Staff Picks - May 2025

Staff Picks - May 2025

June 9, 2025

Written by:

Dragoș Rusu & Victor Stutz

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Enjoy an epic selection of albums and compilations that got our attention and were released over the course of last month. As usual, expect anything from experimental to electronics, Algerian Rai, psychedelic rock, ambient, traditional, contemporary, noise and much more; both new releases and reissues.

What's new, what's good, what's hot or not, what's obscure or under the radar, music wise, here's the monthly Staff Picks. If you think that we've missed something or want to send a tip, please get in touch.

From Auntie Flo to Bernard Parmegiani

Bandã - O Aniversário da Mariá (Seminal Records)
Bandã - O Aniversário da Mariá (Seminal Records)
Angel Bat Dawid & Naima Nefertari - Journey to Nabta Playa (Spiritmuse Records)
Journey To Nabta Playa is a new album from composer and multi-instrumentalist Angel Bat Dawid and multidisciplinary artist and musician Naima Nefertari (aka Karlsson). A powerful meditation on memory, mythology, and ancestral science, the record draws deep inspiration from the ancient astrological stone circle of Nabta Playa, nestled in the remote deserts of Nubia.

Auntie Flo - Outernational Dance (Multi Culti)
Throughout his long career in music, Brian d'Souza aka Auntie Flo has made a name for himself for his adventurous and open-minded approach to music making. Travel and collaboration is key to his work, and over the course of four albums and various singles, he's showcased music made in Cuba, South Korea, Uganda, Brazil and more, often fusing long standing musical traditions, field recordings and artist collaborations with a modern production techniques.

Bandã - O Aniversário da Mariá (Seminal Records)
BANDÃ is the ensemble of Brazilian musicians Juliana Perdigão, Mariá Portugal, Marcela Lucatelli, Carla Boregas, and Marina Cyrino, who together manifest the flavors and freedoms of a sonic world beyond the boundaries of musical genres. BANDÃ is grounded in the affirmation of the sum of outstanding and diverse artistic profiles, with a focus on cross-genre improvisation—drawing from jazz, contemporary classical music, electronics, noise, punk, Brazilian popular song, and folk music coexisting simultaneously.

Battle Elf - 10 (Birdman Records)
Three sonic wanderers make up the band Battle Elf: guitarists Gretchen Gonzales & Chris Peters and drummer David Hurley. Their unified electric sound creates universes from ancient dust, telling tales of battles and redemption. Hailing from Detroit, a hub of industry and culture, each member of Battle Elf absorbed the sounds of the world as they grew.



Bălă - Live at Teatrul 21
Bălă is the tentative alias under which Alex Bălă releases his own music. Alex Bălă is a musician based in Bucharest. He plays in the queer act #FLUID and the krautrock band deathbycoconut and makes music for theatre, dance, film, installations etc

Bernard Parmegiani - Lac Noir - La Serpente 1992 (Sub Rosa)
"At the end of May 1992, in Provence, in his summer studio not far from the Montagne Sainte-Victoire, Bernard Parmegiani played me the first musical moments he had worked on from the sounds he and Christian Zanési had collected in Negreni in October 1990. A few days after this listening session, on 4th June, I wrote him a letter. I didn't mean to take control of what was to become the ninth movement of his composition, but to share with him some of the resonances I had heard in what he had composed, which mingled with my dreams and memories of the Transylvanian snake-woman, and outlined possible concordances with the other pieces underway for Lac Noir." E. Raquin-Lorenzi

Cantor Arie Ovadia - Hamizrah Mezamer (The East Sings): Iraqi-Israeli Songs ca. 1975 המזרח מזמר (Canary Records)
Born in Kirkuk in the Kingdom of Iraq on May 1, 1937, Arie Ovadia was part of an ethnic minority of several hundred Jewish families in the city made up mostly of Turks, Kurds, and Arabs. As in Syria and the Maghreb, after the foundation of the state of Israel, Jews were oppressed and forced out of their homes. Ovadia was about 14 years old when his family had to resettle in Israel in 1951. He was by that point already very involved with music and researched the music of “oriental” Jews, visiting older singers and enrolling in Nissan-Cohen Melamed (b. Shiraz, present-day Iran 1906; d. Israel 1983)’s Sephardic Cantorial Music school.
Glasspack - Rarefied Airs (Stoned To Death)
Glasspack - Rarefied Airs (Stoned To Death)

From Frente Cumbiero to Glasspack

Dharma - Metal Fracture
The crushing sound of industrial heaviness, the inevitable constructions around us, the fractures life brings about (both physical and mental), extreme metal in my youth and coming back to it at this later age, Allan Holdsworth’s Metal Fatigue in 1987 (though nothing musically like that here) and finally, the electric guitar with the joys of fuzz.

