Listen to Nate Mercereau’s new single ‘Accelerator’

20 August 2026

Photo: Alyssa Mercereau

Last month, Nate Mercereau announced his new album Fantastic Thoughts, and shared the album’s radiant and jubilant title track. Described by Mercereau as “Active New Reality Progressive Fusion”, the record is a wild meeting point of progressive rock, jazz fusion, electronic experimentation and improvisation, with influences ranging from Yes, The Mahavishnu Orchestra and Jimi Hendrix to Robert Fripp, Jon Hassell, Squarepusher and Pat Metheny.

Following that first taste he has now shared the euphoric and propulsive ‘Accelerator’, yet another reason to be excited about Fantastic Thoughts. Speaking about it, Mercereau says:

 “music IS a Possible Reality Accelerator, I can go into ideas and feelings beyond words with music. I can go anywhere at any time. The rhythms, chords, melodies and self-samples in this music are Accelerators into the transcendent reality of the most radiant thoughts and feelings.”

Listen to ‘Accelerator’ below and grab the album when it’s out on September 11th through Leaving Records.

Erica Tucceri shares first glimpse into upcoming debut album Route 96

20 August 2026

Melbourne/Naarm has long been home to a rich crossover of jazz, soul, funk and experimental sounds, and Erica Tucceri has been part of that world for some time. A brilliant flautist, composer and producer, she has lent her talents to many artists, including Surprise Chef, ZFEX, Don Glori and Alexander Flood. She first presented her work as a bandleader and composer at the 2024 Melbourne International Jazz Festival, and has since relocated to London. Now Tucceri has announced her debut album, Route 96, due out on November 27th through DeepMatter Records. The album sprouted from the seeds of an usual chapter in her life. During Melbourne’s Covid lockdowns, she was working as a tram driver, and it was during those shifts that many of the album’s ideas began to take shape. What started as melodies and fragments recorded on her phone eventually became a full record, drawing on her memories of Melbourne and the sounds of everyday life in the city. She comments:

“This album is what happens when you leave a moonlighting musician alone in the drivers cabin of a Melbourne tram for a few years. The compositions took shape while I drove. Influenced by the city around me, I’d sing ideas into my phone at the end of my shift, tying the fabric of the music to the sights, sounds and memories of the city. My only rule: if it was catchy enough to have remembered throughout the shift, it was worth capturing.”

Musically, Route 96 brings together jazz, percussion-heavy grooves, broken beats, psychedelia and dancefloor rhythms, with Tucceri’s flute at its centre. The album also features Lewis Moody on keys and production, Ziggy Zeitgeist on drums, Matthew Hayes on bass, and percussionists Ray Pereira and Javier Fredes.

Alongside the album announcement, Tucceri has shared the first single, ‘Grazzie Ragazzi’, a buoyant and rhythm-led track that draws from the feeling of a packed dancefloor and a particular night at Section 8, where the crowd seemed to move together as one. She explains:

“I will never forget the way the energy of the whole room turned. It was heaving. Everyone in the space turned to face the stage, the band were on fire and the dance floor went completely nuts, almost as one. I’ve spent many a night at Section 8, but I’ve never seen that again.”

Listen to ‘‘Grazzie Ragazzi’ below.

Echoes of Zoo unveil ‘Higher Levels’ from upcoming third album Collective Intelligence

19 August 2026

Photo: Alexander Deprez

Echoes of Zoo are gearing up to release their third album, Collective Intelligence, arriving on October 2nd through Rebel Up! and Zephyrus Records.. Led by founder and saxophonist Nathan Daems, alongside Bart Vervaeck, Lieven Van Pée and Falk Schrauwen, the Belgian quartet continue to refine a distinctive musical language that draws from jazz, psychedelic rock, dub, African rhythmic traditions and adventurous improvisation. Collective Intelligence takes inspiration from the ways animals coordinate as swarms, herds and flocks, using that natural intelligence as both a musical starting point and a hopeful call for humans to cooperate, communicate and face global challenges together. Daems comments:

“The collective intelligence that we’re after is reflected in the music in a direct way – by the way we play together and how we function as a band. When we play together, we act as one. We can only be a good band if we display a form of sophisticated collective intelligence.”

Following ‘Flock Logic’, the album’s exhilarating first single, which grew out of the band’s time touring Brazil in early 2024, Echoes of Zoo have unleashed a second single, the effervescent ‘Higher Levels’. The title draws directly on the album’s wider fascination with animal communication and coordination, as Daems explains:

“The title points to the sophisticated ways animals communicate and coordinate as one, to what we casually call telepathy, though that label says more about our own limits than what’s actually possible in nature.”

He adds:

“On this tune, we channel our love for the bittersweet melancholy of West African highlife, then push it into new territory with quarter tones — notes between the usual 12 pitches of piano and guitar — and time-stretched grooves that sit between strict mathematical subdivisions.”

