Gifted and genre-defying bassoonist and composer Joy Guidry has announced the release of Five Prayers, their intimate new album. Marking a shift from the ecstatic energy of free jazz into more meditative terrain, the record finds space in ambient gospel, experimental jazz, and layered electronics, guided throughout by Guidry’s electronically manipulated and emotionally charged bassoon. Exploring themes of vulnerability, healing, and identity, particularly through the lens of living with Bipolar II disorder, Five Prayers reflects a year of mental health challenges and spiritual rediscovery. “I began to pray in new ways,” they share. “These prayers came in the form of sonic meditations and poetry. They embraced more silence and solitude.”
Preceding the album release on May 16th through their own Jaid Records, Guidry has shared the first single, ‘Hold and Be Held’, a delicate and moving track inspired by Nikki Giovanni’s poem This World Is Not A Pleasant Place To Be. Take a listen now.
GoGo Penguin have just announced a brand new album and we couldn’t be more excited. The trio of Chris Illingworth, Nick Blacka and Jon Scott will release Necessary Fictions on June 20th through XXIM/Sony. Marking their seventh long-player, the upcoming record feels like both a return to their essence and a leap into bold, uncharted sonic territory. Over the last decade, they’ve consistently blurred the lines between jazz, classical and electronic music, and Necessary Fictions continues in that spirit, but with new textures and bolder moves. As Blacka puts it, they were trying to get to “our integral, authentic qualities at this moment in time.” One of the major shifts is the embrace of modular synthesizers, not as novelty, but as an extension of their sound. “There had to be a reason,” Illingworth explains. “And for us that was knowing that in places we wanted the character of the music to shift.”
Much of the record was written and recorded in their Manchester studio, which they reshaped into a creative sanctuary, with artwork and photos pinned to the walls for inspiration. Illingworth and Blacka were there nearly every day for a year, with Scott, who lives in London, joining in when the rhythm sections were ready for his input. There’s a real sense of joy in how they talk about the process – “I was very aware of smiling a lot in the studio while we were making it,” says Illingworth. “And I’m smiling now just thinking about it.”
The title, Necessary Fictions, comes from James Hollis’ book The Middle Passage, which explores ideas of the shadow self and the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of who we are. Blacka, who was reading the book, says it presents “very Jungian stuff about the shadow self, and hidden personae. You begin to think, ‘Hang on, there’s an authentic me, deep down in there somewhere!’” He continues:
“Musically, it’s been the same journey, the same process of ditching some of the things we’d got used to doing which were holding us back. We’d be writing tracks in the past where we’d be hesitant, like, ‘But what are people going to think? Aren’t we supposed to be this jazz trio who are not really jazz? Who play electronic-type music on acoustic instruments and it’s all very fast and frenetic?’”
Alongside the album announcement, GoGo Penguin shared the mesmerising lead single ‘Fallowfield Loops’, an exhilarating first taste of what’s to come, and we can’t wait to hear the full album in June. Check out the video the accompanies the track below.
A fixture of the German indie underground since the late ’80s, Berend Intelmann has played a quiet but steady role in shaping its sound, through bands like Hallelujah Ding Dong Happy Happy, Guther, and Paula, and more recently as a producer for artists including Jens Friebe, MissinCat, and Fotos. Now, the Berlin-based multi-instrumentalist, singer, composer and producer is stepping out from behind the scenes with Mother Nature, his first album under his own name. The upcoming album gathers eight tracks that thread together his background in pop songwriting and a growing interest in classical structure. There’s no dramatic shift – synths, drums, and vocals still form the core – but the arrangements stretch and fold in unexpected ways. “The synthesizer melodies are arranged like string quartets,” Intelmann says, “while the songs are presented as musical themes strung together so that they form a coherent story.” He refers to the sound as “slow-kraut—1980s synth sound with 1970s George Duke-style beats”, though the album mostly avoids leaning into any one genre.
Mother Nature features guest contributions from close collaborators, including Marla Hansen who joins him for a vocal duet on one of the tracks, Der Assistent on theremin, and Mieke Miami on flute and saxophone. The album, which Intelmann describes as being “co-produced by friends and family,” also showcases his collaborative spirit.
