Michael Sumsion

The electronic producer Floating Points and the octogenarian jazz master Pharoah Sanders harness the majesty of healing, atmosphere and expanse on their beautiful, sweeping and subtly realised hook-up with The London Symphony Orchestra, a recording that achieves spine-tingling and transfixing  effects with a thoughtful and sparse application of its core ingredients.  The … [Read more...] about Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders and The London Symphony Orchestra: Promises – Review

Genre-hopping auteur William Doyle, formerly known as East India Youth, is as diffuse and dazzling as ever on his second recording under his own name. A new record from the prodigiously gifted William Doyle is always an event worth marking on the calendar. The singer-songwriter is noted for his full-bodied and steadfast immersion in the recording process, a love of … [Read more...] about William Doyle: Great Spans of Muddy Time – Review

Donovan Quinn and Ben Chasny reunite for their side project of unabashed troubadour folk stylings. Back in 2014, New Bums aka Donovan Quinn and Ben Chasny ushered a wave of critical acclaim for their gorgeous Voices In A Rented Room, a record that burrowed deep into contemplative, meandering psych-folk and exuded a scruffy, lived-in charm. A tour of the US and Europe … [Read more...] about New Bums: Last Time I Saw Grace – Review

In which the kings of neo-classical ambient soundscapes work up a sumptuous and beguiling score for a dance theatre interpretation of Italo Calvino’s postmodern novel. Composers Adam Bryanbaum Wiltzie and Dustin O’Halloran have long been acclaimed practitioners of a woozily minimalist aesthetic, both as members of previous bands, artists in their own right and the feted duo … [Read more...] about A Winged Victory For The Sullen: Invisible Cities – Review

Shafts of light peer through darkness on Nick Cave and fellow Bad Seed Warren Ellis’s Lockdown album, Carnage, a recording steeped in both the turmoil of the pandemic and the singer’s classic themes of loss, redemption and apocalypse.  Nick Cave has spoken of how Lockdown has felt oddly familiar; the veteran singer-songwriter is well acquainted with isolation, loss and grief … [Read more...] about Nick Cave & Warren Ellis: Carnage – Review

The operatically trained Brooklyn native Sarah Kinlaw delivers dreamy, slow-burn art-pop on her brooding debut. The rise to fame of the New York singer-songwriter Sarah Kinlaw has been unspectacular and steady, encompassing stints as a dancer, visual artist, choreographer and composer as well as a series of bleeding-edge collaborations with Blood Orange, Caroline Polacheck, … [Read more...] about Kinlaw: The Tipping Scale – Review