I’m not sure if I knew ambient trance music was a thing until I heard OrangeTone’s newest EP, Breachlight.
The sound and feeling is as bright as the EP’s cover, beginning with the shining title track. It bubbles with synth bass tones and stuff that sounds like the happiest video game you’ve ever played while also relaxing you at the same time.
“Silkloom” is what you’d hear as you land on a vibrant planet where plants grow and flower by soundwaves. “Joie” drifts into your mind like a pleasant wind off a warm beach and makes you feel like you’re about to embark on something big.
“Dream Spiral” features guest vocals from diana starshine to elevate the track into a modern house classic. It has to be blowing up nightclub floors by now. “Solar Daze” ends the EP with sounds that perfectly resemble the title – shining keyboards, trippy beats, and happy bass.
The whole EP is blissful. You’ll want this as the weather gets warmer, and especially when it gets colder.
I’m guessing 9 Hours Ahead got their name from the time difference between the two members – Breeze in Amsterdam and Namastrange in San Francisco. Together, they put together their Smooth SailingEP and, despite the time difference, created one of the best house music records of 2026 so far.
The title track uses seagull cries, looped hand percussion beats, and undeniably catchy beats to get you moving. The breakdown and comeback in the middle of the track is so slick you might fall off your boat and into the ocean from it.
“Meridian Space” bumps and thumps with thick bass drum hits and then the even thicker synth bass drops in so thick you could spread it on your pancakes. “Transatlantic Dreams” is probably another reference to the time and space gap between the two DJ pals, and it’s a killer cut suitable for dancing, action sequences, and HIIT workouts. I love the old school synth blasts in it.
The EP ends with the Bliss Inc. remix of “Meridian Space” that makes the beats snappier and the bass a bit menacing while adding what sound like alien transmissions to the track.
Add this to a few of your playlists. You’ll dig it.
Keep your mind open.
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Here’s a cool idea: Get a bunch of electronic music producers and DJs in the same room with some cool guest vocalists and tell them to put their spins on the music of Sun Ra. What do you get? This cool compilation called When There Is No Sun.
Starting with Underground Resistance‘s funky, bumpy take on “When Angels Speak,” the addition of vocals by poet / musician / filmmaker Saul Williams drops you into the groove right away. “When angels speak, they speak of cosmic waves of sound,” Williams says, and you know he’s right. SHE Spells Doom joins up with the Sun Ra Arkestra for a remix of “Somebody Else’s Idea.” The muted, looped horn section provides an interesting groove that seems to cast a long look around the room and invite people into another party at the back.
House music heavyweight Chez Damier teams up with Ben Vedren and poet Anthony Joseph on the “H2H Kora mix” of “The Three Dimensions of Air.” The looping hand percussion beats, bouncing synth notes, and distant trumpet sounds create a hypnotic effect when they combine with Joseph’s vocals. Calibre creates a drum and bass (his specialty) remix of “Chopin.”
Ricardo Villalobos “Earlier Than Late” remix (version 2) of “I Have Forgotten” is a mesmerizing track with odd sounds that resemble something you’d hear in a haunted house movie score if the house had a rave happening in the cemetery next door. Tunde Adebimpe joins Damier and Vedren on the H2H remix of “The Endless Realm.” It’s instantly danceable, as well as enlightening. It’s a house music Zen lesson on the joy of non-attachment.
Underground Resistance and Williams return for their soulful take on “The Outer Darkness.” The first version of Villalobo’s “Earlier Than Late” remix of “I Have Forgotten” bubbles and pops like some kind of sentient ooze. Baris K and poet Abiodun Oyewole‘s riff on “Somebody Else’s Idea” is a house / trip hop / psych-dance track that has a sweet beat throughout the whole thing.
A Guy Called Gerald and poet Mahogany L. Browne‘s version of “Message to Black Youth” is simple and profound, as is Calibre’s ambient remix of “Chopin.” The album ends with the return of SHE Spells Doom’s remix of “Portrait of the Living Sky. It’s a cool house track, with emphasis on the “cool” part. It gives off this feeling of partying outside the dance club with all the cooler people who got rejected at the door.
This is a slick compilation that you can play at your house party, your chill room, or in your car late nights. You’ll want to hear it everywhere.
Keep your mind open.