Drissi El-Abbassi - Rai Sidi Bel Abbes - Volume 2 (Nashazphone)
Drissi El-Abbassi was a pioneer of the style who bridged its early roots with the era of multi-track digital recording during the sound’s rapid evolution, making for an insane set of microtonal synths, psych guitars and drum machines for fans of Cheb Khaled, Omar Khorshid or Omar Souleyman. In 1978, the Algerian Rai musician joined Les Aigles Noirs as a stage animator and 1979 he was part of Les Freres Zergui. First cassette release on Editions Mekkeraphone in '79. Later he worked for labels like La Nouvelle Etoile, Editions Anwar, Editions Maghreb or Editions Saint Crepain.



Eva Fernández Suárez & Thomas Barrière - Adela (Morctapes)
Eva Fernández Suárez and Thomas Barrière have both been around for a while, just not as a duo. Eva is originally from the Asturias region in northern Spain but has been residing in France for quite a few years now. As a solo singer, her work is firmly rooted in classic folk-inspired material, more specifically in the bleak, bare-bones, and stripped-down kind.

Frente Cumbiero - Inconcreto & Asociados (Biche)
Frente Cumbiero is widely recognized as one of the spearheads of the cumbia nueva (new cumbia) movement in Colombia, because of their fresh, contemporary and exciting take on cumbia. The quartet is headed by Colombian songwriter and producer Mario Galeano, who also is part of Ondatrópica and Los Pirañas. He draws his inspiration, ánd his samples that form the base of his contemporary tracks, from his large collection of cumbia records, mainly from the 60s and 70s.

Glasspack - Rarefied Airs (Stoned To Death)
Rarefied Airs is the debut album by Glasspack, duo of Henry Birdsey and Ian McColm. Both Birdsey and McColm are part of an extended New Haven (CT) musician family (think of Stefan Christensen, Shirese, David Shapiro, Center, Figured, Tongue Depressor etc.). In Glasspack they fuse Birdsey’s bagpipes with McColm’s computerized sounds to hammer out rock solid modern fourth world music masterpiece.

Håkon Berre - Mirror Matter (Barefoot Records)
Mirror Matter is drummer and sound artist Håkon Berre’s solo project. Mirror Matter presents Håkon sitting on the floor with his expanded and diverse floor-setup. Using a “gran cassa” as a habitat for his vast diversity of trash and objects, he juggles scrupulously with materials such as metal, plastic, cardboard, paper, wood and expanded polystyrene on top of the horizontally lying bass drum. In this project Håkon focuses mostly on friction / bodies in motion, where he works on a micro level with different objects and their possibilities for friction / vibration, and the resonance it subsequently produces on a receptive sounding board. In addition, the sound is processed electronically using contact microphones and computer software. Ultimately, the acoustic sounds blend in with distortion pedals and synthesized drum machine beats.

Henry Kaiser & Tungu - Night Lamp (Shrike Records)
This release out on the London based imprint Shrike comprises Henry Kaiser on guitar and Tungu aka Sergiy Senchuk on voice, field recording and samples.
Cantor Arie Ovadia - Hamizrah Mezamer (The East Sings): Iraqi-Israeli Songs ca. 1975 המזרח מזמר (Canary Records)
Cantor Arie Ovadia - Hamizrah Mezamer (The East Sings): Iraqi-Israeli Songs ca. 1975 המזרח מזמר (Canary Records)

From Kalahari Surfers to Les Abranis

Evan Parker / Jean-Marc Foussat - Insolence (Nashazphone)
Two avant-garde and improvisation titans offer a new chapter in the infinite quest for freedom and absolute beauty. Innocence and Insouciance are sharp and stinging live improvisations by longtime comrades, Parker and Foussat. Elegant, subtle and complex, these pieces immediately rise to the status of eternal documents by these giants.

