This week’s guide is by CF Smith and contributors Words By Shoaib, Neil G, Benny Thomas, and Irfan Ayaan.
Between The Cracks digs into the corners: off‑centre jazz, avant-garde oddities, droning minimalism, electro-acoustic obscurities, experimental electronics, soundscape art, and beyond. A weekly rummage for curious ears. This week we’re shining a light on new releases by Alden Hellmath, Sharada Shashidhar, Anenon, Yazz Ahmed and more worth your ears. As always, we pair each album with a mini review, a stream and a link to grab the record if it hits the spot. Enjoy, and join us next week for more underground discoveries.
Albums
Alden Hellmuth – Tether
Alden Hellmuth‘s Tether is an exhilarating statement from a composer who understands that the strongest improvisation is built on trust. Drawing from contemporary jazz, punk intensity, and free improvisation, the New York saxophonist creates music that feels unpredictable without ever losing its sense of purpose. Every performance thrives on tension and release, with the ensemble constantly stretching against the compositions before naturally finding its way back. Among the album’s highlights, ‘Microfictions’ wastes no time establishing that dynamic. Hellmuth’s incisive alto saxophone cuts through shifting rhythmic foundations, while the band responds with instinctive precision. The result is restless yet remarkably cohesive, revealing the shared language at the heart of the record. ‘Definitely Not Friends’ leans into sharper grooves and playful friction, allowing the quartet to blur the line between composition and spontaneous conversation. Rather than competing for attention, each musician contributes to a constantly evolving dialogue that rewards close listening. On ‘Guesswork’, she moves away from the frenetic energy of the earlier tracks, this piece spotlighting the distinct timbres of the two bassists while Hellmuth floats over the top with airy, textural melodic lines. The wonky, experimental reimagining of Coltrane’s classic ‘Satellite’ titled here ‘Satellite (K)’ is inspired. The ensemble translates Coltrane’s signature changes into a swinging, fluid groove driven by wonky polyrhythmic interchanges and subtle electronic processing. The album’s lead single and final track, ‘Face The Wall,’ was the very first song Hellmuth wrote for this project. It fully unleashes her inner punk rock influences, smudging jazz structures with aggressive, clamorous alto sax shrieks, driving bass, and a riotous rhythm. Throughout Tether, Hellmuth proves that freedom in jazz is most compelling when anchored by connection. Bold, expressive, and endlessly engaging, it confirms her place among contemporary jazz’s most exciting voices. – WBS
Sharada Shashidhar – A Foot on the Ground
On A Foot on the Ground, Sharada Shashidhar embraces exploration without losing sight of emotional clarity. Recorded over two years in Los Angeles with producer Pete Min, the album documents an artist willing to step beyond familiar habits, experimenting with new instruments, collaborative processes, and unconventional ideas. The result is a rich blend of electronic textures, jazz, soul, and R&B that feels both intimate and adventurous. ‘Reassurance‘ stands out as one of the album’s most affecting moments. Built around warm synth layers and a restrained rhythmic pulse, the track allows Shashidhar’s voice to take centre stage, conveying vulnerability with quiet confidence. Its understated arrangement highlights the album’s emphasis on atmosphere and emotional nuance. ‘Escape Artist‘ reveals a different side of the record. Featuring upright bass, drums, and expressive saxophone work, the song balances jazz sophistication with contemporary songwriting, creating a sense of movement and spontaneity. The chemistry between the musicians gives the track a natural energy that feels alive and unforced. The seductive and absorbing ‘Arches‘ is another standout moment. The brief closing track, ‘Carving Faces,’ is a calm resolution to the album’s sonic journey. It’s stripped down to vocals, synth, and sax, leaving listeners with a feeling of peace. Throughout the album, Shashidhar prioritises curiosity over perfection. A Foot on the Ground is thoughtful, immersive, and deeply personal, capturing an artist confidently expanding her creative horizons. – WBS
How to See Know and Fall – ECOLOGIES
ECOLOGIES feels like a system coming to life in slow motion. The duo lean into electronic pulse and avant-garde jazz phrasing, then let both elements breathe. Early pieces move carefully and introduce textures like organisms entering a shared habitat. Synth patterns repeat and mutate while horns and keys respond with loose, conversational lines. Later tracks tighten the rhythmic focus. Beats become more insistent, and harmonic fragments start to interlock. The record keeps shifting between stillness and controlled turbulence. That movement mirrors its title and treats each sound as part of a larger environment. Nothing here feels ornamental. Every click, drone, and phrase seems to adjust to what comes before and after it. ECOLOGIES reads as a study in coexistence. It is heady but also quietly emotive, especially when the improvising voices push against the grid, creating small cracks in the machinery. – IA
DREAMSCAPES – Tales of a Wanderer
Debut album from UK-based ensemble DREAMSCAPES is a solid 11-track jazz offering with strong leanings towards rock, electronica, and experimentation. Tales of a Wanderer, according to bandleader Julien Durand, “is a journey of self-identity — through adventure, heartbreak, and searching.” In finding his voice both musically and as a person, Baptiste successfully maintains a balance between individuality and uniqueness while making room for collaborators to showcase their talents along the way. ‘wanderer‘, ‘maddy I & maddy II‘, ‘pyramid song‘, and ‘black is the colour‘ are strong standout moments. Great album that gets better with each play. – CFS
Anenon – Dream Temperature
Brian Allen Simon, aka Anenon, returns to the electronic playground with Dream Temperature, a haunting return to the “interim” state between sleep and waking. After a detour into pure acoustics, the LA-based composer embraces a wind synthesiser as his central tool, routing his literal breath through digitised electronics to create an uncomfortably intimate dialogue between body and machine. Recorded at home during nocturnal hours, the album weaves tenor saxophone and melancholic piano miniatures with field recordings from Japan and Big Sur. From the sub-bass rasps of the title track to the sax flourishes and noisy drones of ‘Nulle Part 1+2‘ and the ghostly, post-dubstep flow of ‘Toyama‘, Simon captures the heavy, disorienting weight of half-remembered dreams. It is a vital, elegant coalescence of his acoustic and electronic practices. – NG
EP
Yazz Ahmed – Shinrin-Yoku
I often quote Bob Marley on the healing power of music because I know he was right. When you let yourself fall into the right hands, the right sounds, the right moment, music has this quiet way of putting the world back together in quiet, invisible ways. The new EP from the ‘High Priestess of psychedelic Arabic jazz’, Yazz Ahmed, is framed as music “celebrating the healing power of the natural world”; it’s a small, luminous record that invites listeners to slow down and listen more closely, both to the music and to the world around them. Even before you get to the individual tracks, Ahmed’s emotional aim is clear: this is music reaching for calm without pretending the surrounding turmoil isn’t in shit. A lot of it, for me, is just the atmosphere. ‘Dawn Patrol‘ suggests motion and awakening, while ‘Forest Bathing‘ leans into meditation, calm and breath. Elsewhere, ‘A Moment To Be Free‘ features field recordings of bird songs from Ahmed’s garden. These field recordings don’t feel gimmicky, which they could have easily. Instead, Ahmed created grooves by manipulating the recorded birdsong in her studio and also taking inspiration from their natural melodies to compose motifs for her quarter-tone flugelhorn. The EP signs off tenderly; ‘Questions No Answers‘ pairs Ahmed’s flugelhorn with Noel Langley‘s trumpet in a wistful, improvised duet woven through live sampling. I can imagine returning to this EP when I want to quiet my head a bit. Shinrin-Yoku is an utterly gorgeous piece of work. Give it a spin and see if it hits you the same way. – BT