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JWords —the project of Brooklyn-based producer Jennifer Hernandez—announces her new album, Sound Therapy, out May 8th and presents the lead single, “LUSH.” JWords is known for her production “nodding to both hip-hop’s brawny metronome and more uptempo electronic and dance influences” (Bandcamp). Her career is defined by collaborations, from her work with rapper maassai as the acclaimed duo H31R to her production on Nappy Nina’s 2021 record Double Down. Meanwhile, JWords has built a stylistically broad body of solo work, starting in 2020 with mixtape Sin Señal followed by a string of EPs that climaxed with Sonic Liberation. In the interim, she’s made major strides as a DJ, scoring a monthly residency at The Lot Radio and regularly hosting NTS shows.
Sound Therapy, the follow-up to her 2022 debut solo LP Self-Connection, deals with the troubles and triumphs JWords experienced over the last few years. It gets heavy at times, but the music she’s making now reflects her present circumstances. Instead of building a rollercoaster record based on the traumas of yesteryear, she opted for a confidently Zen approach: “It’s a new era,” she says. “A calmer, chiller, ‘Yeah, I got my shit together’ kind of era.”
Despite the fact that she began as an MC, Sound Therapy marks the first time JWords has been a lead vocalist on her own productions. On today’s single “Lush,” she repeats the phrases “I see me in you” and “I see you in me” over pillowy synths and a crinkly techno backbeat until her words become a mantra.
Growing up Dominican-American in Union City, New Jersey, JWords was a sonic omnivore, devouring the hip-hop and R&B she heard on BET’s Rap City, the Jersey Club that took over the neighborhood, and the Latin music she heard at home. JWords’ music career has been ascendant since she first laid hands on a synth, but her personal life has been less steady, and she fell into a particularly deep rut in her late 20s. Sound Therapy looks back on those years with a sense of tranquility that’s absent in her earlier work. Her subject matter is still serious, but she addresses her trauma without fear or malice, acknowledging that it’s there without giving it the power to define her.
While Sound Therapy marks the first time JWords has been a lead vocalist, it’s her production that shines brightest. Opener “Lotus” contains the type of sparkling synthplay one might expect to find stowed away on a lost Dilla hard drive. “FELT” pummels you with a techno drum line but slowly morphs into a much chiller arrangement of synths. And “LoveCrime” presents an entrancing, oddly shaped structure that JWords somehow finds a way to rap over.
In the end, JWords is grateful for all of the experiences that have brought her to the present moment. She’s seen rock bottom now and never wants to return, but she learned some of life’s most essential lessons there. These days, she’s enjoying her hard-won serenity. She’s got a job teaching kids how to DJ and make electronic music. She’s learned to solder and has plans to create her own style of synth. She’s making her best music, transcending nominal genre boundaries in pursuit of brilliance. She’s calmer. She’s chiller. She’s got her shit together.
Omni Sound is excited to announce When There Is No Sun, a global recording project uniting visionary electronic music producers to reimagine the universe of SunRa, out March27th. Commissioned by Omni Sound and curated by Ricardo Villalobos, When There Is No Sun brings together Underground Resistance, Chez Damier & Ben Vedren, Calibre, A Guy Called Gerald, SHE Spells Doom, Barış K, and Ricardo Villalobos himself to draw from Omni Sound’s recordings of LivingSky by the Sun Ra Arkestra and My Words Are Music, a spoken-word album of Sun Ra’s poetry. The producers pull fragments of sound and text into their own creative orbits, passing through the portal that Sun Ra opened into a realm where the impossible is possible.
Invocations by SaulWilliams, AnthonyJoseph, Mahogany L. Browne, AbiodunOyewole, TundeAdebimpe, and TaraMiddleton turn rhyme into rhythm and resistance into revelation. Rooted in deep reverence for Sun Ra’s legacy, yet reaching forward as a living, generative force, When There Is No Sun is not a tribute but a continuum. Each contributor balances the pulse of electronic music with the spirit of experimentation, embodying Sun Ra’s conviction that sound is a vessel for transformation.
In conjunction with today’s announcement, Omni Sound present “When Angels Speak” by UndergroundResistance featuring Saul Williams. As one of Detroit’s most influential and uncompromising musical movements, Underground Resistance bring their anti-extractive, futurist vision of techno rooted in independence, resistance, and Black empowerment to the title track of Sun Ra’s rare 1966 album, released on their Saturn label. Williams, an internationally acclaimed poet, musician, actor, and filmmaker contributes a distinct blend of lyrical intensity and cultural insight.
One of the most radical musical pioneers of the 20th century, Sun Ra used jazz, electronics, poetry, and performance to expand the possibilities of sound, identity, and imagination. A composer, bandleader, philosopher, and visionary, Ra didn’t just play music, he invented a universe. At the core of his philosophy is freedom through creation. He taught that the world’s dominant narratives—history, race, time, even gravity—are prisons of the mind, and that through music, myth, and performance, one could transcend these limits and reclaim control of destiny.