Ahead of the album’s release on May 30th through Karaoke Kalk, Intelmann has shared the first single ‘Life Of Another One’, an absorbing, gorgeous and tender track inspired by life and death. The track reflects “on memories that have become so distant that they feel like belonging to another person altogether with sombre, intertwined melodies”, as the press release explains. The darker tones gradually give way to “laid- back grooves, Intelmann’s smooth vocalisations and whirling synthesizer sequences”, creating a shifting and immersive atmosphere. ‘Life Of Another One’ is offered along with a video directed by David Jascha Zuschlag and you can watch it below.
With her deeply personal and historically rich new album Árabe just weeks away, vocalist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist Amanda Ekery has released a second single called ‘Yenobak Eih’, which follows the spellbinding ‘Stitching’. Like the album as a whole, the track continues Ekery’s exploration of identity, memory, and cultural storytelling, grounded in her experience as a half Syrian, half Mexican artist. Rooted in oral history and archival sound, ‘Yenobak Eih’ began with a family discovery: Ekery found her great-grandmother’s record collection tucked away in a closet full of 78 RPM records from Brooklyn-based Arab American labels, and homemade recordings including her great-grandfather Fahim announcing “memories from your relatives in El Paso, Tejas”, which opens the song.
While we wait for the full album to drop on May 9th, listen to ‘Yenobak Eih’ below.
Following the release of the gorgeous and shimmering ‘Beveg‘ back in February, Geir Sundstøl now unveils the moody and evocative ‘Broder’, the final taste from his upcoming album, Sakte Film. Marking his tenth year as a solo artist and his sixth album with the label, the upcoming Sakte Film is another dive into Sundstøl’s rich sonic world, that is as hard to pigeonhole as it is easy to get lost in. Geir comments:
“It struck me that categorizing this music is tricky—if not downright impossible. If that’s the case, then I’ve achieved what I wanted.”
As with much of his work, ‘Broder’ also resists easy categorization, drifting between cinematic folk, ambient textures, and gentle experimentalism. Sundstøl, who played all the instruments himself, had this say about it:
“I play everything here: pedal steel, Minimoog, Juno-6, Casio organ, timpani, harmonica, food processor, garage, and tubular bells. It sounds a bit like Tangerine Dream with a nod to the harmonica in “Flåklypa” (nostalgic and whimsical soundtrack from a famous Norwegian childrens movie). This melody was originally created for a podcast in 2018.”
Listen to ‘Broder’ below and grab the album when it drops on May 23rd through Hubro.
Trumpeter, composer and improviser Michael Sarian has a new record coming out at the end of the month titled Esquina. Due out on April 25th through Greenleaf Music, it finds the Toronto-born, Buenos Aires-raised, and NYC-based musician leaning hard into jazz fusion territory, “marked by wild, Jon Hassell-esque processed trumpet, synthesizers and electric organs and pianos, and galloping rhythms that would not be out of place on Agharta or On the Corner”, as the press release describes.
To bring the album to life, Sarian has stuck with the same core trio he’s recorded with before: Santiago Leibson on keys, Marty Kenney on electric bass, and Nathan Ellman-Bell on drums. The looseness in their playing, at times bordering on telepathic, makes Esquina feel like a sharp left turn taken with total control. The album came together with minimal or no rehearsals, built from graphic scores Sarian put together while on the road with a major pop act. This period of mainstream pop music exposure paradoxically fueled the album’s experimental and adventurous spirit, with the music pushing against the polish and rigidity of stadium gigs.
Sarian has previously shared the first single, a cover of Portishead’s ‘Glory Box’, and now he is following it up with ‘Straight Trash’. Showcasing some of Sarian’s most unpredictable and adventurous work, ‘Straight Trash’ opens with a swirling arpeggio and a haze of delayed trumpet, before tumbling into a warped, dub-soaked groove. Listen to both tracks below.
With her deeply personal and historically rich new album Árabe just weeks away, vocalist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist 
Following the release of the gorgeous and shimmering ‘
