A Tuesday split between records that dream and one that chases the light through the leaves 一半的唱片在標題裡做夢，另一半在追葉縫裡的光

Lakecia Benjamin — We Dream

The guest list reads like a festival bill that wandered into a single studio: Terence Blanchard, Hiromi, Chris Potter, Jeff "Tain" Watts, Black Thought, Bilal, with Kassa Overall co-producing. By rights an album this crowded should buckle into an all-star exhibition, everyone elbowing for a solo. It doesn't, and the reason is the woman holding the alto. Benjamin came up through the Coltrane lineage, and she understands that spiritual jazz isn't a matter of how many people you can fit in the room but of bending all of them toward the same breath. Guests arrive, guests leave; the center holds. Her sixth record, and her debut for Artwork Records, is also the most ambitious thing she has assembled. Today's pick, without much competition. 請客名單長得嚇人：Terence Blanchard、Hiromi、Chris Potter、Jeff "Tain" Watts、Black Thought、Bilal，製作檯後面還坐著 Kassa Overall。這種全明星陣仗，十張裡有九張會塌成表演賽——人人來露一手，專輯沒了重心。但 Lakecia Benjamin 的中音薩克斯風從頭到尾握著方向盤。她是從 Coltrane 那條精神爵士的線走來的人，深知這門音樂不是把人堆滿，而是讓每個人為同一口氣服務。客人來了又走，主題始終沒散。這是她的第六張，也是 Artwork Records 處女作，至今最有野心的一次集結。今天的 Pick，沒有第二個選項。

YHWH Nailgun — Magazine

The New York four-piece compress an entire album into eleven minutes—ten songs, not one of which grants you a breath. The frame is no wave, the surface industrial, the percussion intent on punching through the floor; the vocals don't so much sing as get squeezed out from between the walls of sound. This isn't music to relax to but music that pins you against a wall and interrogates you. In an age when everything is stretched and padded, the nerve to make only eleven minutes is itself a stance—4AD, poaching them from the smaller AD 93, knew exactly what it was doing. It lands like a bucket of ice water to the face, and once you've recovered you only want to play it again. If the rest of today is dreaming or chasing light, this is the record that simply wakes you up. 紐約四人組 YHWH Nailgun 把整張專輯壓進了十一分鐘——十首歌，沒有一首給你喘氣的機會。no-wave 的骨架，工業的金屬質感，敲擊樂器像是要把地板砸穿；人聲不是在唱，是在被音牆擠出來。這不是用來放鬆的音樂，是把你按在牆上逼問的音樂。在一個什麼都拉長、什麼都注水的時代，敢只做十一分鐘，本身就是一種態度——4AD 把他們從小廠牌 AD 93 簽過來，是有眼光的。聽完像被人迎面潑了一桶冰水，緩過神來，你只想再放一遍。今天這張是醒著的那一極：不做夢，也不追光，只負責把你叫醒。

Peter Donohoe — Haydn: Keyboard Works, Vol. 2

Haydn's keyboard music is too often played as polite parlor furniture, agreeable and instantly forgotten. Donohoe declines. This second volume spans most of the composer's life—from the guilelessness of an early Partita in G to the shadow of the B-minor Sonata, to the mischief of folk tunes smuggled into capriccios and fantasias. He plays with clarity and structure, letting you hear how Haydn, in an age when the keyboard itself was still unsettled, was probing the instrument and his own limits at once. Not background music but a compressed biography of a composer learning what he could get away with. It follows a warmly received first volume from 2022. 海頓的鍵盤音樂總被彈成禮貌的客廳小品，聽完即忘。Donohoe 偏不這麼做。第二卷橫跨海頓大半生——從早期 G 大調 Partita 的天真，到 b 小調奏鳴曲的陰影，再到那些把民間曲調寫進隨想曲、幻想曲裡的玩心。他彈得清楚、有骨架，讓你聽見在鍵盤樂器還沒定型的年代，海頓是怎樣一邊試探這件樂器、一邊試探自己的邊界。這不是用來當背景音的唱片，是一部濃縮的作曲家成長史。接續 2022 年廣受好評的第一卷。

