The penguin chorus on Ichiko Aoba's new single is Aoba herself, doing the voice 青葉市子憋了一整年，先還你一隻企鵝

mary in the junkyard — Role Model Hermit

Genre類型

Indie Rock / Art-Rock / Post-Punk

Label廠牌

AMF Records

Format介質

Vinyl / Streaming

A debut carries a particular pressure to arrive fully formed, and this London trio—Clari Freeman-Taylor, Saya Barbaglia, David Addison—has the good sense to ignore it. The eleven songs are about unglamorous things: toxic masculinity, motorway service stations, past lives, a pet mouse. The band says the thread holding them together is friendship. You can hear what they mean in the way Barbaglia's viola keeps dragging the rock half a beat behind, into a lopsidedness the songs come to depend on, and in how Freeman-Taylor moves from murmur to detonation inside a single line, sometimes inside a single word. Oli Bayston produced, and left the rough surfaces alone. I spent my first listen waiting for the record to tidy itself up. It never does. By the third listen I had stopped wanting it to, which I suspect was the plan all along. First albums this comfortable in their own unfinished state come along a few times a year, at most. 倫敦三人團等了兩年才交出首張專輯。十一首歌塞滿不體面的題材：有毒的男子氣概、高速公路休息站、前世、一隻寵物老鼠。樂團自己說，把這些縫在一起的是友情。

Kevin Sun & Max Light — Willber Sunlight

Genre類型

Jazz / Post-Bop / Quartet

Label廠牌

Endectomorph Music

Format介質

Vinyl / Streaming

The quartet booked a Brooklyn studio, skipped rehearsals, kept the takes to a minimum, and gambled on four people finishing each other's sentences in real time. Kevin Sun's saxophone and Max Light's guitar trade lines while Simón Willson and Aaron Seeber keep the swing honest underneath. Half the record is original; the rest takes Monk and Horace Silver apart like old toys, bows to Benny Golson on "Belong, Sonny," winks at Charlie Parker on "Teranga Bounce." Loose, but the kind of loose that only works when everyone trusts the room. 紐約四重奏進布魯克林的 Jaybird 錄音室，不排練、少磨 take，賭當場那口氣。一半原創，一半翻案：Monk 和 Horace Silver 被拆開重裝，《Belong, Sonny》致意 Golson，《Teranga Bounce》朝 Parker 眨眼。Willson 和 Seeber 在底下把搖擺託穩，上面兩個人才敢把句子說一半留一半。鬆，接得住。

青葉市子 (Ichiko Aoba) — さよならペンギン (Sayonara Penguin)

Genre類型

Folk / Chamber-Folk / Ambient

Label廠牌

Hermine

Format介質

Single (Streaming)

Poppy Ackroyd — Liminal

Genre類型

Modern Classical / Neo-Classical / Piano

Label廠牌

One Little Independent Records

Format介質

Vinyl / Streaming

Every sound on Liminal comes from a piano and a violin—bowed, plucked, or knocked on the body—the narrowest palette Ackroyd has allowed herself since 2019's Feathers. She wrote it in three months, during a stretch she describes plainly: new life and death arriving at once, everyone she loved needing her, a move across the country. The record should brood and mostly doesn't; she has said she caught herself nearly dancing to it. Heavy material, light result. She doesn't explain the gap, and the album is better for leaving it open. 全碟只用鋼琴和小提琴，2019 年《Feathers》之後頭一回收得這麼窄。旋律、和聲、節奏全從兩具琴身上來，連打擊聲都是敲琴身敲出來的。寫它的三個月裡，新生、死亡、跨國搬家擠在一起，她照樣寫完了。

Andrés Gabetta & Gabetta Consort — From Venice to Buenos Aires

Genre類型

Classical / Baroque / Nuevo Tango

Label廠牌

Pentatone

Format介質

CD / Hi-Res / Streaming

The Gabetta Consort is a period band—gut strings, baroque bows—and for the first stretch of this program it behaves like one, dispatching two Vivaldi concertos and arias by Leonardo Vinci and Bononcini with the Argentine soprano Veronica Cangemi out front. Then the itinerary keeps going, across the Atlantic and two centuries, until the band lands inside Piazzolla's Buenos Aires with Mario Stefano Pietrodarchi's bandoneon breathing in the middle of it. Nobody switches instruments, so the low strings carry the tango with the same slightly rough grain they gave Venice ten minutes earlier. Andrés Gabetta, violinist, director, Sol's older brother, lets the ensemble undergo the migration instead of illustrating it. BBC Music Magazine made it Recording of the Month for July. Fair enough. Sol Gabetta 的哥哥 Andrés 領自家古樂團，從 Vivaldi 的兩部協奏曲出發，停靠 Vinci 和 Bononcini 的詠嘆調（阿根廷女高音 Veronica Cangemi 壓陣），最後開進皮亞佐拉。全程沒人換樂器，羊腸弦直接接住探戈，帶著十分鐘前拉威尼斯時那點粗糲。

Third Person — Third Person

Genre類型

Electronic / Techno / Jazz-Electronica

Label廠牌

R&S Records

Format介質

Vinyl / Streaming

Someone who won't give a name delivers a first album on R&S, its eight tracks numbered "Person One" through "Person Seven," then "Planetary," which lets a Latin pulse in at the close. Jazz sits in the skeleton; the surfaces are textural techno, with flashes of the raw 303 lines this label built its name on in the early nineties. Made, reportedly, from a state of pandemic detachment. The producer has yet to show their face anywhere. 匿名製作人在 R&S 的首作。八首曲子只給編號，《Person One》到《Person Seven》，收尾一首《Planetary》放進拉丁脈動。爵士底子的 techno，不時冒出這家廠牌九十年代招牌的 303 線條。據說成於疫情中的抽離狀態，做的人至今沒露過面。