Long a big man on the tenor saxophone campus, Chris Potter has never rested on his laurels, still hungry to make a significant statement significantly different from the one he made before. Alive with Ghosts Today manifests Potter as a saxophonist/composer/bandleader still in his prime for all three of these roles.
Potter’s guiding light for this project is the story of the notorious American abolitionist John Brown, who led armed and bloody anti-slavery activities in the run up to the American Civil War that exposed and illuminated a deep, complicated divide in American society. Potter felt it’s time to address that divide of which Brown symbolized that persists today. Of course, as an instrumentalist, Potter doesn’t address it through words.
Archive for May 7th, 2026
By this point, Loraine James needs little introduction. For much of the last decade, she has been one of London’s most consistently innovative and emotionally expressive club producers, building a reputation over a series of albums of questioning electronica, expert sound design, and shapeshifting beats, whether it’s the watercolour techno of records like For You and I (2019) and Reflection (2021), the Julius Eastman-homage Building Something Beautiful for Me (2022), or her extraordinary ambient work under the name Whatever the Weather.
…Exactly why this might be, it’s hard to say. How much it matters, even more so, as James does have a significant and committed audience; it’s just that her body of work so far commands…
Lavender Networks marks the Warp debut of Fire-Toolz, Angel Marcloid’s hard-to-pin-down new age cybermetal project, which has issued albums on tape-friendly experimental labels like Hausu Mountain and Orange Milk.
Coming several months after a Danny Brown album loaded with guest features from the hyperpop and digicore scenes, Marcloid’s presence on Warp shows that the label has been paying particular attention to newer generations of niche Internet-based musicians with an anarchic disregard for genre restrictions. Marcloid’s record-store-in-a-blender genre fusion is well established by this point, but as with her last few albums, she’s continually refining her style while adding new elements and approaches.
Cola always felt like a comedown. By the time Tim Darcy and Ben Stidworthy’s previous band, Ought, came to an end in 2021, the Montreal group had morphed from nervy, scrappy post-punk to grandiose art rock. Cola, formed with drummer Evan Cartwright, shifted to something stark and simple with the terse indie rock of their debut, 2022’s Deep in View and its slightly lusher follow-up, 2024’s The Gloss. On their third album, Cost of Living Adjustment, Cola have embraced, if not maximalism, then at least letting go of restraint.
The trio is still enthralled by the pointed edges of post-punk that serve as the skeleton of most of their tracks. Yet, from the moment that opener “Forced Position” kicks in, you can tell something has changed. Cartwright’s anxious…
Look for Your Mind! is the 6th album from brothers Brian and Michael D’Addario, aka The Lemon Twigs, following on from their career highs of 2023’s Everything Harmony and 2024’s A Dream Is All We Know, both of which had elevated their music to a new finessed, sophisticated level. On this latest outing the formula hasn’t really changed in that the songs still have their roots in the 1960s and ’70s and arrive with a refreshed vibrancy, although there are moments where the brothers tread a fine line between authenticity and pastiche.
The first half of the album features several standout moments, some of the best of their career to date. The title track comes out of the blocks fast, the sound of 1965 guitar-pop distilled into the finest of essences. The motifs may be familiar…
The energy is the first thing you notice. A lot of reunions and records coming off a long hiatus can sound tentative, careful, or, worst of all, listless. Remember the Humans, the first Broken Social Scene album in nine years, brims with vitality from the outset. In fact, the opening track, “Not Around Anymore,” pulses with pent-up energy, and in it frontman Kevin Drew reassures the listener that passing time is okay, that “you don’t need to cry anymore,” even though, “it’s all gone away.” Loss doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
The song also reassures in its symphonic pleasures, showcasing Broken Social Scenes’s shifting palettes, from soft horns to sped-up fast-picked guitars. Throughout, the band overflows with ideas, excited but patient, letting the tunes…
…Omnivore Recordings reignite its longtime series of Knack collections with Knackology: The Zen Recordings, a 19-song collection from the archives of the label founded by the band’s main songwriter and lead singer, the late Doug Fieger. The set boasts demos, live recordings, and studio rarities from the band that’s so much more than just “My Sharona” and “Good Girls Don’t.”
Knackology rounds up demos from Fieger and Berton Averre – the pair began collaborating in 1973, six years before the release on Capitol Records of Get The Knack – of “That’s What the Little Girls Do” and “Rock & Roll Is Good for You,” as well as the band’s live performances from various venues of “My Sharona,” “Good Girls Don’t,” “Baby Talks Dirty,” “(She’s So) Selfish,”…
Heavy Stereo, Hurricane #1, Arnold, Kevin Rowland in suspenders… it’s generally accepted that Creation Records did not invest their Oasis windfall wisely. Yet amid the frenzy of the mid-’90s guitar-band goldrush, they did make one very shrewd acquisition, swooping in to sign Super Furry Animals after only the band’s second show proper outside Wales – even if Alan McGee subsequently let slip that this may have been more a case of luck than judgement.
“Initially I just heard Super Furry Animals as being similar to Blur,” McGee told SFA biographer Ric Rawlins. “So I thought, ‘Well, fuck! Blur sell lots of records, I could have my version!’ Little did I know that I was signing The Beach Boys meets fucking Gong meets Isaac Hayes on a fucking…
Aldous Harding cuts a divisive figure in the world of alt-rock. To her devotees – and there are enough of them to warrant her playing three nights at London’s Barbican later this month – she is a strange and endlessly fascinating figure. Her lyrics are mysteries to be unpicked for deeper meaning, like dreams awaiting analysis. On Train on the Island, her fifth album, you’re invited to make some kind of sense of stuff about naked owls, having your face covered with bechamel sauce, seeing “the real John Cale” silently eating rice, “Sicilians reaching over the clams”, and the imponderable lines: “I’m saving myself by eating rocks and plants / I pray for the incel.”
The curious album covers; the uneasy stage presence and between-song non-sequiturs;…
Longtime fans of Evansville, Indiana’s the Cold Stares might be confused by the title of the once-duo/now trio’s new album.
Promotional notes advise us that Texas was created after touring extensively in that state, looking to capture its essence in their music. They recorded these eleven songs in Austin at the mostly analog Bud’s Recording Services, further cementing the Lone Star connection.
This is not an outfit that sits around waiting for inspiration to strike. Texas is the fifth album since 2021, following two discs of The Southern (2024, 2025), in addition to nearly constant touring. Initially, singer/songwriter/guitarist Chris Tapp was so convinced in his songs that he self-released the first four Cold Stares albums…