This week’s guide is by CF Smith and contributors: Words By Shoaib, Benny Thomas, Gavin Senaratne and Irfan Ayaan.
Each week at Twistedsoul, we showcase the finest new releases from across the globe. We scour Between The Cracks to bring you notable releases that might may have flown under your radar. This week, we’re highlighting new releases from Space Afrkia, Vanishing Twin, Negro Leo, Gigi Masin and more. Lend an ear to the music, and if it strikes a chord, show some love to the artists and labels by supporting them.
Albums
Space Afrika – Quiet Storm
Space Afrika‘s Quiet Storm is an expansive, emotionally rich album that deepens the duo’s signature blend of ambient, dub, and techno while embracing bold new collaborations and themes of spirituality and growth. Known for crafting immersive, atmospheric sound worlds, the Manchester/Berlin pair (Joshua Tarelle Reid and Joshua Inyang) push their aesthetic further here, weaving together ambient textures, dubweight, trip-hop grooves, techno rhythms, and dreamy classical into a cohesive yet sprawling journey. Quiet Storm has been described as the duo’s most ambitious work to date, thanks in part to its wide‑ranging guest list, which includes Klein, Kelly Moran, RXK Nephew, Tony Njoku, Axelle Fanyo, Alto Aria, and Kiala Ogawa. As a follow-up to 2021’s acclaimed Honest Labour, it signals a maturation of the duo’s vision without losing the introspective, meditative quality that defines their music. – BT
ffolliott – Gree
Cut over five quiet years in a Belfast bedroom, Gree feels like stumbling upon an unlabelled shoebox of domestic recordings. Producer and songwriter Jamie ‘ffolliott’ Nelson leaves aging cassette tape hiss, vinyl dust, and tape-head pitch wobble completely exposed, framing fragile songs around raw childhood memories and etchings recovered from his late father’s private artistic archive. Opener ‘cappy’ sets the album’s dusty sonic baseline. Pure intimacy. Over warm acoustic chops and crackling vinyl drums, broken-beat veteran Kaidi Tatham lays down thick, elastic Moog basslines that anchor Nelson’s whispered, close-mic’d confessions with unexpected rhythmic grit. On ‘wash’, the mood turns blurry and spectral. Fingerpicked guitar figures drift through watery tape delays, mimicking the muffled ache of overhearing adult family arguments through thin plaster walls as a young child. Words bleed softly. The piece captures domestic confusion with devastating, unhurried restraint. ‘a la tet’ pushes into eccentric, playful beatmaker territory. Warped guitar loops wobble beneath choppy MPC percussion while Nelson chants fragmented refrains like half-remembered nursery rhymes. Off-kilter and hypnotic, it treats bedroom pop as an open playground. Lead cut ‘sideit’ carries the record’s heaviest emotional weight. Slumping hip-hop drums drive beneath melancholic chords as Nelson parses domestic addiction and family silence with steady, unsparing honesty. No melodrama. Just clean, stinging clarity. Scattered between the album’s longer pieces, interludes like ‘rinterlude‘ and ‘duederlude‘ draw on crackly boombox tapes from the 1990s, capturing ffolliott and his sister as children, broadcasting imaginary radio shows from their family home. Gree shows that imperfection holds far more truth than clean digital polish. By giving his family’s private ghosts room to breathe, ffolliott crafts an uncommonly moving, singular debut. – WBS
Vanishing Twin – Archives
Shapeshifting trio Vanishing Twin make music like an ongoing collective conversation. Egos disappear quickly. Split between rural France and London, Cathy Lucas, Valentina Magaletti, and Susumu Mukai built Archives by trading raw tape improvisations across a virtual studio, freely swapping instruments to dismantle conventional notions of band authorship. On ‘Sugar Stone ‘, the trio glides into weightless, cosmic pop territory. Mukai’s rubbery bassline drives beneath Lucas’s serene vocal reflections on motherhood, while Magaletti’s off-kilter percussion keeps the rhythm playfully buoyant. It feels domestic, surreal, and wonderfully warm in the chest. ‘Familiar Fruit’ locks into a hypnotic motorik sway