This week’s guide is by CF Smith and contributors: Words By Shoaib, Neil G, and Irfan Ayaan.
Friday has arrived, bringing with it a brand-new edition of our Between The Cracks feature. This week, analog electronics, ambient-pop, avant-garde jazz, lo-fi indie, and more. Dive into our latest picks, and if something strikes a chord with you, show your love by clicking the buy or share link. Enjoy the music, and have a great weekend!
Albums
Norma Winstone – Live at Maida Vale (Gilles Peterson / BBE)
Well, this is living legend musical magic! Norma Winstone‘s Live at Maida Vale shows a master still in full flight. Curated by Gilles Peterson for his BBE Music collaboration, the recording serves as a first glimpse of the upcoming BBC Sessions Vol. 2 – Maida Vale: The End of an Era. Backed by a sharp, sympathetic sextet – her sons Leo and Alex Taylor, plus Oren Marshall, Elliot Galvin and Mark Lockheart – the amazing Winstone moves through five performances with the same lyrical curiosity and narrative instinct that have shaped her five-decade career. Peterson calls this “possibly the biggest highlight of all my years at the BBC,” and honestly, who are we to argue? He’s been there, done it, and got the T-shirt. With sleeve notes by Emma Warren adding context and care, Live at Maida Vale is a huge statement that Winstone’s artistry remains immediate, essential, and beautifully on point. A really, really beautiful piece of art. – CFS
Aquiestoy – Til We Dissolve
Seattle-based guitarist Carlos Snaider brings his Nuyorican and Ecuadorian roots into focus on Til We Dissolve, a richly layered record where acoustic instrumentation, analog electronics, hip-hop, and Latin music coexist without feeling forced. Across twelve tracks, Aquiestoy creates a world that feels personal yet expansive, moving naturally between languages, rhythms, and moods. ‘What You Bring’ opens the album with a full live‑band arrangement, laying down a rich, organic foundation. With Julian Weisman on bass and Mario Layne Fabrizio on drums, it sets the tone beautifully: warm, fluid, and very much alive. Recent single ‘Daño Choca ‘ invites listeners into a reflective space where texture and feeling take the lead. ‘Si Fueras Tú’ is a warm, intimate standout, pairing Snaider’s vocals with a fluid groove that lets the Latin influences sit comfortably alongside the album’s electronic textures. The track carries a gentle sense of longing, but its rhythmic foundation keeps it grounded and inviting. ‘Receive It’ unfolds as an expansive folktronica journey, with Weisman again on bass and Elias Hampton on acoustic guitar, gently bridging finger‑picked folk traditions with glowing, warm electronic layers. ‘What Did You Say?’ locks into a percussion-driven groove, with Fabrizio on drums and Daniel Mendoza on congas, blending Latin-jazz swing with hip-hop-leaning polyrhythms and vocals. ‘Coconut Rice’ opens things up further, blending guitar, percussion, bass, and electronics into something more spacious and hypnotic. Its relaxed movement reflects Snaider’s ability to make diverse influences feel like parts of the same musical language, not separate ingredients. Ultimately, Til We Dissolve is about connection: between cultures, languages, people, and sounds. Snaider’s production gives every element room to breathe, resulting in an album that feels thoughtful, fluid, and genuinely alive. – WBS
Paul Giess, Randi Pontoppidan, Jamaaladeen Tacuma – The Mirage of Ceuta
Conceived during a 2024 residency in Essaouira, Morocco, The Mirage of Ceuta unfurls like a lucid dream sequence. Nothing is staged. The stunning collaboration centers on the trio of avant-garde bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma, composer and vocalist Randi Pontoppidan, and trumpeter/producer Paul Giess, with Matthew Jernigan on drums and Mohamed Wakrim and Maryam Bouzid on voice and Guembri. Made possible by the Third Way Cultural Alliance, the talented musicians translate windswept medina alleyways and coastal encounters into hallucinatory sound collages. Title track ‘The Mirage of Ceuta’ sets the imaginary coastline in motion right away. Giess’s Harmon-muted trumpet drifts through delayed feedback loops while Pontoppidan layers breathy, siren-like vocal washes in the background. It feels suspended in mid-air. Eerie, heat-warped, and quietly