Winding Roads
Easy dub, various nu-jazz strains, outsider piano, new age reinvention, hip hop goes alt-pop and Brazilian winter warmers. It's a bumper edition so screw the shopping and get listening.
With several days to enjoy my daughter’s company coming up, as overjoyed as I’ll be to reconnect with her, it will mean I’m basically screwed for time until December, and I don’t want three week newsletter gaps to become the norm. So I’ve scrambled through the releases I had in my diary, given them the once over in rather zeitgeisty fast music fashion, hurriedly scribbled some thoughts, and here they are. Consider them more like artist introductions, you can write your own reviews this week - feel free to drop them in the comments, the best one wins a thumbs up emoji and encouragement to start a newsletter.
Kara-Lis Coverdale.
I feel like I should know more about Kara-Lis Coverdale, she seems to have been floating about my periphery and playlists more than the blog, and after a cursory listen it appears that not paying more attention to her well received, all ambient bases covered From Where You Came LP, and the ambient piano joys of A Series of Actions in a Sphere Forever album from earlier in the year was a grave oversight, and if you don’t know about the Smalltown Supersound then consider this a label introduction too, and I’ll consider this a reminder to do some active listening to her music very soon.
A Canadian musician, composer and producer based in Montreal, she focussed on music from an early age, and I’m happy to report decided to head down the road less travelled. Noticing Changes in Air brought me to this point and is just the sort of playful ambient tonic I need at the moment, sometimes the extended tracks take an age to evolve, others have their heads in the clouds like a child on the last day of summer term. This is my Coverdale gateway listen for now, but rest assured I’ll be exploring the rest of her 2025 releases over sooner rather than later.
John Thayer - Winds Gate (Aural Canyo
John Thayer has serious TSMM form and I’m always intrigued by what he’s up to, so it’s taken me far too long to properly sink into his latest transmission on the always worth checking Aural Canyon label. Based in New York he’s got an improvisatory bent which he deftly combines with serious studio craft, which must help when he’s engineering albums for others as a day job. He also plays well, and has all sorts of great collaborations to his name, check the dreamy folk vibes he cooked up with Leah Thomas for example, it’s a personal fave.
Wind Gate sees him on a mission to inject some energy and ideas into the new age vibrations still reverberating from the death throes of the counter-cultural movement (can we do that again sometime soon please?); there’s all sorts of blissful sounds, gongs, rattles, found sounds and wellness improving ambient frequencies floating through the speakers, artfully threaded around gently hypnotic, minimal frameworks.
Vintage drum machines are dusted off, software apes the insect sounds of Monsanto free fields, static prickles and crackles crackle as found sounds melt into the soundscape like warming butter, and there’s even a couple of oddly stately tracks at the end to rouse you from your meditation.
Crayon - Home Safe (Erased Tapes)
The Erased Tapes label are on a “good” rather than a genre specific music mission, and the fact that it’s been working well for them for almost twenty years gives me hope for TSMM’s future, but even I was surprised by the eclectic soul meets cultured alt-pop of Crayon.
Apparently he’s something of a go to guy for French rappers but he’s really stretched out on Home Safe which has its origins in Sunday music, dance and visual art jam sessions held in a shared Paris apartment, and how I would have liked to have been there wielding a paint brush and tambourine, though if I’d have made the album is another matter.
There’s a ton of musicians and vocalists involved - one of the joys of Tidal is the credits sub-menu, and a serious soulful thread runs throughout. There’s classical passages and strings galore, trip hop rubs shoulders with alt-pop and jazz and folk flourishes are never far away. Despite the myriad influences Crayon manages to pick up the thread like a boss, find the common ground in the jam session whimsy, ditch the filler, keep the killer and stitch it all together into a surprisingly stripped back offering that could only come from someone who’s a time served and talented producer.
СОЮЗ / SOYUZ - Krok (Mr. Bongo)
After autumn put up a game fight the weather is now pretty crap in the north of Portugal and winter is wrapping its wet, windy and chilly grip around the Minho region. I’m switching on the dehumidifier (honestly you need one up here) and heating, but a bit of Brazilian or Brazilian inspired music is always a good winter warmer, even though, probably for their own safety and sanity, СОЮЗ / SOYUZ happen to be Belarusians now living in Poland,
Calling this album Brazilian actually is something of a misnomer. Gone is the overt homage and piggy bagging on the vintage sounds of Brazil from their previous releases, even though the skeleton of the album was recorded in Sao Paolo with Sessa (more of him in the next tip), but the soft edged nature of the songs and the gentle bossa style vocals, this time in Belarusian rather than Russian, are constantly evocative of that most musical of countries. Despite the lack of tell tale instruments and lyrics, the outfit instead wind their way through buttery soul, vintage library music, smooth orchestral jazz and general twentieth century musical lushness. One for the nostalgics and easy listening massive, not to mention another fine addition to the already might fine Mr. Bongo catalogue.
