Moriah Plaza "Própolis"
With effortless cool, Moriah Plaza blend Brazilian samba, cinematic Latin jazz and psychedelic 60s pop on new EP ‘Propolis’.
Moriah Plaza’s self-titled debut album, released on Batov Records in 2023, garnered critical acclaim and widespread airplay, across BBC Radio 6 Music and NTS in the UK, FIP in France, Bandcamp Weekly, and Apple Music, positioning the group as one to watch in the worlds of global pop and contemporary jazz.
‘Propolis’ EP picks up from the where the debut album left off, except now presenting more of a collaborative effort from the relatively settled Berlin-based group of Tamir Chen (bass) and Moosh Lahav (keys, flute), originally from Tel Aviv and formerly of the shoegaze band Soda Fabric, alongside Gretchen Schadebrodt (vocals, guitar) from Chile and Alice Moss (drums) from the UK.
Title track “Propolis”, co-written with Brazilian poet and singer Cecília Erisman, carries a joyful Brazilian tone, recalling Os Mutantes and Hermeto Pascoal with its bossa meets psych “la la la
la la” hook, flying flutes, and organ riffing.
“Dizendo” exudes the effortless cool of a Latin American cafe, cigarette and coffee at the ready. The laid back jazz organ, subtle Latin touches and Gretchen’s carefree vocals carry an irresistible charm.
“Besos en La Playa” takes the listener further across the continent into a more pronounced Latin jazz mode, with Spanish lyrics whispering romantic beachside tales.
The EP closes on the slow-building, “Dom Dom”, gradually blossoming into an epic vocal crescendo, drawing reflections of Stereolab and Zero 7. Alice Moss’ drumming and Moosh Lahav’s gentle flute provide the balance.
‘Propolis’ sees Moriah Plaza take strides into widening their influences and redefining their genre defying sound, and could very well appeal to fans of groups as seemingly disparate as Calexico and Khruangbin.
Pansy "Skin Graft"
The Seattle-based musician Vivian McCall Vivian McCall established her career as a multinstrumentalist and recording engineer with the outsider-y retro pop band Jungle Green in Chicago. After years of engineering sessions for her bandmates, and recording an Jungle Green album with Foxygen’s Jonathan Rado at Sonora Recorders in Los Angeles, she recorded the self-titled Pansy (Earth Libraries, 2021): eight, short, deeply-personal songs about transformation and becoming. Vivian, a transgender woman, was processing her transition in real time, and drawing from the music that helped her survive–The Magnetic Fields, Liz Phair, and the eclectic punk of New Zealand’s Dunedin sound (Chris Knox, The Chills, The Clean, and others).
Where Pansy is about becoming a person, the Skin Graft EP is about being one, Vivian says, and balancing ordinary struggles with the existential crisis of living in a country that’s grown wildly hostile to transgender people. Recorded at “the Unknown” studio in Anacortes, Washington, Skin Graft is due via Earth Libraries in November 2025.
h. pruz "Red sky at morning"
“My mother used to quote the red sky proverb to me growing up. I didn’t realize it had biblical origins for a long time… many years have felt like a homecoming back to my creative start in childhood,” Pruzinsky admits. Wrestling with the twin fears of solitude and reliance and an escape from a life that disallowed an expression of their truest self, Red sky at morning simultaneously heeds the call of the journey while working to construct a momentary shelter from the storm – whether it arrives in the dawn or dusk of our lives. It is the story of a wayfinder relinquishing control and allowing the mutinous chaos of love to chart a path to an acceptance of some great stillness. Shuffling across worn floorboards, polished from overuse, that point toward calmer waters, trying to unlearn the frantic pace of introspection, the goal is evident in the hopeful refrain of “Arrival” – “I can clear the cycle.”
– Dawood Nadurath
Chris Liebing & Speedy J "Collabs 3000 – 2025"
Techno pioneers Chris Liebing and Speedy J (aka Jochem Paap) reunite as Collabs 3000 for their 2025 EP, a brand new four-track release and their first new studio material together in nearly two decades.
Channeling the raw, improvisational energy of their recently revived Collabs 3000 live sets, these tracks build on the legacy of their acclaimed collaboration with a fresh, future-facing edge. The EP precedes the full remastered reissue of the electronic techno masterpiece Metalism, out November 2025, and celebrates a partnership that helped to define the sound of early ’00s Techno.