Kalahari Surfers - Own Affairs (Via Parigi / Outre National)
"This album is situated in this political environment however it took advantage of the new do-it-yourself music technologies available at that time. Technologies that made it possible to make and release records without interference from traditional record company executives. Two musician friends of mine pooled their resources after their respective bands had broken up. Ivan Kadey (National Wake) and Lloyd Ross (Radio Rats) built an 8-track recording studio control room and fitted it out in a second hand caravan and called it Shifty. They parked it in a garage attached to the only house left in a demolished and derelict mining village near Soweto on the outskirts of Johannesburg." Warrick Sony

Kawaguchi Masami 川口雅巳 / Mike Vest / Dave Sneddon - To Be True, Then The Loop Will Run Forever (WV Sorcerer Productions)
This improvisational trio, explores the endless sonic exploration of garage noise rock, improvisation, and psychedelia. Thriving on the principles of spontaneity. A rich auditory landscape where this improv rock energy intertwines with the expansive realms of repetition and the power trio psychedelic rock formation.

Les Abranis - Album No 1 (Id Ed Was) (WeWantSounds)
The Kabyle group Les Abranis from Algeria has become one of the most sought-after bands on the global beat scene over the years. Founded in France in the late 1960s by two young Algerian Kabyle workers, Shamy El Vaz and Karim Abdenour, Les Abranis rose to prominence in the 1970s with their innovative sound, blending traditional Kabyle music with funk, rock, and psychedelic influences. Their lyrics, often sung in Kabyle, celebrate Amazigh identity and culture, making them a major influence on the North African music scene and beyond. In 1983, the group entered Acousti Studio in Paris to record Album No. 1, featuring legendary French drummer André ‘Dédé’ Ceccarelli—who played with artists ranging from Serge Gainsbourg to France Gall, as well as on numerous library music sessions with Janko Nilovic, Teddy Lasry, and Jacky Giordano—alongside Tony Bonfils on bass. Album No. 1 was originally self-released in 1983 and distributed exclusively within the Kabyle and Algerian communities in France and the Maghreb. Over time, it has become a sought-after LP among fans of Arabic music, as it was never reissued—until now.



Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga Rhythm Force - Khadim (Ndagga)
Khadim is a stunning reconfiguration of the Ndagga Rhythm Force sound. The instrumentation is radically pared down. The guitar is gone; the concatenation of sabars; the drum-kit. Each of the four tracks hones in on just one or two drummers; otherwise, the sole recorded element is the singing; everything else is programmed. Synths are dialogically locked into the drumming. Tellingly, Ernestus has reached for his beloved Prophet-5, a signature go-to since Basic Channel days, thirty years ago. Texturally, the sound is more dubwise; prickling with effects. There is a new spaciousness, announced at the start by the ambient sounds of Dakar street-life. At the microphone, Mbene Diatta Seck revels in this new openness: mbalax diva, she feelingly turns each of the four songs into a discrete dramatic episode, using different sets of rhetorical techniques.
Maurice Louca - Barĩy (Fera) برٌِي (Simsara Records)
Maurice Louca - Barĩy (Fera) برٌِي (Simsara Records)

From Mike Cooper to Repetition Repetition

Maurice Louca - Barĩy (Fera) برٌِي (Simsara Records)
This wild and adventurous album that Egyptian artist Maurice Louca wrote over a four-year period takes its title from the Latin root for the word feral, and has its origins in a solo set that Louca first developed in 2019; the compositions eventually took their final shape when he recorded them in a Cairo studio in 2024 with a group of long-time collaborators and guests. The violinist Ayman Asfour, percussionist and drummer Khaled Yassine, double bassist Rosa Brunello and co-producer Adham Zidan all play critical roles on the album, and they’re joined on two tracks by multi-instrumentalist Nancy Mounir (who plays violin and theremin on El Taalab) and oud virtuoso Hazem Shaheen (on Sahar).

Mike Cooper - Eternal Equinox (Room40)
"These pieces started out as simple improvisations on my virtual pedal steel inspired by the compositions of Kevin Good played by pedal steel guitar player Matt Sargent on their record Trails. Simple melodic minimalistic pieces. Eventually as I listened back to my improvisations other textures and timbre suggested themselves and more complex compositions came to light." Mike Cooper

Natura Morta - Un Pensiero Intrusivo (Disques de la Spirale)
A name that breathes, a voice that whispers and howls in soliloquy. Collecting the echoes that follow—field recordings from Colombia, murmured poems, the spectral songs of birds—she stitches together a sonic diary, an audible thread between past and present.

