Freq has been online in various forms since 1 April 1998; this iteration has been around as of 2010, with an archive of older material available.
Supergroups as a mainstream proposition appear seem to have largely become a thing of the past, in part due to the music industry’s latter-day solo performer-centric focus and brute economics. Therefore, it has fallen to veterans operating in more independent imprint spheres to keep such convergences alive.
It has been seven years since the last Concept album and although the line-up remains the same, with Trygve Fiske on bass, Hans Hulbækmo on drums and Oscar Grönberg on piano and Hanna Paulsberg herself on sax, they have decided after fifteen years of playing together to see how it sounds with a vocalist.
Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher trilogy, recently released in a handsome blu-ray slipcase set by Second Sight films, not only offer a hectic thug’s eye view of Copenhagen low-life, they also ask two very important questions. One, who is the titular pusher, and two, what does any of this have to do with a Japanese video game auteur (OK, maybe that one’s just me).
Here, with a quintet that includes regular friends Omri Mor on piano, Tal Yahalom on guitar and Yoed Nir on cello, it takes a further heartfelt look at some more of the nigunim that have arisen during Yosef's spiritual wanderings along with a few pieces of a more personal bent.
All four members are part of the fertile Copenhagen jazz scene and regular collaborators with other artists but here, Erik Kimestad, Mads Hyhne, Richard Andersson and Jakob Høyer have convened to bring their years of experience to bear on some of trumpeter Erik's compositions along with some group improvisation.
The film articulates the emotion of grief in all its slings and arrows, with a dedicated and sometimes painful sense of reality. It reminds us that, while Shakespeare’s work may be immortal, in his life mortality lay all around him.
...heavyweight collaboration between bassist Guy Segers, percussionist Charles Hayward and guitarist Kawabata Makoto. Recorded live in Brighton back in 2013, the album consists of three extended improvisations...
After a relentlessly prolific and steadily diversifying 2025, it’s perhaps not surprising that Precious Recordings is one of the first independent labels out of the release gates at the dawning of 2026. With respectively refreshing twists, the below pair of near-back-to-back vinyl and digital outings confirm that the core business of digging up the BBC’s buried treasure chests – with consent - remains undiminished: LP-length anthology of The Twinsets’ triptych of vintage John Peel sessions & Jetstream Pony’s recorded live-on-air appearance for 6Music, Riley & Coe Session 09.04.25 EP.
...ruminates on the relationship between Norway and the United States, particularly on the flow of migrants in the nineteenth century. Having spent some time on the remote island of Traena, he uncovered correspondence and photographs sent between siblings who had never met as one had emigrated to Hawai'i and there is something in the dichotomy between two different civilisations that has been captured here.
Whilst the arrestingly cheesy-peculiar front cover of Impostor Syndrome is rather offputtingly redolent of something you might easily flick past in a car boot sale crate of decades-old novelty records, inside the sleeve resides an assemblage of absolutely charming warmth and ingenuity.
...although ostensibly jazz, the pieces recorded here run through a real mix of styles from light impressionism to dramatic rhythmic workouts.
Both a revolving door group and a single-minded mission, Matt Pond PA were officially inaugurated eponymically in Philadelphia way back in 1998, with the debut Deer Apartments LP. Since this beginning, the off-to-one-side enterprise has been adroitly steered by self-described ‘dignified drifter’ Matt Pond through innumerable membership configurations, label deals, modes of operations and sonic shifts across prolific releases of various shapes and sizes.
Utilising, electric, pedal steel and Portuguese guitars along with electronics, his sparse, diffuse sounds evoke the lull of the surface and the mystery of the depths.
It is absolutely great that these pieces have found the light of day after all these years and is an essential addition to what is a relatively slender discography for such a long-standing group.
With cosmic horror having made something of a sly comeback in recent years (as the malign influence of HP Lovecraft has given way to the Thomas Ligottis and Laird Barrons of this world), there’s never been a better time to immerse yourself in the secrets of this strange, physics-and-architecture-defying house and its wonderful gallery of grotesques for a unique slice of surrealist horror.
...an acute observation of a time in this country when things seemed remarkably bleak; but it doesn't jeer or harass, just observes and reports. It just so happens that the musical making is a delight and the singer has lived to tell the tale.
... a solid slice of guitar / synth graze, psychologically skewered on Adi’s impassioned delivery ...White Souls In Black Suits is a welcome Clock DVA reissue with the promise of more classics to re-released in the near future.