hypnotic. On ‘Desair’, the mood tightens into dark, nervous minimalism. Tacuma’s deep, rubbery bass notes creep beneath Matthew Jernigan’s light brushwork, creating subtle tension while Giess offers short, blues-bent trumpet cries. The players leave generous breathing room, letting salty ocean air seep straight into the tape. ‘The Kind Craftsman Appears‘ is anchored by the Guembri’s earthy pulse, creating a cyclical groove that feels timeless rather than repetitive. Wakrim’s Guembri flows with deep, woody, ancient blues, and his hypnotic tones dissolve the boundary between voice and instrument. Around it, Giess’s restrained trumpet layers the piece with airy melodic responses. ‘Welookadis’ pivots toward playful abstraction. Quick and wonderfully eccentric. Stripping away conventional rhythm, Pontoppidan treats her voice like a modular synthesizer, stuttering syllables and pitch-shifted clicks against Giess’s live electronic processing. It sounds like overheard market chatter refracted through a surreal filter. Maryam Bouzid’s soul‑stirring tones and hypnotic Guembri playing steal the spotlight, carrying ‘The Soul of the Guembri’ and ‘The Soul of the Guembri Floats On‘ with raw, devotional force. The songs float on her gorgeous, resonant lines – part chant, part invocation – as the Guembri’s eep, woody sound anchors everything in place. The Mirage of Ceuta succeeds by sidestepping predictable tourist clichés. Rather than borrowing Moroccan traditions for cheap exoticism, the trio creates an authentic meeting ground where memory, jazz intuition, and ancient coastal wind blur together. – WBS
SQ Mice – SQ Mice
The self-titled album of SQ Mice sounds like three people raiding a basement full of broken club equipment and somehow discovering pop music inside it. The trio mixes no-wave abrasion, tape-warped techno, microtonal synths, screaming bass, and multilingual vocals into something wonderfully difficult to pin down. The song Morgens Müde opens with hypnotic tension, Windowcleaner sharpens the record’s nervous energy, and La Pomme sinks into a stranger, more seductive groove. Meanwhile, East of the Sun is a sublime piece of haunting ambient-pop and minimal wave. The sprawling, atmospheric closer Molecules brings their “squeahmy manifesto” to an end. The excellent thing about this work of art is that the album constantly shifts between bangers, ballads, and damaged electronic textures without losing its personality. It makes one feel curious, amused, and slightly unsettled, like stumbling into an underground party with its own bizarre private language. – NG
DJ Plead – Please
On Please, DJ Plead shifts from high‑intensity club weapons to intimate, downtempo cuts that feel like small films. The ten tracks move through offbeat rhythms and Arabesque synth lines that carry traces of Lebanese heritage and inherited memory. Pieces like Return to Deuce, Stucco, and Seven Eight, Too Late lean on tightly patterned percussion, but their mood is closer to reflection than release. There are few traditional song‑form vocals, yet the music has a strong lyrical presence. Melodic figures behave like recurring lines in a poem, returning with slight changes and hinting at unresolved feelings. Track titles such as Unforced Error, Open Era, and Traffic suggest everyday friction and movement, while the harmonies feel soft‑spoken and cinematic. The result is a quietly hypnotic album where emotional narrative lives in texture and phrasing rather than in sung verses, and where the lyrics are implied by tone and atmosphere. – IA
Regina Collage – Horizont
The album Horizont feels like music recorded with the door half open, letting uncertainty, memory, and distant light quietly enter the sonic soundscape. Regina Collage builds her songs from sparse bass, guitar fragments, lo-fi haze, and an exposed voice that makes every imperfection feel painfully close. The song Tremolo trembles with fragile warmth, It Should Be Something drifts through exhaustion with heavy restraint, and the title track turns distance into something almost tangible. Sung in Ukrainian, the album carries emotion even when language falls away. Listen closely, and you can feel the flavours of loneliness, tenderness, and stubborn hope living side by side, creating a record that feels deeply private yet strangely welcoming. – NG