Sessa - Pequena Vertigem de Amor (Mexican Summer)
Sérgio Sayeg aka Sessa, is a Sao Paolo native with time served in New York. Armed with a nylon string guitar and sweet voice he’s got a soft spot for fusing the sounds of his homeland in back to the future Tropicalia fashion. This is Brazilian music through and through, albeit with a functioning stoner vibe and some cool twists and turns.
Sweet string laden bossas, percussive grooving jazz dancers, guitar strummed free spirited orchestral folk, samba soul for the lovers rather than the fighters, microdosed bossa and jazz vocal dreaminess, it’s all there. Winter warming has never been so energy efficient, and big up as always to Mexican Summer his label.
Scientist Dubs KONGS to Free the Yellow King and Save the Swamp (Holiday Maker)
The optimistically named Hopetown Brown aka Scientist made the newsletter and blog back in April. He’s one of the original dub deities from Jamaica, got his start at Tubby’s studio no less and is still cutting it today. He’s also regularly on the look out for fellow dub warriors to collaborate with and for this outing he’s taken on Jack KONG’s (not to be confused with experimental rockers KONG as Tidal did) The Yellow Kings Revenge album, which is an inventive, well crafted, if slightly clunky drum powered outing from a couple of years back.
With the amount of well crafted, nicely stoned sonic detailing on the original it was always destined to work out well. Scientist has stripped things back a bit, added his secret sauce to the original stems and produced, perhaps with the exception of the slightly dreader, “Ambush at High Noon (YK’s Last Stand)“ opener, a lovely laid back, pleasantly baked, easy skanking dub listen.
JJJJJerome Ellis - Vesper Sparrow (Shelter Press)
I’d already tipped a couple of JJJJJerome Ellis’ singles for this album over at the blog and gave you up a heads up of the album in the last newsletter so hopefully a few of you have checked and playlisted the album or some of its tracks already. This sort of engagement really matters in today’s data driven music industry, even if you’re not present hit play on a few of your favourites or playlists before you leave the house, it will help the artists navigate the algorithms and rise above the AI slop that is currently further eroding genuine artists’ earnings. The modern music industry really is a nightmare for independents.
I’m also happy to report that his six track album for the ever surprising Shelter Press imprint doesn’t disappoint, it’s a hell of a ride, though perhaps not for those of a nervous disposition. At times he apes his childhood stutter with his music, at others he’s redefining what nu-jazz can be with walls of machine noise repurposed to free jazz ends. Check the peaceful, deeply soulful, largely minimal ambient piano title track, well until it erupts at the end of it’s nine minute duration that is, but don’t worry there’s a 15 minute ambient jazz meditation that follows it to get over the shock. And hold tight for some sax powered spoken word minimalism, and even some spiritual jazz meets blissful happy clappiness on the album’s farewell. It’s a jazz redefining rollercoaster.
Arve Henriksen
I was finally going to write about Henriksen’s recent collaborative outing with Eivind Haarset & Terje Insungset, Uncharted Waters and then noticed that he’s just also released an album with Estonian guitarist/composer Robert Jürjendal entitled Haihara which, wait for it, is released on Smalltown Supersound, although oddly it’s not mentioned on their Bandcamp page or website.
Anyway I’ve been following this trumpet playing spirit guide to help me shine a light on Scandinavia’s leftfield, and in Henrkiksen’s case often electronically fused, jazz output with interest the last few years and if you have an interest in more progressive nu-jazz then you should too. Be warned though he is prolific; personally I home in on his more ambient minded material where his succinct playing and stretched notes glide across low gravity electroacoustic soundscapes, and Uncharted Waters below is just that ticket. Serendipitously Haihara is another point in case, and now I know about Jürjendal’s ability to electronically twist and loop his multi-instrumental chops into parallel dimensional soundtracks I’ll be following him too.
Henriksen is quite the wormhole to tumble into, so if time is tight maybe head over to Sequential Stream, also released on Smalltown Supersound, which I have a soft spot for. Where you go from there is up to you.
Don’t Forget TSMM’s Playlists and Podcast.
From ambient sound baths and wellness imbuing new age vibes to underground house via jazz, neoclassical, folk, dub and more, the twenty one TSMM playlists and podcast cover a lot of ground, and are updated regularly.
They’re available on Tidal, Apple Music, Amazon, Youtube Music, Youtube, Deezer, Soundcloud and Spotify (if you don’t worry about them not paying most of the artists on the playlists).
Vesper Sparrow- that’s going into my listening queue.
Some interesting recommendations there..thanks