driven by crisp rimshots, kalimbas, and buzzing analog synths. Skewed vocal harmonies fold over themselves like origami. Nothing sits still for long. The groove morphs constantly without losing its cool, understated swagger. Lead single ‘Bring Me the Axe’ unspools a darker, stranger narrative. What starts as a lulling acoustic chant suddenly turns into a tense, percussive hunt. Magaletti attacks unusual sound objects and wooden blocks with ferocity, pushing Lucas’s icy refrain into menacing fairy-tale territory. The title track ‘Archives’ pieces together spoken-word fragments, cellos, and spiraling strings. It sounds like stumbling into a dusty projection booth where half-remembered film cues collide. Spliced tape loops flutter throughout, dissolving the line between private rehearsal and finished song. Archives prove that physical distance can sharpen creative intuition. By treating their daily studio outtakes as living folklore, Vanishing Twin deliver their most mercurial, adventurous record yet. A masterclass in collective trust. – WBS
Negro Leo – White Elephant
Few retrospectives feel as unruly and alive as White Elephant, the new anthology from Brazilian experimental musician Negro Leo. Co-published by Hive Mind Records and Rio de Janeiro’s QTV, the sprawling 27-track collection pulls from 14 albums, EPs and singles released since 2012, capturing an artist whose work has consistently resisted easy classification. The breadth of Leo’s music becomes apparent almost immediately. ‘The Newspeak‘ showcases his experimental approach to lyricism while ‘Ilha de Calor’ attacks with angular post-punk funk. Elsewhere, the synth-heavy ‘ONLINE AGORA‘ pushes towards maximalist hyperpop, showing how electronics and programming became increasingly prominent in Leo’s later work. Yet the record is just as compelling when it pulls back. ‘Marcha Para Longe‘ carries a loose psychedelic quality, while the closing ‘Esferas‘ reveals a more delicate, exposed side of his songwriting. Across the compilation, traces of samba, funk carioca, Tropicalismo, free jazz and Brazilian popular music continually crash into one another. White Elephant can be deliberately overwhelming, but that is part of its appeal. Political, unpredictable and packed with ideas, it turns more than a decade of experimentation into a statement of intent. For adventurous listeners looking for an entry point into one of Brazil’s most singular experimental voices, this is an essential place to start. – GS
Wau Wau Collectif – Teranga
Teranga completes Wau Wau Collectif‘s trilogy with a warm, multi‑lingual celebration of welcome and shared meeting. Drawing on a large network of Senegalese and European musicians, the album weaves balafon, ngoni, strings, and guitars into songs that feel communal and gently psychedelic. Lyrics move between Wolof and French, often invoking hospitality, history, and everyday struggle. Tracks like Oh Africa! and 100 Ans sound like open‑armed addresses to the continent’s past and future. La Paix du Senegal and Protection carry more explicitly protective and hopeful messages, sung over lilting rhythms that make their politics feel lived rather than declared. The title song Teranga embodies the concept of welcome, turning the word into a refrain that invites listeners into the collective’s loose, multilingual family. Across the record, the lyrical tone is gentle but insistent. It insists on connection, travel, and collaboration as spiritual practices in a world that often pulls people apart. – IA
Gigi Masin – Movement
After the jazzy detour of his 2023 Dolphin LP (see review), Gigi Masin‘s Sacred Bones debut finds him doing what he does best: moving effortlessly between melancholic electronics, technoid robotics, and deep ambient warmth. ‘Bed on Mars‘ opens with cosmic stillness, while ‘Lost‘ floats like a slow tide with its soft synth-trumpet glow. ‘Deception Dance‘ adds a subtle, off-kilter beat, think Sun Electric meeting Carl Craig, and ‘Golden‘ bumps up the mood with warm, Balearic light. Gigi Masin never fails to deliver something quietly astonishing, and I’m genuinely grateful for the music he keeps sharing. – CFS
