For the Record: March 28, 2025.
Jürg Frey, Carla Kihlstedt, Chris Cochrane, Myra Melford, HxH, and more new arrivals and future releases of interest.
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, Amazon, 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. (Links to Amazon, used when all else fails, do not imply endorsement.)
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.
I’m going to level with you: the new release that has me the most pumped today is Dominion, the first new studio album since 2019 by the British neo-prog band IQ—my favorite new band of 2024, which just happens to have formed in 1981.
That said, this week’s crop of improvising composers is formidable. ou can’t go wrong with the new releases from Sophie Agnel, Ingrid Laubrock, and Myra Melford.
On the Neu imprint, which I cited briefly in a recent column about labels producing consistently covet-worthy releases, comes Voices, a breathtaking collection of vocal works by Jürg Frey performed by the U.K. vocal ensemble EXAUDI. Exalted in every sense, this one’s essential listening.
There’s also an ambitious, appealing new song cycle by Carla Kihlstedt that’s been making waves far and wide; I recommend reading this review by Joshua Kosman, who caught a performance of 26 Little Deaths in San Francisco.
Cuneiform offers a vital document of guitarist, vocalist, and composer Chris Cochrane with his Collapsible Shoulder Big Band, recorded live at Roulette in 2019 and 2020. Cochrane is one of those archetypal downtown NYC creatives who’s had a hand in pretty much everything: new music, free improv, indie rock, and so on. His band – a multi-generational crew comprising similarly versatile players like Gordon Beeferman, Brian Chase, Kato Hideki, Gelsey Bell, Syd Straw, Jim Pugliese, and longtime No Safety partner Zeena Parkins – is up to every challenge the leader proposes. Listen, learn, savor.
Finally: a new Tortoise single, jointly issued by International Anthem and Nonesuch just ahead of Big Ears, with more promised. Welcome back.
And a reminder: next Friday, April 4, is NOT Bandcamp Friday. (The next one is Friday, May 2.)
New this week.
March 28.
Sophie Agnel - Song (Relative Pitch)
Sasha Berliner - Fantôme (Outside In Music)
Bloomers (Anne Efternøler, Maria Dybbroe, Carolyn Goodwin) - Cyclism (Relative Pitch)
Chris Cochrane Collapsible Shoulder Big Band - Live 2019: A Map of Books (Cuneiform)
Denley Gorfinkel Farrar - Vents (Relative Pitch)
Mario Diaz de Leon - River of Life (self-released)
The Dietrichs - No Bahdu (Relative Pitch)
Kevin Drumm - Sheer Hellish Miasma II (Erstwhile)
Jürg Frey - Voices - EXAUDI (Neu)
Satoko Fujii Tokyo Trio - Dream a Dream (Libra)
Sylvia Hinz + Andrew Leslie Hooker - METAL (scatterArchive)
Luis Ianes, Noël Akchoté - Seuil (LINA)
Miłosz Kędra - their internal diapasons (Pointless Geometry; due March 29)
Stefan Keune, Steve Noble, Dominic Lash - Black Box (scatterArchive)
Carla Kihlstedt - 26 Little Deaths - Present Music (Cantaloupe Music)
Ingrid Laubrock - Purposing the Air (Pyroclastic)
Branford Marsalis Quartet - Belonging (Blue Note)
Myra Melford Splash Trio - Splash (Intakt)
Huw Morgan - 2025 highlights, part 1 - compositions by Avril Anderson, Marco Baldini, Michael Bonaventure, Arturas Bumšteinas, Tomás Cabado, Heledd C Evans, Klaus Lang, Rytis Mažulis, Huw Morgan, and Glyn Perrin (mainly slow organ music)
Adam O’Farrill - For These Streets (Out of Your Head)
Nils Vigeland - Perfect Happiness - Jing Yang (New Focus)
Upcoming releases.
April 4.
HxH (Lester St. Louis & Chris Williams) - Stark Phenomena (OFNOT)
April 10.
Cindy Yuen-Zhe Chen - Resonant Flows (Sawyer Spaces)
Ed Cooper - HEKATE’S VOICES (Sawyer Spaces)
Shaul Kohn - Melonheads (Sawyer Spaces)
Tom Soloveitzik & Microcanonical ensemble - two waves, drawn on paper (Sawyer Spaces)
Manfred Werder - 2008(3) (Sawyer Spaces)
April 11.
Christopher Tyler Nickel - Mass; Te Deum - Catherine Redding, Vancouver Chamber Choir/Kari Turunen, Vancouver Contemporary Orchestra/Clyde Mitchell (Avie)
April 25.
Ensemble Ex Materia - A/B (Arpaviva)
May 23.
David Van Tieghem - Even As We Speak: The Music of David Van Tieghem (Phantom Limb; originally released 1984–89)
Find many more upcoming releases in For the Record: The Master List, here.
Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.
Carla is an incredible musician and person. She played on my The Grassy Knoll “III” album back in 1997.