The artists featured in When There Is No Sun, in their own way, embody Sun Ra’s conviction that sound is a vessel for transformation. They are not united by genre but by purpose—artists who use rhythm, language, and imagination to rewire perception and open portals to new worlds.
When There Is No Sun Release Events: Tue. March 17 – Cape Town, ZA @ Pan African Space Station (streaming event only) Fri. March 20 – Wuppertal, DE @ Open Ground (feat: Ricardo Villalobos & Chez Damier) Fri. April 10 – New York, NY @ Nublu (feat. Sun Ra Arkestra & Chez Damier) Fri. July 31 – Amsterdam, NL @ Dekmantel Festival (feat. Saul Williams & Underground Resistance)
Keep your mind open.
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Grandbrothers, the duo of pianist Erol Sarp and engineer / software designer Lukas Vogel, create a lovely blend of classical, jazz, electronica, and ambient music together. Their newest album, Elsewhere, is designed to take you to such a place…wherever it may be.
The duo decided to add more vintage synths, drum loops, and other electronic oddities to their newest album. The simmering intro of “Famara Dust” swirls like a slow whirlpool into the trip hop-inspired “Fable.” The funky drums of “We Collide” sizzle and snap while Sarp’s piano keeps you buzzing. The way Sarp’s piano loops (which remind me a bit of some Ennio Morricone compositions) and curls with Vogel’s programmed beats on “Where Else” is slick.
“Liminal” thumps and bumps in all the right places. “Velvet Roads” starts off as smooth as the fabric in its title and then drops a gorgeous house beat on you. “Cypress” might be your new favorite chill house track. “Rex Machina” does indeed sound like it uses samples, loops, bleeps, and bloops from various machines to accent the piano and alter field recordings (Thunder? Breaking ocean waves? Wind through trees?) and loosen that stress headache you’re enduring.
I can’t help but think Grandbrothers got the title for “run.run.run.run.run” – a snappy electro track that sounds like it’s mixing in steel drums at some points – from seeing it on some vintage synthesizer or computer they used to process the sounds of it. Ending with “NOWHERE,” the album has taken us to a place that’s nowhere yet everywhere, here and now, then and when.
The album is a journey for Grandbrothers, who were exploring new ways to make new music with Elsewhere, and for us. We all come through it with a fresh look on the world.
The cover of Klangphonics‘ 2021 album Songs to Try takes an image of a forest and the sky above it, flips it, blurs it, and makes it something intriguing. The album does much the same with our perception.
In case you didn’t know, “deep house” is a thing, and Klangphonics might be the best proponents of it. The German trio eschew traditional DJ methods (How weird is it to write that?) and opt to create live electronic music from a blend of acoustic and electronic instruments (or sometimes household objects, tools, and even a riding lawn mower).
“Great Plains” starts off the record with dance grooves and drums that feel right at home in a night club or the Grand Canyon. The switch halfway through to the meditative song become a straight-up house banger is stunning. “Holocene” brings in Anna Metko on guest vocals that give the track a brightness that’s difficult to describe but lovely to experience.
“Dendrometry” (the study of the sizes and shapes of trees) is perfect for your morning run through the woods with its bumping beats, “wind through the leaves” synths, echoed birdsong, and encouraging bass line. “White Flower” takes off like a race car and doesn’t look back. “Heliosphere” uses Carl Sagan’s speech about all of us living on a speck of dust in a sunbeam to excellent effect and sends us out on an uplifting note.
The whole record is uplifting and intriguing…and danceable. These three are high on my must-see list now.
I saw over 50 bands last year, so these five had to bring it to make the top of the list.
#5: Osees – Old National Center – October 22, 2025 – Indianapolis, IN
I’m not sure it would be proper for me to not see Osees at least once a year by this point (or The Black Angels, for that matter). This show was in a small ballroom in the basement of the Old National Center that didn’t have much airflow but did have rock-sold pillars at the four corners of the dance floor / mosh pit. It was a sweaty, loud affair, which is just what you want for an Osees show. They hadn’t played in Indianapolis in a few years, so the crowd was eager to see them — and many hadn’t seen them until that night. They were either shocked or delighted by the end.
