Jason Moran hired someone to break his piano into pieces. The piano fought back. Jason Moran 讓人把自己的琴聲撕碎了，然後跟碎片即興

Anders Hillborg / Swedish Chamber Orchestra / Christian Karlsen — Vaporised Tivoli: Orchestral and Concertante Works I

Jason Moran, BlankFor.ms & Marcus Gilmore — Shards

The premise is deceptively simple: Moran plays piano, Gilmore plays drums, and BlankFor.ms captures fragments of what they play, distorts them—speeds them up, reverses them, granulates them—and sends them back. What results is a conversation between three musicians and their own immediate past, a kind of improvised archaeology conducted in real time. Where their 2023 debut Refract felt like three people testing boundaries, Shards sounds like the boundaries have been quietly removed. Recorded at The Bridge Studio in Brooklyn for Sun Chung's Red Hook label, which continues to operate with the curatorial precision of a very small museum. 邏輯簡單到危險：Moran 彈琴，Gilmore 打鼓，BlankFor.ms 即時捕捉他們的聲音碎片——加速、反轉、顆粒化——然後扔回去。三個人和自己的回聲同時即興。比起 2023 年的 Refract，這次邊界直接消失了。錄於布魯克林 The Bridge Studio，前 ECM 製作人 Sun Chung 的 Red Hook 廠牌出品。Moran 是當代爵士最重要的鋼琴家之一，Gilmore 是 Roy Haynes 的孫子——這個三角里的基因密度不低。

Ana Roxanne — Poem 1

Six years is a long time between records, long enough for an artist to become an entirely different person, which appears to be roughly what happened. Where Because of a Flower wrapped Roxanne's voice in tape hiss and recursive loops, Poem 1 strips everything back to near-transparency: nine tracks, eleven minutes, a voice that sounds exposed in the way that the word implies both vulnerability and revelation. The kranky label has always understood that brevity and ambience are not opposites. This may be the year's most convincing proof. 六年。Because of a Flower 之後整整六年，Ana Roxanne 才交出第二張。但這不是續集。那張專輯裡她藏在 tape noise 和 loop 後面，Poem 1 的人聲裸露到近乎讓人不安。九首曲目全長 11 分鐘——沒有一秒多餘。kranky 廠牌出品，和 Stars of the Lid、Grouper 同門。NPR New Music Friday 重點推薦。短到像一口氣，但那口氣會在房間裡停很久。

Hiss Golden Messenger — I'm People

MC Taylor's eleventh album was written across Bolinas, the North Carolina Piedmont, and a Santa Fe motel room, which is to say it was written across several versions of America at once. The guest list—Bruce Hornsby, Marcus King, Sam Beam, Sara Watkins—reads like a who's who of people you'd want playing in a decommissioned church outside Woodstock, which is exactly where Josh Kaufman recorded it. Taylor has always been good at making restlessness sound like a form of devotion. This may be the record where the two become indistinguishable. MC Taylor 的第 11 張專輯，離開 Merge 後首張新廠牌發行。Josh Kaufman 共同製作，錄於 Woodstock 郊外一間退役教堂。客座名單是做夢級別的：Bruce Hornsby 彈鋼琴、Marcus King 彈吉他、Sam Beam (Iron & Wine) 和聲、Sara Watkins 拉小提琴、Amy Helm 唱和聲。寫於 Bolinas、北卡 Piedmont、Santa Fe 汽車旅館之間——Taylor 把橫跨美國的震動全壓進了 12 首歌裡。

Jesca Hoop — Long Wave Home

For her seventh album, Hoop drove a camper van across England, collecting collaborators the way other people collect postcards. Sam Amidon brought banjo. Sebastian Rochford, late of Sons of Kemet, brought drums. Leo Abrahams brought guitar. What Hoop brought was, for the first time, sole production credit—and a set of songs written during a period of upheaval that the music processes with remarkable poise. "Playground," a protest song for the children of Gaza, sits inside this otherwise intimate record like a stone in a pocket: small, hard, impossible to forget. 第七張，第一次獨立製作。Hoop 開著露營車穿越英格蘭錄製，沿途收集合作者的演奏：Sam Amidon 的班卓、Sebastian Rochford (Sons of Kemet) 的鼓、Leo Abrahams 的吉他。10 首歌 37 分鐘，寫於個人鉅變期。其中 Playground 是一首為加沙兒童寫的抗議歌——在一張如此私密的專輯裡，這首歌讓整張的重心都不一樣了。NPR lightning round 推薦。

Octo Octa — Sigils For Survival

Maya Bouldry-Morrison's fourth album marks a decade since she publicly came out as transgender, and she conceived it as a spell—or rather, eight spells, each accompanied by a hand-drawn sigil. Built entirely on hardware instruments with the MIDI-clock drift deliberately preserved, the record has the tactile quality of something made by hands rather than screens. Alongside the deep house and ecstatic electronics that are her signature, she plays dulcimer, hand-pan, and recorder, instruments that feel less like additions than like things that were always there, hidden in the circuitry. Maya Bouldry-Morrison 公開出櫃跨性別十年，這張專輯是那十年的咒語。全硬體樂器創作，刻意保留 MIDI 時鐘漂移和 off-grid 錄音的手感。除了標誌性的深沉電子舞曲，加入了揚琴、手碟、直笛和人聲。每首曲目配有一個手繪 sigil（魔法符號）。RA、DJ Mag、Stereogum 多家報道。聽起來不像是電子樂加了原聲樂器，而像是原聲樂器一直藏在電路里。

Cindy — Another Country

San Francisco's Cindy have been making slowcore for five albums now with the patience the genre demands and the melodic instinct it sometimes lacks. The title borrows from James Baldwin, and the music shares his sense of tender displacement—these are songs that sound like they were written in one place about the memory of another. Lead single "Procession" is a reverb-drenched ballad so hushed it practically whispers, which turns out to be the appropriate volume for what Karina Gill has to say. Also available on cassette, for those keeping count. 舊金山的 Cindy 已經安靜地做了五張精緻 slowcore。碟名取自 James Baldwin 同名小說，首次以穩定陣容錄製。Karina Gill 寫歌比以前更從容。Stereogum 形容先行單曲 Procession 是「幾乎在耳語的老派流行情歌」。有卡帶版——如果你在收集卡帶。

Lip Critic — Theft World

Eleven songs in ten minutes, inspired by the true story of frontman Bret Kaser discovering his identity had been stolen—by a young fan who then used the stolen information to purchase, among other things, Lip Critic's entire discography on Bandcamp. The thief was reportedly wearing a Five Nights at Freddy's hoodie when confronted. You could not invent this. Stereogum named it Album of the Week. Two drummers in psychic combat, a sampler that sounds like it was struck by lightning, and Kaser channeling the energy of a doomsday preacher who just discovered irony. 11 首歌 10 分鐘。真實故事：主唱 Bret Kaser 身份被盜，偷他身份的人是個穿 Five Nights at Freddy's 連帽衫的年輕粉絲——還用偷來的身份在 Bandcamp 上買了 Lip Critic 全部作品。Stereogum Album of the Week。兩個鼓手在精神層面對決、一個像被雷劈過的 sampler、以及 Kaser 的末日傳教士能量。你編不出這種劇本。