On "The Montreux Years", Roberta Flack’s Montreux Legacy Comes Alive

Roberta Flack never needed to overpower a room to hold it. There was a quiet authority in her performances — the kind that drew people in rather than demanded their attention. Her voice could be intimate without ever becoming fragile, sophisticated without losing its soul — a quality that made her one of the defining recording artists of the 1970s.

Now, that quietly formidable live presence gets a fresh showcase with Roberta Flack: The Montreux Years, a 13-track collection drawn from five of her appearances at the legendary Montreux Jazz Festival. Released by BMG and the Montreux Jazz Festival on June 26, 2026, the set brings together performances recorded in 1971, 1972, 1990, 2005 and 2008, creating a remarkably broad portrait of Flack as a live performer.

Image: Roberta Flack at Baltimore’s M.D. Meyerhoff Theater in 1995. Photo by John Mathew Smith, via Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

From the early ’70s to the final Montreux appearance

The real attraction here is the timespan. Flack first appeared at Montreux in June 1971, when she was still in the early stages of the career that would soon make her a household name. The collection then jumps forward through 1972, 1990, 2005 and finally 2008.

That makes The Montreux Years more than a straightforward greatest-hits package. It is effectively a live career snapshot, showing how Flack’s interpretation of a song could evolve across decades while retaining the qualities that made her performances so distinctive.

The tracklist moves between familiar classics and less obvious choices. There is the hushed grandeur of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”, captured at the Auditorium Stravinski in 2005, alongside “Killing Me Softly With His Song”, “Feel Like Makin’ Love” and “Mercy Mercy Me.” Earlier Montreux recordings include “To Love Somebody” from 1971 and “Suzanne” and “Somewhere” from 1972.

And then there is the 1990 material: “I’d Like To Be Baby To You,” “More Than You’ll Ever Know” and “Always.” The first of those has been singled out as an early taste of the collection, offering a glimpse of Flack in a different era but still operating with that trademark control and warmth.

A voice built for the live setting

Flack’s reputation was never based simply on vocal fireworks. Classically trained as a pianist and educated at Howard University, she developed a style in which restraint became a form of power. The Smithsonian has described her music as embracing blues, folk, R&B, jazz, classical and pop influences — a useful description of why her records have always resisted being neatly filed under one genre.

That versatility is particularly revealing on The Montreux Years. Rather than presenting Flack as a museum piece frozen in the early 1970s, the collection allows the listener to hear an artist continuing to reinterpret her musical world well into the 21st century.

The performances were also fully restored and newly mastered by Tony Cousins at London’s Metropolis Studios, with the release accompanied by liner notes from Flack’s longtime manager Suzanne Koga and rare and previously unseen photographs.

Image: Roberta Flack performing in Deauville, France, July 1992. Photo by Roland Godefroy, via Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

A fitting addition to Flack’s legacy

Flack died on February 24, 2025, aged 88, leaving behind a catalogue that included four Grammy wins and the distinction of becoming the only solo artist to win consecutive Grammy Awards for Record of the Year — for “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” in 1973 and “Killing Me Softly With His Song” in 1974. She was also honoured with the Recording Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020.

That makes the arrival of The Montreux Years especially poignant. It isn't simply another archival release designed to fill a gap in a catalogue. Heard together, these recordings trace nearly four decades of an artist who never needed to shout to make an impact.

Montreux gave Roberta Flack a stage; these recordings give listeners the chance to step back into that stage with her. And for anyone who has ever been drawn to the exquisite calm, emotional precision and understated drama of Flack’s music, The Montreux Yearsis a particularly welcome reminder of just how extraordinary that voice could be when the lights went down and the music began.

On "YDOS", Black Spikes Turn The Extreme Metal Rulebook To Ashes

Lithuania’s modern-metal outsiders collide blast beats, progressive metal, electronics, trap and theatrical storytelling on a dark fairytale about the vices lurking inside us.

There are plenty of ways for a metal band to announce that it intends to do things differently. Black Spikes have apparently decided that the best approach is to throw the entire rulebook into the fire.

The Lithuanian quintet return on 28 August with Ydos, their second full-length album and their first release through Austrian heavy-music institution Napalm Records. If the early material is anything to go by, this is a band with absolutely no interest in staying obediently inside one particular corner of the metal spectrum.

