay with me. Across the album, monet refuses neat resolutions. the color of rain is political without becoming rigid, deeply personal without losing its larger vision. It asks listeners to sit with discomfort, beauty, contradiction, and uncertainty all at once. Few albums this year feel as emotionally fearless or as human as this one. – WBS
Rosa Brunello – We Are Surging Waters
Italian bassist and composer, Rosa Brunello, returns with her new album, ‘We Are Surging Waters’. The 9-track record is a musical diary of Brunello’s artistic rebirth, her connection to the collective consciousness, and her love of experimental jazz. Each track on the album has a unique sound and origin story that reflects Brunello’s genuineness as an artist. Familiar names appear as collaborators with Tommaso Cappellato, Marco Frattini, Tamar Osborn, Yazz Ahmed, and more, helping Brunello bring the album to life over three days in June 2025. The album kicks off with ‘Hearts Beat for Freedom’, a short but powerful track that immediately sets the tone. The track exudes a rebellious energy, energising listeners to pay attention to the album’s collective consciousness message. The second track, ‘Line Unbroken’, is one of the album’s pieces that Brunello improvised. The raw creative process of the song is clearly reflected in its lively, chaotic rhythm. The title track, ‘We Are Surging Waters‘ masterfully uses electric guitar, percussion, saxophone, and electronic elements to deliver a clear musical declaration: music for peace. ‘Living Upstream’ is all about raw energy and a sense of forward motion. On ‘No Bass Frills‘, Brunello appears only briefly on djembe, allowing the band’s collective voice to shine. The varied instrumentation works together flawlessly, symbolic of nature’s elements and humans supporting each other seamlessly. The album closes with ‘Memory in the Making‘. The languid track is heavy on wind instruments and atmospherics. With ‘We Are Surging Waters’, the gifted Brunello delivers another striking artistic statement. A lot of you are really going to love this album! – AR
Carlos Niño & Friends – Bubble Bath for Giants
On Bubble Bath for Giants, Carlos Niño dives headfirst into warm sonic waters. The record’s eight pieces are full of bells, bowls, gongs, reeds, synth mist, hand percussion, and the kind of spiritual-jazz vibes that make most “immersive” records seem about as transporting as a scented candle in a dentist’s waiting room. Niño calls it an ode to oceans, fairies, gentleness and force; happily, it sounds exactly that. Rather than reaching for transcendence with pomp, it sidles into it through texture: ‘Orangeharvest‘ glows with live-wire warmth, ‘Dancingintheplanetarium‘ blends celestial ambient sounds and lush vocal harmonies, and ‘Visions by the Fire, shells‘ has the hushed, devotional quality. What keeps Bubble Bath for Giants from dissolving into worthy ambience is Niño’s feel for movement and mischief. Even at its most vaporous, the album has a strange, low-gravity insistence that turns ‘High Energy Cloth‘ into a gathering of elders from several galaxies, while ‘Deep Bow‘ and the closing ‘Strikethechord, Enter the Portal’ unfold like rituals assembled from friendship, memory, and extremely expensive wind chimes (the vocals of Sibusile Xaba are beautiful). As ever, the friends list is absurdly rich, André 3000, Marshall Allen, Laraaji, Sam Gendel, Darius Jones and more, but the album never feels like a prestige traffic jam; it feels communal. Cosmic without cliché, it’s a genuinely transporting listen. – CFS
Félicia Atkinson & Christina Vantzou – Reflections Vol. 3: Water Poems
Seeing Félicia Atkinson attached to a release is all the convincing I need; I’m on it straight away. If she’s made a bad album, I haven’t come across it. I’m still new to Christina Vantzou‘s world, but the Atkinson connection alone tells me I’m in very good hands. Part of RVNG Intl.’s contemplative Reflections series, Water Poems finds Atkinson and Vantzou operating in a space where music and environment blur into a single continuous current. The album draws heavily on electroacoustic composition, yet its defining feature is a sense of drift that mirrors the unpredictable movement of water. The opening ‘Film Still/The Sea‘ immediately sets the tone, layering hushed spoken-word passages over gently shifting ambient textures. ‘Little Piano Rivers‘ expands the palette with a more conventional arrangement, but with submerged tones and distant harmonic swells that feel almost tidal in their motion. The closer, ‘Scorpio Purple Skies‘, is one of the album’s most striking moments, foregrounding Atkinson’s voice alongside John Also Bennett. detached yet intimate, this sprawling, 9-minute track allows language to dissolve into sound rather than dominate it. What makes Water Poems compelling is its refusal to separate disciplines: poetry becomes texture, music becomes environment. The result is an album that functions as a continuous ecosystem of sound, encouraging immersive, almost meditative listening. – GS
