New on Shfl, February 2026
Phil Freeman on Free Jazz Orchestras, Chris Catchpole on Murder Folk, Ned Raggett on In the Nursery, Andy Beta on Don Cherry, plus 15 new recommendations
Phil Freeman on Free Jazz Orchestras
The seeming contradiction of the “free jazz orchestra” is what gives its music such power. How can one ask eighteen or twenty musicians, each committed to the principle of unfettered, highly individualistic improvisation, to work together with the discipline necessary to create something coherent? These works are often written out (though there’s plenty of solo space allotted), but still kept loose enough that a kind of mosaic-like group identity emerges. And when it works, free jazz orchestra music can be a kind of magic trick.
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Chris Catchpole on Murder Folk
Given folk music’s centuries-long fixation with homicide, the term ‘murder folk’ is almost a tautology. Indeed, the shadow of death and the gallows pole hangs over far more of the songs passed down from generation to generation than those illuminated by a spring morn or the love of a fair, bonny maid.
Ned Raggett on In the Nursery
UK brothers Klive and Nigel Humberstone are more than just siblings – they’re identical twins, leading to a theme they’ve observed more than once in their joint careers. They form the core of In The Nursery, an active creative partnership that has now stretched across nearly fifty years of numerous remarkable albums, creative projects and more. While they initially found a footing in a 1980s underground defined by the lingering impact of post-punk, electronic experimentation and the gelling of what could be called industrial music, they’ve ultimately become something more sui generis, not quite categorizable as any one thing except their own sound.
Andy Beta on Don Cherry
Through the 1960s, Cherry worked at the vanguard of jazz: Sonny Rollins, Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, and the like. But as the decade wore on and the strife of life in America as a Black man grew onerous, Cherry made his way to Sweden and envisioned an entirely new way of putting that open musical dialogue to practice in new environs, inspired by the freedoms of the hippie lifestyle and new experiments in living. Forward-thinking, adventurous, fearless, open-eared musical travels lay ahead for Cherry and his longtime partner, artist/ musician Moki Cherry.
Reviews
Phil Freeman
Max Roach / We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite
Max Roach was not one to fuck around, but he was never fucking around less than on this album, recorded in August and September 1960 and released that December.
Art Blakey / Free for All
Sometimes avant-garde ideas slip into the mainstream in ways you don’t notice right away. Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers were one of the most energetic and crowd-pleasing bands of the early to mid-1960s, particularly when Wayne Shorter was serving as tenor saxophonist and primary composer between 1959 and 1964. But his tunes were often more than simple hard bop heads, and because they already had listener good will on their side, they could take the music surprisingly far out.
Charles Lloyd / Forest Flower: Charles Lloyd at Monterey
It’s hard to even comprehend now how popular saxophonist Charles Lloyd was in the late ’60s. His quartet with Keith Jarrett on piano, Cecil McBee (and later Ron McClure) on bass, and Jack DeJohnette on drums played jazz festivals, but they also co-headlined with rock bands at the Fillmore (a January 1967 concert yielded two live albums, Love-In and Journey Within) and toured around the world, including the Soviet Union. Forest Flower was their breakthrough release; it got them heavy airplay on “free form” FM radio and wound up becoming one of the most commercially successful jazz albums of all time, going platinum.
Jeff Treppel
Faith No More / The Real Thing
Perpetually somewhere in-between – grunge, hard rock, funk, rap, soul, metal – these San Francisco freakazoids found the perfect someone to put them together on their third album. Mike Patton provided them with a charismatic frontman, a multi-faceted voice to match their complex music, and a bandmate who wasn’t gonna punch anyone in the face on stage.
Hoaxed / Death Knocks
After their promising debut full-length, Two Shadows, Kat Keo and Kim Coffel added a third silhouette for their second venture into the dark woods. New bassist April Dimmick turns out to be no mere trick of the light. Whereas their leafless trees previously felt a little sparse, the added bass fills them out with twisting, gnarled branches.
Barón Rojo - Volumen Brutal
Volumen Brutal, Baron Rojo’s second release, presented their greatest chance at breaking through to an international market – recorded at Ian Gillan’s Kingsway Studios with contributions from King Crimson’s saxophonist and Gillan’s keyboardist, they even had Bruce Dickinson help them translate their lyrics for an English-language recording of the album. You’re in for a treat no matter what language.
Joe Muggs
B12 / Electro-Soma II
Of all the artists in the WARP Records Artificial Intelligence generation – which included Aphex Twin, Plaid / The Black Dog, Autechre, Richie Hawtin, Speedy J and more – the duo of Stephen Rutter and Michael Golding were the ones who hewed closest to the inspirations of Detroit techno and electro. Perhaps as a result, they didn’t get as much attention as their peers who veered off into their own ever-more distinctive variants.
Miryam Solomon & Rosie Turton / Maar
It’s hard to understand how music that’s so minimal as to feel like a geometry diagram can provoke deep feeling – but this 30-minute improvised micro album by trombonist Turton and alt-R&B vocalist Solomon really gets there.
Yara Asmar / Everyone I Love Is Sleeping and I Love Them So So Much
The Lebanese poet, musician, sound artist and puppeteer Yara Asmar makes some of the most intimate music in the world – in the sense that, even without lyrics, you feel like you’re being allowed into the most private of thoughts.
Nate Patrin
Nolan Potter, Population II, Yoo Doo Right / Yoo II avec Nolan Potter
Atmosphere outranks genre here, as krautrock, free jazz, noise, post-rock, and funk all blur together into a malleably fluid vehicle for locked-in ensemble work. And that allows for both a persistent, driving energy and a feeling of organic mutation.
Sherelle / With a Vengeance
Dance music has always had its synthesists — the kinds of producers who knew there was more than just an “Amen” break and a penchant for diva vocals that united the strains of post-house music that erupted from the hardcore continuum at the turn of the ‘90s. And Sherelle is made for our moment in that category: with jungle, footwork, techno, and house all recognized as crucial interlocking components of a modern genre-polyglot sensibility, her tracks on With a Vengeance double as reclamation and expansion.
Jack DeJohnette / Cosmic Chicken
The period between Jack DeJohnette’s tenure with Miles Davis and his long, fruitful run as a bandleader on ECM might look like an interstitial period in his discography, but his last album on Prestige delivers some remarkable sounds. Cosmic Chicken relies significantly on DeJohnette’s fluidity as a drummer, building complex rhythmic structures that underpin a form of fusion unafraid to venture further out past the constrictions of crossover.
Megan Iacobini de Fazio
Praed Orchestra! / The Dictionary of Lost Meanings
As a duo, PRAED’s music has always felt gloriously overwhelming: hypnotic, frenetic, driven by clarinet lines that spiral over pounding electronics and rhythms that seem engineered to push trance into overdrive.
Mai Mai Mai / Karakoz
Roman producer Toni Cutrone, better known as Mai Mai Mai, has carved out a singular space within Italy’s experimental underground. Emerging from the capital’s leftfield electronics and noise circuits, he built his reputation on a body of work that treats Mediterranean folk memory as living matter rather than archival relic.
Alfio Antico, Go Dugong / La Macchia
What makes this pairing so compelling is the balance they strike: Antico’s ritualistic pulse and voice remain central, while Go Dugong’s electronics, from subtle spatial effects to threads of psychedelia and jazz flourishes, expand the sound without overshadowing its roots.