Whilst it takes some patient listening to peel back the hidden layers contained within, the pensive Fly The Ocean In A Silver Plane provides plentiful rewards through its serious-minded but soulful roaming through the expansive inner-world of Pan•American.
album review
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Whereas its predecessor saluted the scenery of the Peak District across a smorgasbord flavoured with kosmische Tortoise-tinted post-rock and retro-futuristic synth sculpting, this follow-up honours the North Sea-facing coastline of the UK, on a somewhat less divergent yet deeper-cooked buffet of sounds.
Although the band had bedded in by now, the songs and direction were very much David's responsibility and across the sixteen delightfully ramshackle tracks collected here, his bedsit romanticism and rainy seaside melancholy rub shoulders with punkish disdain and a fleeting sense of desperate alienation.
...brings together older material that has been fermenting in other canonical places with newer pieces cooked-up afresh between the foursome. The result is an album that intrepidly tips a lot into a collaborative cauldron and pours out plenty of impressive distillations.
...thoughtful, measured shapes of the violin are carefully released and there is an air of subtlety to the support, with even the warm caress of the bass providing a sense of solace. The arms around the shoulders allow space for these musical tales to unfold from the vocal, piano and trumpet reflecting a concerto melancholy...
The latest two releases from experimental label Rope Worm find French improvisational duo Maninkari and Polish exploratory drummer Daniel Szwed expanding sound in very different directions, but both leaning very much towards esoteric instrumentalism.
UK trio Mammal Hands are continuing on their trajectory combining pastoral, spiritually aware jazz with hints of minimalism and classical to evoke a space that is constantly moving, but at a pace that is adventurous yet welcoming.
Remarkably the result of just a one-day session last summer, Blank Arcades is an internally wandering yet never unfocused affair that finds multiple routes between sparse simplicity and collaborative camaraderie.... With such well-measured richness to unpack in its roomy interiors, Blank Arcades is another captivating Andrew Rumsey-curated place to get lost inside.
There are hints of jazz inflection here and there, but the album offers far more: a very personal view that recognises some jazz tropes but disguises them with their own subtle sway. In places the bass and drums shapeshift, rolling like marbles with a willingness to forgo structure for texture when it seems right and allow light to pierce through.
...a neatly-distilled pop-noir affair – which includes recuts of prior EP extracts and newer material – that shifts between layered moodscapes and shadowy minimalistic grooves... Glen Johnson is clearly unafraid to wander wherever his perennial penchants take him
...a half-hour album filled with minute-long sketches, each inhabiting its own little world. The BELLASTRA is a random prompt generator that used found sounds to guide the players, with each of the trio adding electronics, accordion and flute respectively.
Expansive pianist and composer Olly Chalk has been in the contemporary improvised music scene in London for a number of years, often collaborating but always searching. Here, for In Those Remote Stars, he has drawn a quintet around him of like-minded individuals who bring a sense of bubbling adventure to his eleven compositions.
If 2025 wasn’t quite busy enough for Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey’s Skep Wax label -- in widening its scope via a slew of new signings and extra global connections -- then 2026 looks set to just keep on building upwards and outwards, with some pretty epic touring schedules and a flux of new releases already in the calendar well into the spring.
Paper Masks is a lovely focused affair where the hypnotic pull of the words shimmer in a peppery abstraction that invites you to taste the kernelling kinetics behind what’s being spoken.
...a product of near-seamless mind-melding that traverses multiple timelines of choice historic influences, without any fashion-focused anxiety.
...this second full-length set from Melbourne’s capital letter-averse kisses has a lot to live up to, both in comparison to the label’s stunning sole LP 2025 outing from Sienna Thornton and the quintet’s own utterly sublime self-released eponymous album from 2024.
Dignity opens with a five-part suite that delves into Isabelle’s feelings of dignity and how we can better live in that manner, with the other players lending a hushed setting which allows the flute to travel, snaking carefully and wavering gently as the Hammond holds out its hand and lends support.
Dialling down prior murkier and less direct tendencies to markedly push guitarist and lyricist Etienne Quartey-Papafio’s now-more-assured vocals much further to the fore, the sophomore Sunlight Echoes is a substantial and soulful step forward for the foursome, rounded out by drummer Jagun Meseorisa, guitarist Michael Adelaja and bassist Vanessa Govinden.