For the Record: Feb. 27, 2026.
Sarah Kirkland Snider, Oker, Chris Pitsiokos, Tomeka Reid, Yvonne Rogers, and more new releases and coming attractions.
For the Record is a weekly column that rounds up details about new and pending recordings of interest to the new-music community – contemporary classical music and jazz, electronic and electroacoustic music, and idioms for which no clever genre name has been coined – on CD, vinyl LP, cassette, digital-only formats… you name it.
This list of release dates is culled from press releases, Bandcamp, and other internet stores and sources, social media posts, and online resources such as Discogs. Dates cited typically correspond to initial U.S. release, and are subject to change.
These listings are not comprehensive—nor could they be! If you’d like to submit a forthcoming recording for consideration, please email information to nightafternight@icloud.com. (Streams and downloads preferred.)
All opinions expressed herein are solely my own, and do not reflect the views of my employer.
Topspin.
Playing catch-up today… not enough time to go deep, but too many excellent new records to ignore. This week, you don’t want to miss Forward Into Light, a glorious collection of orchestral works by Sarah Kirkland Snider, played beautifully by conductor Andrew Cyr and the Metropolis Ensemble. (There’s a fancy, intimate, and free record-release event on Tuesday, March 3.) Also strongly recommended: aerial, a pair of hypnotically gentle, ambiguous improvisations by Oker, the quartet of Torstein Lavik Larsen, Adrian Fiskum Myhr, Fredrik Rasten, and Jan Martin Gismervik.
From last week’s hefty pile of releases I’ll single out Doing Something, Doing Nothing, a mesmerizing album by Chris Pitsiokos that proceeds from a bold premise – “something like In a Silent Way meets Rothko Chapel,” Pitsiokos explains on his Bandcamp page – and then went somewhere else. Some features of the landscape are indeed familiar, but the resulting totality is alien and intriguing, demanding exploration. I’m also wildly stoked to hype Hunab Ku, a long-awaited new album by Corima—the Los Angeles-based zeuhl band featuring the unstoppable Patrick Shiroishi. And from two weeks ago, dance! skip! hop!, the latest by the Tomeka Reid Quartet, is buoyantly irresistible.
This week’s MVP is pianist Yvonne Rogers, who plays it wacky and skronky on Oh Horror!, this week’s new release by My trio; lends strong, sympathetic support on Color Theory, last week’s newcomer by alto saxophonist Nicole McCabe; and plays a significant supporting role on Elephant, eagerly anticipated in March from trumpeter Adam O’Farrill. This morning, the Pyroclastic label added to the elation with new that Rogers will be releasing a solo album, The Button Jar, on May 8. Yes, please!
New this week.
Alexander Lloyd Blake - Songs of Remembering - Angel Blue, Ogi, Jamal M. Moore, Tonality, Wild Up (Bright Shiny Things)
John Chowning - Stria (Important)
Jack Dettling - keyboard works (Populist)
Asher Gamedze - A Semblance: Of Return (Northern Spy)
Max Kutner - Rogue Lash (Orenda)
My trio (Tim Watson, Yvonne Rogers, Jon Starks) - Oh Horror! (self-released)
Vadim Neselovskyi - Preservantia - Vadim Neselovskyi, Ysaÿe String Trio (Tzadik)
Oker - aerial (Aspen Edities)
Shane Parish - Autechre Guitar (Palilalia)
Sibyl (Chloe and Lily Holgate) - Sibyl (Gold Bolus)
Sarah Kirkland Snider - Forward Into Light - Metropolis Ensemble/Andrew Cyr (New Amsterdam)
Wilfrido Terrazas - Trilogía del Dolor — An Investigation of Human Pain in Three Parts (New Focus)
These Things Happen - A Gentle Reminder (Corbett vs. Dempsey)
Triple Blind - Cold Walk (self-released)
New last week.
Beam Splitter - Dedicated Play - Live at Morphine Raum (Tripticks Tapes)
Corima - Hunab Ku (Soleil Zeuhl)
Anne Efternøler/Maria Laurette Friis/Johanna Borchert - We are. Profoundly. Predisposed. To drowning. (Relative Pitch)
Masayo Koketsu/Nava Dunkelman - Veins of Rain (Relative Pitch)
Takuma Kuragaki/Pierre Gerard - ambiguous garden (Ftarri)
David Lang - note to a friend - Theo Bleckmann, Attacca Quartet (Cantaloupe Music)
Leo Major - Latentenergy Miniatures (self-released)
Hannah Marshall - Grazing (Relative Pitch)
Magda Mayas’ Filamental - Murmur (Relative Pitch)
Nicole McCabe - Color Theory (self-released)
Olivier Messiaen - Quatuor pour la fin du temps - Anzû Quartet (Cantaloupe Music)
Chantal Michelle - All Things Might Spill (Shelter Press)
Ben Nobuto - Hope Spiral - Ben Nobuto, Ben Goldscheider, Brother Tree Sound (NMC)
Sean Noonan - The Drummer of Tedworth (Neuma)
Meg Okura - Isaiah (Adhyâropa)
Chris Pitsiokos - Doing Something, Doing Nothing (Eleatic)
Aaron Quinn - To Be Held (endectomorph music)
Eric Sawyer - Civil Disobedience - Boston Modern Orchestra Project/Gil Rose (BMOP/sound)
Christina Vantzou - The Reintegration of the Ear (Editions Basilic)
New two weeks ago.
Michael Stephen Brown - Twelve Blocks (First Hand)
Harry Christelis - Preserving Fictions (Clonmell Jazz Social)
Bruno Duplant - En d’autres lieux (Discreet Archives)
Andrew Greenwald - for Distractfold - Distractfold (dFolds)
Joel Harrison & The Alternative Guitar Summit - Don’t Forget Your Guitar (AGS Recordings)
Shawn Lovato - Biotic (endectomorph music)
Sam Pluta - Slays Well with Others (Carrier)
Tomeka Reid Quartet - dance! skip! hop! (Out of Your Head)
Upcoming releases.
March 6.
Jessie Marino - Curtain Pleater (self-released)
March 13.
Kevin Sun - lofi at lowlands 三 (endectomorph music)
March 20.
Cassia Streb & Tim Feeney - Lampworking (kuyin)
The Westerlies - Have You Heard: The Music of Bill Frisell, Vol. 1 (Westerlies)
March 27.
Simon Hanes - GARGANTUA (Pyroclastic)
Mark Turner - Patternmaster (ECM)
April 24.
Dave Harrington, Max Jaffe, Patrick Shiroishi - Making Colors (AKP Recordings)
May 1.
Travis Laplante - Estuary (Carrier)
May 8.
Chris Potter - Alive With Ghosts Today (Edition)
Yvonne Rogers - The Button Jar (Pyroclastic)
Find many more upcoming releases in For the Record: The Master List, here.
Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.
Steve, thank you so much for this column. I appreciate the scope of what you’re covering. This is music that needs a wider audience as the world gets weirder.
Thanks, Steve. This is such a great service.