Listen to ‘Higher Levels’ now.

Blue Earth Sound announces second album, Everything to Remember, and shares first single ‘Limiter’

15 August 2026

We love Blue Earth Sound, the project of Chicago-based multi-instrumentalist, bandleader and composer James Weir, and we’re very excited to hear he has a new album on the way. We first fell for the project with Cicero Nights, Weir’s 2025 debut which was one of our Album Picks of the year. After years spent making music with Chicago post-punk band NE-HI and synth-driven group Spun Out, Weir took things in a very different direction, building a jazz-inflected and cinematic sound around his love of improvisation. He followed the album earlier this year with The St. Louis Sessions EP, pushing his sound into a more spontaneous territory.

Entitled Everything to Remember, the new record sees him continuing to weave together jazz, soul, improvisation and cinematic music. Across ten instrumental compositions, Weir continues to explore music as a way of holding onto places, memories and feelings that are difficult to put into words. Everything to Remember brings together his longtime collaborators including drummer Patch Romanowski, Resavoir trumpeter Will Miller, flautist and saxophonist Eamonn Prizy and International Anthem engineer Dave Vettraino. The album was recorded over multiple sessions in Chicago, with demos also developed at Romanowski’s family cabin in Rome, Wisconsin, where Weir and his collaborators spent time working in a more secluded setting. Weir comments:

“We started recording in November of 2025 over multiple sessions with Dave at his new studio on the deep south side of Chicago. Trips to Patch’s family cabin in Rome, Wisconsin were done to get demos recorded and fleshed out in a rural, secluded, inspired space while listening to Pink Floyd B-sides, New Age music, Mizell Brothers productions, Marvin Gaye and The Smiths.”

Everything to Remember is slated for a November 20th release through DeepMatter Records. It seems like a long while away but luckily we can already hear the beautiful, soulful and nostalgic ‘Limiter’, an exhilarating introduction to what’s coming. Speaking about the track, Weir says:

“This one was really written by the live band core of me, Martin Diaz, Patch Romanowski, Eamonn Priz and Michaels Wells. Had an absolute blast recording the psychedelic harmonica stems, inspired by Ludwig Goransson’s productions, and the Durutti column echo on the guitar in post-production, with moody Talk Talk space in the interlude. Gotta keep ‘em guessing.”

We can’t wait to hear the rest. Now listen to ‘Limiter’ below.

Watch Trá Pháidín’s video for new single ‘Garbhóg’

15 August 2026

Photo: Sara Leslie

Last month, Trá Pháidín announced the release of their new album Cloch ‘s Claí (trans. Stone & Wall), and alongside it shared the exuberant and jubilant ‘An Béal Bocht’. With release day just over a month away, the Irish collective are giving us another preview of their mighty and magnificent album with new track ‘Garbhóg’. As with the previous single, ‘Garbhóg’ is offered with an accompanying video directed by Peadar Tom Mercier. Watch it below and grab Cloch ‘s Claí when it drops on September 25th through World of Echo.

megiapa unveils video for new single, ‘on the spaceway (frfr)’

11 August 2026

Last month, megiapa announced the release of her debut album Intentions, and shared ‘Open Your Eyes‘, a sun-drenched and seductive first taste of what was to come. Now the LA-based producer, vocalist, visual artist and linguist is enticing us again with ‘on the spaceway (frfr)’, a hazy and lush instrumental that puts her beatmaking skills front and centre, with guest contributions from bassist ghalani of Greenwood (aka The Growth Eternal), pianist Ahmad Muhammad (aka Kafari) and Telemakus. Drawing on the liberatory philosophies of Sun Ra, megiapa describes the track as imagining “Black people in this spaceway just enjoying themselves in all their expansiveness.” The track arrives with an accompanying video directed by LA visual artist Eric Coleman, who had this to say about it:

“The inspiration comes in part from Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep and the way Burnett found beauty, intimacy, and humanity within the everyday rhythms of Black life. But rather than focusing on the mundane or the weight of daily existence, I wanted to turn the camera toward joy—specifically the joy that exists within Black spaces. The backyard became the center of that idea. A familiar, almost sacred space where we gather, eat, laugh, create, listen to music, talk shit, tell stories, and simply exist with one another. My intention was to create a day in the life of creative Black folk without making the creativity itself the spectacle. I approached the editing with the same intention. I wanted the video to feel deceptively simple—to move naturally between moments, gestures, conversations, and details while quietly revealing the complexity underneath them. Black life can be joyful and complicated, ordinary and extraordinary, intimate and expansive all at once. I wanted the images, rhythms, and relationships to speak for themselves—to create a small portrait of Black life from the inside, where the backyard is not simply a location, but a space of freedom, creativity, family, and belonging.”

Watch the video below and grab Intentions when it drops on September 25th through International Anthem.