And that is precisely what makes Ydos so intriguing.

Black Spikes have built their sound around collision rather than convention. Progressive metal, electronic textures, crushing riffs, blast beats, breakdowns, atmospheric passages and even trap and rap elements are all allowed into the same room. Metal Hammer's assessment of the record highlights that restless mixture, pointing to progressive passages and blasts on “MOTINA”, rap and trap beats on “MELAS”, and pulsing electronics and punishing low-end on “ZELVAR”.

The result isn't simply genre soup, either. There is a deliberate narrative holding the whole thing together.

Welcome to the world of Ydos

The Lithuanian word ydos refers to vices or flaws, and Black Spikes have turned that idea into a dark musical fairytale. Rather than simply writing a collection of heavy songs and attaching a concept afterwards, the band say the story came first and guided the songwriting process. Each track explores a different human vice, giving the album a structure that is closer to a nightmare fable than a conventional collection of singles.

Opening track “PASAKA” — meaning “fairy tale” — establishes that atmosphere with ticking sounds and orchestral textures before vocalist Agni enters with high vocals and screams. “MOTINA”, translated as “mother”, then begins the story of the birth of the vices, expanding into growls, blast beats and elaborate guitar work.

From there, the album gets considerably stranger.

“MELAS” explores lies while bringing trap and rap into the band's modern-metal framework. “MARA” tackles excessive curiosity through sharp contrasts between serenity and violence, while “ZELVAR” represents greed and is notable for containing the album's only English lyrics. “REVANA” turns its attention to revenge, before “APATIJA” explores apathy and “AUREA” examines pride.

It is an ambitious idea — and, crucially, one that seems to have been allowed to influence the music rather than merely decorate it.

Heavy enough to crush, strange enough to linger

At the centre of all this is Agni's remarkably flexible vocal performance. The band's music can move from atmospheric and almost hypnotic passages into shrieks, screams and deep guttural growls without seeming to lose its sense of identity. Metal Hammer likewise singled out her range, describing a voice that moves between whispers, screams and growls in her native Lithuanian.

That use of Lithuanian is another part of what makes Black Spikes stand apart. Rather than abandoning their native language in pursuit of an international metal audience, the band have made it an integral part of their identity. Even when you cannot understand the words, the theatrical delivery makes the songs feel less like straightforward verse-chorus compositions and more like scenes from some beautifully sinister film.

That cinematic quality has already been noticed by critics. MetalTalk praised the album's combination of orchestration, blast beats, progressive and djent-influenced rhythms, electronic textures and changes in tempo and dynamics, while other coverage has highlighted the way Black Spikes combine darkness with unexpectedly graceful or atmospheric passages.

A band suddenly stepping onto a bigger stage

Ydos also arrives at an important moment for Black Spikes.

The band have recently signed with Napalm Records — a significant step for a group emerging from Lithuania's metal scene — and the album follows increased attention at home, including a double nomination at Lithuania's M.A.M.A. Music Awards. They also spent 2026 on the road with Infected Rain and Butcher Babies, giving audiences outside Lithuania a chance to experience the band's theatrical approach in the flesh.

That live identity matters. Reports from the tour describe Black Spikes as a visually striking act as well as an intensely heavy one, with costumed musicians, atmospheric staging and contemporary dance adding another layer to the performance.

In other words, the band aren't simply making unusual records. They appear to be building an entire world around them.

The rulebook was never going to survive

There is something refreshingly fearless about Ydos. Black Spikes aren't attempting to reinvent every component of heavy music individually; instead, they are asking what happens when you stop worrying about which components are supposed to belong together.

The answer, judging from the material already released, is a record where blast beats can collide with electronic bass, progressive arrangements can give way to trap rhythms, ethereal vocals can suddenly become monstrous screams, and a song about an abstract human vice can still hit with the physical force expected from modern extreme metal.

That makes Ydos less a rejection of extreme metal than an expansion of its borders.

The rulebook, then, hasn't merely been bent.

Black Spikes have set fire to it — and are dancing in the flames.

Joshua Cavanagh-Brierley Turns Big-Band Ambition Into Something Gloriously Alive

There is something wonderfully mischievous about Joshua Cavanagh-Brierley’s The Mild Mannered and the Mortal. The title sounds almost self-effacing, but the music underneath it is anything but.

