July 4, 2025
This quarter proved to be so abundant with interesting music that I broke it into monthly installments. You can hear these June releases by clicking on the highlighted titles. As always, descriptive blurbs in quotation marks come from the artist’s own PR or other reviews, and the names of artists who live or have lived in the Pacific Northwest are in bold.
Tarun Balani - Kadahin Milandaasin (India)
"This deeply personal work explores the jazz drummer and composer's Sindhi heritage, tracing the migration journey of his grandfather from Sindh to New Delhi. The album’s title translates to “When Will We Meet?” and reflects themes of longing, identity, and cultural preservation. Balani’s compositions blend traditional Sindhi folk music with contemporary jazz, creating a rich tapestry of rhythm and improvisation."
Francis Beybey - Trésor Magnétique (Cameroon/France)
"...this compilation of unreleased tracks, archival recordings, and neglected gems from Bebey's vault, feels like a grand reveal in an ongoing narrative...In an era when African artists were sometimes stuffed into marketing categories like "world music" or "folk," Bebey adamantly mixed and matched instrumentation that had seemingly no business coexisting. A pygmy flute might flutter against the metronomic pulse of a drum machine, or a classic guitar riff might coil around a looped synthetic soundscape... For newcomers, it offers a doorway into a vast discography that moves fluidly between danceable afro-funk, folkloric chanting, politically charged commentary, and shimmering electronic explorations."
Le Motel - Odd Numbers / Số Lẻ (Belgium)
"Beneath its pulsing, shimmering tones, the record is alive with the sounds of everyday life—purring mopeds, idle whistling, the din of kitchens and whisper of rain, voices joyful and contemplative, scenes of bustling cities and domestic intimacy. Le Motel...gathered sounds, photographs, and videos while traveling in Vietnam in 2023. From Hanoi he ventured to Hmong communities in the mountains near the border with China, building out a network of contacts gathered from friends and friends of friends...the album’s final shape was deeply dependent upon the participation of the people the artist met in Vietnam. Back in Brussels after his travels, as Le Motel began working with his materials, he sent early drafts to his contacts, inviting their input. This back-and-forth eventually yielded a dynamic collective effort in which nine of the album’s 15 tracks feature multiple composer credits."
Amina Claudine Myers - Solace of the Mind
"There’s a quiet kind of power in hearing someone who isn’t trying to dazzle you — someone who’s lived a long life in music and doesn’t need to raise her voice to hold your attention. [Here] NEA Jazz Master Amina Claudine Myers pares everything down: just piano, organ, voice. It’s gentle, melodic music — unhurried, deeply personal, and full of warmth...Myers, who came up singing in church choirs in Arkansas and found her creative home in the AACM, has always followed her own path. Her music spans gospel, blues, free jazz, and beyond, and this record feels like all those influences folded into something quietly masterful and rooted in who she is. She’s not preaching or philosophizing — just offering something honest and comforting." (Tim Larsen, Jazz Views)
Pan American & Kramer - Interior of an Edifice Under the Sea
"Cinema-for-the-Ears at its most sublime... furthering sonic explorations into the deep liquid space of Future-Past by two master-improvisors who spontaneously compose their wordless paintings out of thin air and into shimmering minimalism... It is an excursion into the lowest depths of Ambient Music, and a new beginning from the very place where life itself began. The floor of the ocean has a new sound, and it is breathtakingly beautiful."
Richard Skelton - The Second Chamber (Scotland)
"Recorded between 2021 and 2025, these new compositions feature his original ‘broken consort’ of small, handmade or modified stringed instruments, augmented by cello, viola and piano. Over the past decade, Skelton has subjected this acoustic palette of sounds to increasingly destructive processes, but [here] he allows each instrument to simply ring out in reverberant space. The result is an album that looks to the horizon whilst remaining anchored in the soil, an album that treats as revelation the chance resonances of even the simplest of musical gestures..."
Vanessa Tomlinson - The Edge Is a Place (Australia)
"...a series of six compositions made in 2024 using a fixed set of acoustic sound sources. A vibraphone, 8 ceramic bowls, 1 glass bowl with water, 2 metal bowls, 3 planks of wood, shell chimes, 2 cymbals, shakers, hi hats, 3 indian bells with no donger, 1 bass drum. Utensils such as knitting needles, bouncy balls, chains, chefs chopsticks, vibraphone mallets, doublebass bows, triangle beaters are all used to conjure sounds out of the objects."
Sumi Tonooka/Alchemy Sound Project - Under the Surface
"A suite of seven pieces, inspired by the roots of trees and how they work together as underground systems to support the survival of all trees, even outside of their own species... I think of this as a metaphor from nature about community - turning the notion of survival of the fittest on its head - to mean that the strong reach out to help the weak and the damaged, fostering a collective cooperation that supports the whole. In other words, humans need each other and must work together to survive and thrive, just like trees."
Ken Ueno - Sonic Calligraphies I - V
""In October 2018 I performed at the TANK Center for the Sonic Arts, in Rangely, Colorado. It is a unique and mystical space – originally built around 1940 as a railroad water-treatment tank, this seven-story Corten steel structure was relocated to Rangely in the 1960s... Being a metal tank with a high ceiling, the space offered a uniquely resonant performance environment for me and my megaphone. My shaped-feedback tones sustained so long that I could fade in and layer new tones over decaying ones, each with staggered half-lives...The space itself became the instrument, and I was both inside it and a part of it."
Stephen Vitiello, Brendan Canty, Hahn Rowe - Second
"It may begin in ambient-adjacent territory, but it quickly veers off, and it just keeps zigzagging, taking on elements of krautrock, post-punk, dub, and the groove-heavy interplay of groups like Natural Information Society and 75 Dollar Bill."
The Westerlies - Paradise
"The Westerlies turn their mighty clarion sound to the Sacred Harp music of the American South dating back to the mid-1800s. They have reshaped, recast and elevated this choral music — named for The Sacred Harp, a shape-note songbook from 1844 — into something that’s beautifully soothing and timeless." - Downbeat
ZÖJ - Give Water to Birds (Iran/Australia)
"ZÖJ’s sophomore release crafts an evolving sonic landscape where the edges between sound, silence and nature dissolve. Attuned to the moment, the music unfolds slowly and deliberately; drawing you in, asking you to listen deeply, and feel fully. This isn’t background music; it’s an invitation to be present."