Tunisian oud master, vocalist, and composer Dhafer Youssef is globally renowned for his restless musicality. He has used his ancient instrument – five millennia and counting – to explore jazz, classical, and blues, in addition to the classical and folk musics of the Middle East, North Africa, and Mediterranean regions. The ephemeral Birds Requiem is his debut offering for Sony's resurrected Okeh imprint.

"The Height Of The Reeds" started as a commissioned work to the city of Hull, Great Britain´s cultural capital 2017. Composed by Arve Henriksen, Eivind Aarset, Jan Bang and Jez riley French, the work celebrates the longstanding seafaring relationship between Hull and Scandinavia. It was originally the musical companion to a sound walk that took place in April, May and June 2017.

Jazzland is proud to present the brand new opus from two of the brightest luminaries on the Norwegian scene. "Snow Catches on her Eyelashes" emanates musical authority, a hyperconscious layering of textures and musicality, at once evocative of some otherworldly space, yet familiar at a deep human level that resonates with each sonic flourish.

This far-reaching double album, recorded and mixed in three days in Lugano, introduces a quartet featuring pianist Tigran Hamasyan with Arve Henriksen on trumpet, guitarist Eivind Aarset and Jan Bang on live samples. The musicians had played in diverse configurations on ECM, but with Hamasyan at the centre of the sound, bringing with him ancient folk melodies transfigured in the compositions of Komitas, other inspirations come into play. All four players are at a creative peak here, whether freely reflecting upon Armenian themes or spontaneously shaping atmospheric soundscapes together.

Artists releasing multiple volumes of work over a short period of time has become more of a thing in recent years, and even when the output is consistently of the highest quality, it can be frustrating for the listener trying to gauge how a release fits within a single oeuvre, or how that oeuvre fits in within the greater artistic landscape. For sure many artists won't really care - but the fact remains that in all but the rarest of cases (and there are defo exceptions) a creative braindump makes a single body of work less memorable, more throwaway.

After two exemplary ECM discs in the company of Andy Sheppard, Michel Benita has an album with his own group. The Ethics band is international, and the Algiers-born bassist leads a line-up comprised of a flugelhornist from Fribourg, Switzerland, a koto player from Tokyo, a guitarist from Drøbak, Norway, and a French drummer who once lived in Turkey as a member of the Istanbul Symphony. The group’s music, correspondingly, flows - like the glistening river of the title - beyond borders.

The renowned Norwegian guitarist - who has previously contributed to ECM recordings with Nils Petter Molvær, Marilyn Mazur, Arve Henriksen, Andy Sheppard, Arild Andersen and Jon Hassell - with a first ‘leader’ disc for the label, recorded in Kristiansand and Oslo. “Dream Logic” is aptly named, its slowly developing drifting pieces, built up from layers of guitars, have an almost hallucinatory quality, an otherworldly ambience. Jan Bang, who is co-composer of a number of the pieces, also contributes sounds and samples, and co-produced the disc.

"Phantasmagoria, or A Different Kind of Journey" is the latest album by the Eivind Aarset 4tet, to be released September 2021 at Punkt Festival, Kristiansand. Featuring Eivind Aarset, Wetle Holte, Erland Dahlen and Audun Erlien, the album is no departure in terms of the compositional quality contained therein, as it remains gold standard.