Released by Manchester’s Efpi Records on 7 August 2026, the album is the fourth release as a leader from the Manchester-based double bassist and composer. It brings together a new sextet built around the rhythm-section chemistry of Cavanagh-Brierley’s Angle Shades trio — pianist Richard Jones and drummer Johnny Hunter — with trumpeter Graham South, tenor saxophonist Kyran Matthews and trombonist Ellie Smith completing the frontline. Olivia Cuttill also appears on trumpet on “Rich and Catherine”.

The result is a record that repeatedly sounds bigger than the personnel on the sleeve. Cavanagh-Brierley has a history of writing for larger ensembles — his 2021 album Joy in Bewilderment expanded as far as a 12-piece group and featured American saxophonist Chris Potter — but here he achieves a similarly expansive effect with considerably fewer musicians.

A dream, a ghost of Mingus, and eight new compositions

The strangest part of the story may be how the album began. Cavanagh-Brierley has explained that the project grew from a vivid dream about discovering a previously unknown Charles Mingus album. Rather than simply waking up and forgetting it, he tried to reconstruct the music he had heard in the dream, eventually producing “Toby Would’ve Hated This”, a piece that gives Smith’s trombone a particularly prominent role.

That Mingus connection is important, but The Mild Mannered and the Mortal isn't simply an exercise in retro jazz cosplay. Cavanagh-Brierley has been clear that he wasn't attempting to make a Mingus album — instead, the aim was to capture something of the older bassist-composer's exuberance, unpredictability and sheer delight in musical interaction. The distinction matters.

Image credit: Charles Mingus, photographed by Tom Marcello at the Bi-Centennial celebration in Lower Manhattan, 4 July 1976. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed CC BY-SA 2.0.

When a sextet sounds like a small orchestra

The album's opening track, “Elvin's Lullaby”, establishes the approach immediately: long horn melodies, richly layered ensemble writing and Jones's piano threading through the arrangement before South takes an expansive solo. “25 O'clock” pushes harder, with Hunter driving the group into something approaching miniature big-band territory.

Then comes “Can't Get A Luckin'”, a 12½-minute journey through shifting styles and tempos that finally gives Cavanagh-Brierley a chance to step out from behind the composer's desk and put his double-bass playing front and centre. “Rich and Catherine”, meanwhile, changes the temperature, allowing Cuttill's trumpet to bring a warmer, more lyrical quality to the record.

It's this ability to change shape without losing the identity of the band that makes the record particularly compelling. One moment the horns suggest a compact big band; the next, the music is opening into something looser and more abstract.

“Lift Off” lives up to its name, turning the sextet into a punchy, high-energy unit, while the title track — listed as “The Mild Mannered are the Mortal” — moves through multiple dynamic and stylistic shifts. Jones, previously operating largely as an ensemble player, gets room to really stretch out, producing one of the album's standout piano performances.

The North's new jazz energy

Perhaps the most exciting thing about the record is that it feels less like a showcase for one composer than a conversation between musicians who know exactly how far they can push one another.

Cavanagh-Brierley has described the familiarity between the core players as a major part of the writing process, and that familiarity comes through in the looseness beneath the elaborate arrangements. The recording was made in Manchester in March 2024 with the musicians playing together in the same room, rather than being separated into isolation booths — a choice that helps explain the unusually immediate ensemble sound.

Kyran Matthews is particularly prominent, delivering a muscular tenor presence throughout, while Hunter's drumming provides a flexible engine capable of moving from supportive propulsion to full-on rhythmic attack. Smith's trombone gives the three-horn front line an earthy weight, while Jones and Cavanagh-Brierley keep the harmonic and rhythmic machinery constantly shifting beneath it.

Potter's appearance on Joy in Bewilderment also provides a useful reminder of how wide Cavanagh-Brierley's musical world already is. His official biography lists work with Potter alongside artists including Matthew Halsall, Nishla Smith, Caoilfhionn Rose Birley and the Beats & Pieces Big Band, as well as orchestral work and theatre productions.

Image credit: Chris Potter at the North Sea Jazz Festival, photographed by Geert Vandepoele. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed CC BY-SA 2.0.

Mild manners, mortal consequences

For all its sophistication, The Mild Mannered and the Mortal never seems overly concerned with proving how clever it is. That's arguably its greatest strength.

