New music – Sondre Lerche: Follow The River (PLZ / Virgin)

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published by Ben Hogwood, with text from the press release

Acclaimed Norwegian singer/songwriter Sondre Lerche releases euphoric new single Follow The River – a flamboyant 9-minute pop-odyssey that captures the Norwegian songwriter in an unabashedly romantic, ecstatic state of mind, energised by renewed faith in love and life. Follow The River marks the second reveal from Lerche’s newly announced eleventh studio album Acrobats, out on Friday 21 August via PLZ / Virgin.

Acrobats – his first full-length of brand new music in over four years, marks the return of the beloved Norwegian artist with an album that’s bold and bombastic; a polarising reflection on the dichotomy of finding love while in times of soulless global unrest and unfathomable human atrocities.

Originally beginning life as “quite a small and simple song”, new single Follow The River gradually expanded into what Lerche describes as his “very first disco odyssey” – a sprawling nine-minute epic in its full album form, packed with ever-new scenes, encounters and experiences.

Each of its six verses zooms in on the profound and mundane details of two lost dreamers meeting and falling in love through music, scent and taste, on breezy bar visits and through sticky, sweaty city streets in summer.

“This one doesn’t make excuses for being completely overcome with feelings of love and desire,” says Lerche. “So naturally I thought, ‘I need a gospel choir on this,’ because it’s almost indulging, maybe, as an act of defiance, in the beauty of two humans finding each other, reveling in all the little, mundane moments of that.”

Featuring a rousing gospel-style choir and adlibs from singer Suzanne Sumbudu, Follow The River stands in striking contrast to much of the wider Acrobats album – unashamedly upbeat, optimistic and love drunk in all its glory.

Musically, the recording shamelessly embraces music history with nods to everyone from Pet Shop Boys, Janet Jackson and Steve Reich to Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, which inspired the track after Lerche found himself “crying his eyes out” during a performance at the Oslo Opera. “It actually started out as quite a small and simple song, but the story expanded into more of an epic, and I felt the urge to turn the entire recording into a groovy adventure, with ever-new scenes, encounters, and experiences,” says Lerche. The track also features what is perhaps Lerche’s most natural and simplistic chorus so far in his ever-expanding catalogue.

Alongside the sprawling album version – which even includes its own remix in the spirit of Pet Shop Boys’ Introspective – the song will also be released as an elegant and concise single edit clocking in at four effective minutes before summer takes over.

The expansive album version features contributions from saxophonist Jonas Hamre, clarinetist Solveig Wang and vocalist Gabriela Garrubo, alongside Lerche’s longtime collaborators, drummer Dave Heilman and producer Kato Ådland.

‘Acrobats’ physical pre-order is available as a webstore exclusive 2xLP gatefold ‘Splendor’ edition including recent EP ‘Turning Up The Heat Again’, a standard 1xLP edition on transparent red vinyl, and CD.

Sondre Lerche‘s new album ‘Acrobats’ is out 21st August via PLZ / Virgin. Sondre Lerche will embark on an extensive headline tour in support of the new album, which will take him across the UK, Europe and the US. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit his website HERE.

Published post no.2,921 – Thursday 18 June 2026

On Record – Laurence Pike – Possible Utopias for Jazz Quintet (Balmat)

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Reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

“A thought experiment equipped with drumsticks, circuitry, and the desire to go beyond hardwired limits”. So reads the Bandcamp appraisal of Laurence Pike’s first album for the Balmat label – which doesn’t behave as its title implies.

“My loose concept was: What does music sound like when the expectations of late capitalism are removed from it?”, says Price. “How might a jazz musician from an idealised culture of the future, or even another world, utilise musical language when the conventions of style and marketing are no longer a factor in music making?”

For one thing, Pike is the only consistent presence through the album, the ‘jazz quintet’ being a figment of his vivid imagination. Three occasional guests are credited, however – alto saxophonist Ben Lerner, pianist Novak Manojlovic and Nico Callahan, described as providing ‘additional synthesis’.

The utopias are very real, going beyond jazz in search of ambient, electronica and post-rock.

What’s the music like?

