This week’s guide is by CF Smith and contributors: Words By Shoaib, Neil G, Benny Thomas, and Irfan Ayaan.
Friday rolls in, and Between The Cracks lands once again. Six fresh discoveries from across the spectrum have slipped into our ears, and we’re sharing them with you. Arve Henriksen, Nova Fellowship, Enneads, Blind Yeo, and a few other gems shape this week’s selection. Dive in, enjoy, and keep showing love to the artists and labels. Check out our latest picks below.
Albums
Arve Henriksen – KAIKU RUIJASTA
Arve Henriksen returns with a gorgeous new album. KAIKU RUIJASTA drifts between ECM‑style jazz, fourth world textures, and ambient haze. The music draws deeply from Kven culture and the northern landscape. Henriksen shaped the album after scoring Kniven i ilden, a work that sparked a personal journey into his father’s Kven roots. The record captures the minimalist, ghostly, and deeply atmospheric sonic signature Henriksen is known for, making it an essential listen. Standouts include ‘Varenkinvuono’, ‘Yli Sumun’, ‘Kalvet’, ‘Elävä kaiku‘, ‘Ruijan rajoila‘ and the title track. A beautiful album you genuinely need in your life. – CFS
Nova Fellowship – CONTINUUM
Nova Fellowship‘s CONTINUUM turns a one-off festival tribute into something more lasting: a vivid meeting point between Steve Reid‘s spiritual jazz, funk-rooted freedom, and Four Tet‘s electronic imagination. Recorded in a one-day live session at Studio Pigalle in Paris, the album feels immediate, loose, and deeply connected to the music’s exploratory spirit. The Franco-American quintet consists of Zach Morrow (drums), Francesco Geminiani (tenor sax, flute, electronics), Hermon Mehari (trumpet), Tony Tixier (keyboards & percussion) and Rob Clearfield (keyboards). ‘Sixth House’ opens with restless momentum, as Zach Morrow’s drums push the ensemble forward while keyboards and horns build a dense, propulsive groove. The performance honours Reid without sounding archival, finding fresh energy in the composition. The explosive versions of the tracks ‘Nova‘ and ‘Free Spirits’, arranged by Tixer and Clearfield, known in particular for his work alongside Makaya McCraven, feature hypnotic bass lines and captivating synthetic textures on their shared keys and synths. ‘Lions Of Judah’ carries that same physicality, balancing muscular rhythm with spacious horn lines and hypnotic keyboard textures. It is soulful and expansive, letting the band stretch the piece while keeping its pulse firmly intact. ‘Morning Prayer’ shifts the mood toward something more mysterious and contemplative. Francesco Geminiani’s unusual Nautilus flute gives the piece an almost ritualistic quality, surrounded by electronics and gently unfolding textures. Throughout CONTINUUM, Nova Fellowship play with conviction, treating this repertoire not as museum pieces but as living material. Their chemistry makes the tribute feel immediate, adventurous, and genuinely inspired. – WBS
The Dengie Hundred with Gemma Blackshaw – Days in Pieces
Days in Pieces deepens the nocturnal world that The Dengie Hundred and Gemma Blackshaw began on Who Will You Love. Sparse beats, found sounds, and spectral oscillations support hushed vocals recorded alone at home, often while children slept. The songs unfold like late‑night lullabies that are too honest to be soothing. Lyrics dwell on romantic intimacy, the ache of distance, and the strange overlap between desire and maternal care. Many lines feel diaristic, as if whispered confessions about love, exhaustion, and quiet longing were set directly onto looping patterns. The new record’s words are described as sharper, ruminating on romance with more clarity and less soft focus than before. Repetition plays a key role. Short phrases return over minimal arrangements, turning into mantras about holding on, letting go, and being needed. The overall tone is hypnagogic and intimate. It feels like listening in on someone thinking out loud, half in the dark, about how to keep love intact across days in pieces. – IA
Blind Yeo – The Lemoine Point
The Lemoine Point uses its geometric title as a metaphor for how Blind Yeo‘s songs bring scattered times and feelings to a single centre. Musically, their psychedelic folk and art‑rock textures feel bright and slightly unstable. Guitars, synth loops, drums, and cello swirl around compact vocal refrains. The lyrics often arrive as short, repeated images that grow heavier with each cycle. Instead of telling linear stories, they fix on small details of nature, memory, and daily life, letting those fragments stand in for larger emotional states. Songs like Today / Tomorrow, Memory to the Soil, and Magnolia contemplate time passing, grief settling into landscape, and love showing up in ordinary scenes. On Right Side of the Round and the title track, phrases about balance and direction echo the record’s fascination with hidden centres. The overall effect is quietly devotional, as if the band were chanting through anxiety toward a fragile but real point. – IA
Enneads – Enneads
Based in New York, the Enneads are a trio consisting of Phyllis Chen on piano, Hamir Atwal on drums, and Zach Layton on a rare instrument, the 17-string electric bass. Taking their name from the Neo-Platonist philosopher Plotinus, the Enneads’ approach to improvisation is rooted in exploring naturally occurring harmonic overtones, which Pythagoras described as number made audible. Chen and Layton both explore the resonant nodal points on their strings, with Layton exploring a wide range of tunings on his 17-string bass (which, in this context, functions similarly to an ancient Greek harp or Lyre), and Chen finding rich complexes of overtone structures inside the piano’s lid. Through electronic amplification and effects pedals, these overtones are further enhanced and modulated, producing a dense, layered sonic texture. Hamir Awtal’s imaginative drumming again produces hypnotic rhythmic patterns that make multiple numerical ratios audible through cycles of organic pulsation, articulating in time. – BT
Payton MacDonald – Transients Vol. 1, 2, & 3
Across the collection of Transients Vol. 1, 2, & 3, Payton MacDonald turns the marimba into a gateway for restless percussion. His duets with Susie Ibarra, Billy Martin, and Nava Dunkelman feel conversational, each player pushing rhythm into unexpected shapes without losing its human touch. Rituals moves with an almost ceremonial urgency, and the song Spinnings feels playful and perpetually off balance, while Sweet Suite stretches the project into a wider, more meditative space. Snippy, along with Tales and Tales Too, are also a highlight. The album’s joy comes from hearing musicians react in real time, letting texture, instinct, and silence matter equally. Overall, the album feels adventurous and intimate, like discovering several musical languages being invented during one long conversation. – NG