There are complex harmonies, abrupt turns, extended improvisations and carefully orchestrated passages everywhere, but the arrangements leave genuine space for the players. Even the album's more intricate moments retain a sense of movement and personality rather than becoming exercises in compositional gymnastics. Independent reviews have similarly singled out the balance between detailed writing and freedom for the soloists.

And then there is “Mr. Relaxed”, the closing track whose title proves to be a wonderfully unreliable description. The piece is lively, with energetic ensemble interplay followed by solos from South, Jones and Matthews. It's a fitting finale for an album whose supposed mildness repeatedly gives way to something much more animated.

At well over an hour, this isn't background music. It's an album that demands a little time — but rewards it with the sense that something is constantly happening just around the corner.

Joshua Cavanagh-Brierley's The Mild Mannered and the Mortal may borrow a mischievous spark from Mingus, but it ultimately belongs to its own moment: a Manchester-made, forward-looking jazz record full of restless arrangements, heavyweight ensemble playing and musicians clearly enjoying the freedom to surprise one another.

And for a record called The Mild Mannered and the Mortal, that's a pretty lively way to be.

On "Pure Devotion" Overmono Turn Up the Heat

The Welsh electronic duo return with a tactile, unruly second album that pushes their club sound into stranger and more physical territory.

Overmono have never been particularly interested in making electronic music that feels overly polished. On Pure Devotion, the Welsh brothers Tom and Ed Russell take that instinct several steps further, turning the studio itself into an instrument.

Released on 7 August 2026 through XL Recordings, Pure Devotion is the duo’s second album, following 2023’s Good Lies. Across 11 tracks, Overmono combine the heavyweight bass pressure and euphoric rush of their live sets with an unusually hands-on approach to sound design.

And if the album’s title suggests something serene, the music has other ideas.

Where the machines get messy

The central idea behind Pure Devotion is physicality. Rather than simply reaching for pristine digital sounds, Overmono have been deliberately abusing, reshaping and re-recording their equipment.

The pair have described running tape over magnets, pushing sounds through old speakers and experimenting with ageing effects hardware. One particularly eccentric experiment involved baking a cymbal covered in coffee grounds, crisps and vinegar — an idea attributed to producer Sylvia Massy.

It sounds ridiculous on paper. In the context of Overmono, however, it makes perfect sense. Their music has always thrived on the tension between machine precision and human messiness: rigid rhythms collide with warped samples, emotional vocals and sounds that seem to be on the verge of breaking apart.

That philosophy is all over Pure Devotion.

From Lockup to the deeper cuts

The album opens with “Lockup”, a track that immediately establishes the record’s tougher, more kinetic side. The single reworks Birmingham post-punk group Fast Relief’s “What A Waste” into a driving four-to-the-floor track, giving Overmono another opportunity to blur the boundaries between rave, punk and electronic music.

From there, the record moves through a surprisingly compact collection of ideas. “Knight In Shining Prada” features John Joseph Holt, while Kindora appears on “Even Angels Ghost” and alongside Rock Floyd on “Ballad”. Ruthven also contributes to “Gem Lingo (ovr now)”.

The tracklist reads almost like a snapshot of Overmono’s increasingly broad musical world: club weapons sit alongside more spacious, melodic moments, while vocal collaborations add colour without pulling the album away from its electronic core.

The songs are also strikingly concise, with the individual tracks mostly landing between roughly two-and-a-half and four-and-a-half minutes. That gives the album a brisk, constantly moving feel rather than the extended runtime of a traditional techno record.

The live show is still the beating heart

Perhaps the most important thing about Pure Devotion is that it feels connected to what Overmono have become onstage.

Since Good Lies, Tom and Ed Russell have spent considerable time developing their live performances, including touring internationally, appearing at Glastonbury and recording a Boiler Room set in Manchester. Their new material has therefore been developing alongside a live identity that has become increasingly central to the project.

That helps explain why Pure Devotion seems designed less as a collection of isolated studio experiments and more as fuel for a room full of people.

The contrast is crucial. Overmono can make something feel enormous without making it sound unnecessarily complicated. A bassline hits hard, a vocal slips into focus, a melody briefly appears through the smoke — and suddenly a track that might look deceptively simple on paper becomes enormous when played through a proper sound system.