#4: King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra – August 09, 2025 – Ravinia – Highland Park, IL
I almost didn’t include this show by King Gizzard (another band I seem to catch every year) because our seats were too far back to see the actual stage. However, this show teaming KGATLW up with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was too neat of a show to pass up and, what put it into the top five, they sounded great. No joke, this is probably the best sound engineering I’ve experienced at a KGATLW show, and I’ve seen many (and all of them are recorded and released by their highly skilled sound crew). I’d never heard them so clear in a live setting.
#3: TV on the Radio – September 27, 2025 – Levitation Austin – Austin, TX
I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to see TVOTR live, so I was bouncing when my suspicions were confirmed and they were booked for Levitation Austin. The show was everything I’d hoped for — high energy, great sound, and powerful messages. It felt like a blessing to see them after so many years without a tour.
#2: Nine Inch Nails – August 20, 2025 – United Center – Chicago, IL
Here’s a show I almost didn’t attend because the first night at Chicago’s United Center sold out so fast that I couldn’t get tickets. Luckily, Trent Reznor and his pals decided to book another show the following night and I scored tickets for that. The set included three different stages, great new versions of classic tracks, new tunes, and NIN looking and sounding like they’d never taken a break to make Oscar-winning film music.
#1: Underworld – May 17, 2025 – Radius – Chicago, IL
Here’s the other band I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to see live. They don’t make many trips to the U.S., and the closest they’d come in recent years was Detroit (four hours from where I live). Seeing them in a relatively small venue half the distance away was an immediate priority, and then I learned they were playing two sets with no opening act. It was a stunning performance that had everyone jumping for hours with only a short intermission and left everyone floating by the end.
Who do you want to see this year? I’m already looking forward to catching The Hives, Dry Cleaning, LCD Soundsystem, Gary Numan, Failure, Shame, Alison Krauss, and (of course) Osees, not to mention a return to Levitation Austin. Levitation France is taking a hiatus this year, so perhaps Austin Psych Fest will take its place?
Here we are at the top ten albums I reviewed last year. The choices get tougher as the numbers get lower. Let’s get to it.
#10: The Limiñanas – Faded
A salute to forgotten models, actresses, singers, and to lost friends, Faded is another solid album from the French psych-rock duo. It has all the elements you want from The Limiñanas – wild guitars, heartbeat drums, smoky vocals, and a sense that they’re re-creating something you’ve forgotten.
#9: Blackwater Holylight – If You Only Knew
It was great to get a new recording from Blackwater Holylight last year (and a new full-length album is already on the way), and If You Only Knew marked a turn toward shoegaze for them. I’m all for it. The heavy guitars and deep, often sad lyrics are still there. Perhaps doom-gaze is a better description of it. Then again, why bother describing it? Just let overwhelm you.
#8: Frankie and The Witch Fingers – Live at KEXP
I’ve been waiting for a live Frankie and The Witch Fingers album for a little while, and this recording of a raw, raucous show for KEXP didn’t disappoint. It’s difficult to capture their live show energy, but they did it. The fact that they open the show with “Brain Telephone” (an oldie) makes it even better.
#7: Roi Turbo – Bazooka EP
This, simply put, is the best house music record I heard all last year. It makes you crave a longer record. These guys are having a lot of fun and thankfully they invited us to the party.
#6: Joe Alterman & Mocean Worker – Keep the Line Open
This jazz-funk-trip-hop record is a delight from start to finish as pianist Joe Alterman and producer / DJ Mocean Worker pay tribute to funky legend Les McCann. Every song is highly danceable and will brighten any time of day.
Up next, the top five, which includes two welcome returns, another legend, electro upstarts, and brash post-punks!
Are you looking for another full album of house and techno bangers? Well, DJ Zinc has you covered with Crackhouse Vol. 3.
The opening moments of “Conditioning” (with Chris Lorenzo) are designed to get you jumping. “That Sound” is a stand-out, building to a thumping floor-filler. “Close My Eyes” is classic house music, mixing fun beats with lovely vocals. “Amergency” dives back into straight-up jungle madness.
“Everywhere” blends the two into jungle-house with looped gospel-like vocals and popping boba bass to keep you caffeinated and on a sugar rush. Kamakaze joins Zinc for “What I’m On” – a head-swirling jungle track that makes the room feel like it’s spinning. “When I” brings us back to soulful house music. “Dollars” practically turns on the strobe lights for you with its bright synth riffs.
“Goldin” adds vocals from President T to the party, bringing in a rough edge to Zinc’s booming beats. Ever helps Zinc close out the mix with the sweaty breakbeat cut, “For My People” that leaves you out of breath by the end. It feels over too soon, as most good raves do.