V.A. - Only Sounds That Tremble Through Us | فقط أصوات ترتعش في أجسادنا (Bilna'es بالناقص)
The album Only sounds that tremble through us is a double LP. The first record features a full album of compositions by Abbas and Abou-Rahme, developed as part of the project between 2022-2024, while the second record is an album made up of commissioned compositions by Hiro Kone, Drew McDowall, Makimakkuk, Julmud, Haykal, SCRAAATCH, Muqata’a, Freddie June, and DJ Haram in conversation with the project. The artists invited have all had a long engagement with the wider project, several of these artists had been invited by Abbas and Abou-Rahme to perform in the installation as part of the exhibitions of the work, whilst others are featured in the work itself. The artists in this double LP take the wider project and archival material as a conceptual and at times a literal starting point (through sampling, and synthesis) for their compositions.



Repetition Repetition - Fit for Consequences: Original Recordings, 1984–1987 (Freedom To Spend/RVNG Intl.)
Fit for Consequences: Original Recordings, 1984–1987 is the first ever archival release from Repetition Repetition, the "two-man electric minimalist band" consisting of Ruben Garcia and Steve Caton hailing from Los Angeles in the mid 1980’s. Repetition Repetition’s unique blend of cosmic art-rock minimalism / maximalism was self-released across a series of cassettes produced in micro editions, and while garnering the attention and participation of luminaries such as Harold Budd, remained under the radar during the band’s existence.
Spiritczualic Enhancement Center - The Deep Sleep of Evil Men (Crash Symbols)
Spiritczualic Enhancement Center - The Deep Sleep of Evil Men (Crash Symbols)

From Spelterini to The Selva

Spelterini - Hyomon-Dako / Magnésie (Kythibong Records)
Spelterini widens the realm of possibilities even further, blending rock experiences with learned music, and forging new paths at the crossroads of post-punk and minimalist music. These two pieces explore delightful points of friction between contrasting formats and temporalities, which stand in contrast to the sonic urgency at work, finding fragile points of balance between repetition, rupture, and explosion. Named after the Italian tightrope walker Maria Spelterini, famous for crossing Niagara Falls several times on a wire in 1876, the quartet composed of Pierre-Antoine Parois, Arthur de La Grandière (members of Papier Tigre and La Colonie de Vacances), Meriadeg Orgebin, and Nicolas Joubaud (two former members of Chausse Trappe) have a penchant for song titles borrowed from the fine points of Scrabble and unpredictable musical compositions, often spanning more than fifteen minutes.



Spiritczualic Enhancement Center - The Deep Sleep of Evil Men (Crash Symbols)
For Spiritczualic Enhancement Center's sixth album in 8 years, The Deep Sleep of Evil Men presents a free-roaming space western girded by the band’s distinctive and chaotic song structures. Mystical melodies are conjured as the dragon rises from his magnetic slumber, entranced musicians acting as mediums to summon new moments from the world's endless chronicle of sound.

The Selva - The Selva (Clean Feed)
The Portuguese trio The Selva likes to make musical references, to symbolize and to propose dubious significations. The debut album of the group starts with a piece full of indeterminate allusions to the Far-Eastern traditional music expressions. It goes on with a virtual journey through Renaissance times and its aesthetic values, seeming to invite us to care more for the beauty of life.

The Soundbulbs - The Electroacoustic Attic Vol. 1
The Electroacoustic Attic Vol. 1 is an album compiled by cutting and gluing together fragments taken from several improvisation sessions. Its raw, organic and intimate sound is the result of harvesting the inspiration of each moment, with every misplaced note and distortion adding uniqueness to its character. There are no added layers or effects, just a messy and unpredictable flow of emotions. The Project comprises Maatus Pealler (on synth, kalimba and percussion), Gabi Crecan (modular synth) and Tomi Tako (shakuhachi, percussion).
About the Author

Dragoș Rusu & Victor Stutz

Dragoș Rusu is co-founder and co-editor in chief of The Attic, sound researcher and allround music adventurer, with a keen interest in the anthropology of sound.

Victor Stutz is a sound adventurer and music selector from Bucharest – currently based in Barcelona - with a background in anthropology.

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