A bigger, stranger Overmono

What makes Pure Devotion interesting is that the duo haven't simply tried to make a bigger version of Good Lies. Instead, they have doubled down on the imperfections that made their music distinctive in the first place.

The result is an album built around a very Overmono idea: take something familiar, damage it slightly, push it through something inappropriate, and see what happens.

There are still the huge beats and chest-rattling low end, but the surfaces feel more tactile. The electronic machinery is audible in the music rather than hidden behind it. Even the album artwork — featuring the Doberman image created by long-time collaborator Rollo Jackson — reflects that combination of menace and elegance.

With Pure Devotion, Overmono sound increasingly comfortable occupying their own space: somewhere between rave nostalgia, experimental production and unabashed emotional release.

It is dance music that wants to be felt physically — but also inspected closely once the adrenaline wears off.

And that might be the most devoted thing about it.

Tony Lakatos’ George In Our Minds: A Lost Trio Session Gets Its Moment

A previously recorded 2004 performance brings Tony Lakatos, George Mraz and Adam Nussbaum together for a sophisticated salute to Gershwin — and an unexpectedly moving farewell to Mraz himself.

There is something wonderfully old-school about George In Our Minds. The title points towards George Gershwin, whose compositions form the heart of the set, but the forthcoming SKIP Records release carries another, much more poignant meaning: it is also a tribute to the great Czech-American bassist George Mraz, who died in Prague in 2021.

Recorded live in Slovakia in 2004, the album features Hungarian saxophonist Tony Lakatos alongside Mraz on double bass and American drummer Adam Nussbaum. SKIP Records is scheduled to release the previously recorded performance on 28 August 2026, with catalogue number SKP9168.

Image credit: Tony Lakatos with the Paul Kuhn Trio at Römerberg, Frankfurt am Main, October 2008. Photograph by Dontworry. CC BY-SA 3.0.

Gershwin with plenty of jazz muscle

The tracklist is an intriguing mixture of familiar standards and more adventurous material. “I Get Along Without You Very Well”, “Georgia On My Mind”, “The Nearness Of You” and “Stardust” sit alongside “Played Twice” — a Thelonious Monk composition — plus two Lakatos originals, “Double Reality” and “Vintage”.

That makes George In Our Minds sound less like a conventional songbook exercise and more like a proper musicians’ session: familiar melodies are the starting point, rather than the destination. Lakatos' tenor saxophone supplies the melodic personality, while Mraz and Nussbaum give the music the conversational rhythmic foundation that only a seasoned trio can really achieve.

The Lakatos–Mraz connection was already well established. Lakatos' 1994 album The News featured George Mraz alongside pianist Kirk Lightsey and drummer Al Foster, while his SKIP Records album I Get Along With You Very Well brought Lakatos, Mraz and Nussbaum together for a programme devoted to Hoagy Carmichael, with Jimmy Scott also appearing.

That history makes the rediscovery of this live recording all the more appealing.

A tribute within a tribute

This double meaning is what gives the record its emotional weight.

The album is fundamentally a celebration of Gershwin's music, but the title and accompanying release information also frame it as a remembrance of Mraz. The bassist had a remarkable career spanning European and American jazz, and his partnership with Lakatos was clearly a meaningful musical one.

Then there is Adam Nussbaum, a drummer whose career has included major associations with John Scofield, Dave Liebman, Stan Getz, Gil Evans and numerous other leading jazz figures. His ability to respond rather than simply accompany is a key part of the classic small-group jazz sound, and it makes this particular trio combination especially compelling.

Image credit: George Mraz at Exxon Park, New York City, 7 July 1983, with the Tommy Flanagan Trio and drummer Vernell Fournier. Photograph by Brian McMillen. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.

What makes George In Our Minds exciting, then, is that it isn't simply an archival curiosity. It documents three heavyweight musicians interacting in real time, tackling some of the most enduring melodies in American music while leaving plenty of space for improvisation, tension and swing.

For anyone drawn to sophisticated European jazz, the Great American Songbook or classic saxophone-bass-drums interplay, this is a release worth keeping firmly on the radar. And with George Mraz's presence at its centre, George In Our Minds looks set to be more than just another posthumous archival release — it could be a genuinely affecting snapshot of a trio at work.