Colin Matthews — Seascapes

Colin Matthews turns eighty this year, and he marks it by looking back through four song cycles. The title set takes the poetry of Sidney Keyes—a young writer killed in the Second World War, for whom the sea was both metaphor and grave. Claire Booth's soprano threads through the Nash Ensemble's textures, moving from coastlines to Czech dissidents to Baudelaire's Spleen and its famous fixation on melancholy. Contemporary art song is forever being told it has nothing new to say; this is a quiet, well-argued rebuttal. Jessica Cottis conducts, with baritone Marcus Farnsworth joining. An old man writing about the sea is, of course, writing about what's left once the tide goes out. 英國作曲家 Colin Matthews 今年八十，用四組歌曲套曲回望自己。同名作設的是 Sidney Keyes 的詩——一個在二戰中早逝的年輕詩人，海對他既是隱喻也是墓。Claire Booth 的女高音在 Nash Ensemble 的織體之間穿行，從海岸寫到捷克異見者，寫到 Baudelaire 那首關於憂鬱的《Spleen》。當代藝術歌曲常被嫌沒新話可說，這張專輯就是一句安靜而有力的反駁。Jessica Cottis 指揮，Marcus Farnsworth 男中音加入。

Toshiki Soejima — Komorebi

Komorebi—the Japanese word for the trembling light that filters through leaves—is less a title here than a method. The Japanese guitarist Toshiki Soejima isn't chasing the bright, declarative beam or any grand statement; he's after the unstable dapple, the kind a breeze can scatter at any moment. His guitar is clean and held back, with jazz and instrumental hip-hop running faintly beneath; trumpeter Takuya Kuroda, the British producer edbl, and the Irish singer Carrie Baxter each add a few strokes and then withdraw, no one overstepping. It's a record for dusk—it doesn't raise its voice, and it asks nothing of you. The only non-English entry today. 「木漏れ日」——陽光透過樹葉縫隙漏下來的那點晃動的光。日本吉他手副島稔把這個詞當成了整張專輯的方法論：他不去追強光、不去追宏大敘事，只追那些不穩定的、隨時會被風吹散的光斑。他的吉他乾淨而剋制，jazz 與 instrumental hip-hop 的底子若隱若現；小號手 Takuya Kuroda、英國製作人 edbl、愛爾蘭歌手 Carrie Baxter 在旁邊各點幾筆就收手，誰都沒有越界。這是一張適合黃昏聽的唱片，不喧嘩，也不催促你做任何事。本期唯一的非英語入選。

Velveteen — My Dreams Are Changing

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EP

March to August — Highway 75

A married couple from the Ozarks, Derrick and Jodi Mears, two people and a full kit of instruments: banjo, guitar, harmonica, plus bass, stomp box, and lap steel. It's a concept record about a fictional long-haul trucker driving from addiction and loss toward redemption and a kind of peace. The premise sounds like well-worn country territory, but the virtue of a duo is that there's nowhere to hide—every line has to hold itself up. Not ornate; honest. Interstate 75 runs from Florida to Canada, and they've managed to fit one man's whole life onto it. 歐扎克山區一對夫妻，Derrick 和 Jodi Mears，兩個人一臺戲：班卓、吉他、口琴，加上貝斯、踩箱鼓、lap steel。這是張概念專輯，講一個虛構的長途卡車司機，從成癮、失去，一路開到救贖與和解。題材聽起來像鄉村樂的老套路，但二人編制的好處恰恰是無處可藏——每一句都得自己撐住。不華麗，勝在真。75 號州際公路從佛羅裡達通到加拿大，他們讓這條路裝下了一個人的一生。

noxz — Safe To Be _

noxz is an architect, a producer, and a visual artist all at once—the sort of résumé that primes you to suspect concept outrunning craft. Safe To Be _ is steadier than that. The base is R&B, soul, and Afro-fusion, with jazz-leaning electronics woven quietly into the edges, and guests—Berhana, Shae Universe, Sipprell, Ogi—who decline to upstage. The title ends on a blank, like a sentence left unfinished, and the record carries the same temperament: reserved, room left over, in no hurry to prove anything. Someone who draws blueprints for a living tends to know exactly where the empty space in a structure belongs. noxz 同時是建築師、製作人、視覺藝術家——這種履歷容易讓人警惕「概念大過音樂」。但《Safe To Be _》是穩的。R&B、soul、Afro-fusion 打底，jazz 傾向的電子在邊緣悄悄織進來，Berhana、Shae Universe、Sipprell、Ogi 這些客座都沒有搶戲。標題末尾留了個空格，像一句沒說完的話；整張專輯的氣質也是如此：剋制、留餘地、不急著證明什麼。會畫圖紙的人做音樂，最懂的就是結構裡哪些地方要留空。