Rewarding. Pike’s varied work as a soloist but also as part of Szun Waves, Pivot aka PVT, Triosk and Liars means he has an acute ear for what works with percussion – and that reaps dividends here.

Pike’s sonic palette is impressively varied. On one hand is Manojlovic’s freely flowing piano on Guardians of Memory, where urgent pulses are detected from hi hats and tapped cymbals. Often his music suggests the weather – an approaching storm, the wind in the trees, a humid day on the edge of a desert. All these things and more could be determined by The Shame of Jazz to Come, with its brooding synth pads and rustling percussion, but elsewhere Pike’s thoughts are more fractured and dislocated.

Saxophonist Lerner”s contributions are telling, while Pike’s ability to evoke nocturnal scenes is maintained in the subtly atmospheric Night Bird and dappled beauty of Possible Utopias itself.

Does it all work?

It does – because Pike’s music has refreshing details of unpredictability, original textures and riffs, and a feeling for the listener that all this is taking place outdoors, under the stars.

Is it recommended?

It is – and proves a fine addition to an already impressive solo body of work.

For fans of… Szun Waves, Luke Abbott, James Holden, Portico Quartet

Listen / Buy

Published post no.2,920 – Wednesday 17 June 2026

On Record – Thomas Bangalter: Mirage (Erato)

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Reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Mirage is the latest work by Thomas Bangalter, formerly of Daft Punk, to show his credentials for a more through-composed style of composition. Bangalter had an education in classical music, which can be felt through the cleverly constructed songs Daft Punk made, and perhaps most vividly in their score for Tron: Legacy.

More recently we have heard an orchestral album, Mythologies, a sizeable ballet characterising a series of wonderful and awful creatures – following in a line of French composers who have done this with such wonderfully pictorial writing. Mirage, however, is an electronic score, conceived by choreographer Damien Jalet and contemporary artist Kōhei Nawa, with the ballet premiered at the Grand Théâtre de Genève in 2025. It continues to tour Europe throughout 2026.

What’s the music like?

Very different to Mythologies, and arguably less colourful – but more compelling.

Mirage is a very slow build, a brave tactic from Bangalter but one well worth sticking with, especially on headphones. Starting with the pulse of a sonorous bass note, like a subterranean signal from another planet, the wave form starts to go wavy, as though the electromagnetic winds were picking up, and that slight shift is critical to the momentum of the ensuring piece. On Part II the drums get bigger and momentum builds through fidgety hi hats, the sense of forward movement increasing like an accelerating train.

Part III cuts to a bass drone before what feels like the mirage itself on Part IV, shapes dancing in the middle ground before an ominous wavering of the drone pulls the rug from under the listener’s feet. Part VI opens out into wide space before mirage images appear again, rich in colour. The tension relaxes audibly into Part VII, dappled figures and light interference suggesting the space beyond. Then, as a conclusion, Part VIII drops again towards inaudible bassy figures, the distant knock confirming the signal is still out there.

Does it all work?

Yes, though is clearly most effective if you experience the whole piece in one sitting, on equipment that can do justice to the range of frequencies employed.

Is it recommended?

It is. Bangalter’s musical trajectory will be very interesting to watch, for here he is aligning himself more with experimental composers such as Xenakis rather than the French ballet masters. The suspicion is that his sweet spot will be somewhere between the two, and will include both electronic and acoustic instruments, and hopefully on the Erato label, whose livery appropriately dresses this release. An auspicious second album, and highly recommended.

For fans of… Daft Punk, A Winged Victory For The Sullen, John Murphy, Vangelis

Listen / Buy

You can explore purchase options for Mirage on the Presto Music website

Published post no.2,919 – Tuesday 16 June 2026

On Record: Ofra Yitzhaki – Josef Tal: Piano Works 1936–2000 (NEOS Music)

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Ofra Yitzhaki (piano)

Josef Tal
Sonata for Piano (1949)
Five Densities (1975)
Three Pieces (1937)
Concerto no.5 for Piano and Magnetic Tape (1964)
By the Rivers of Babylon (1951)
Six Sonnets (1946)
Essay IV (1997)
Essay V (2000)
Chaconne (1936)

NEOS Music 12520 [82’04”]
Producers Alexander Hainz and Dominik Weinmann Engineer Robin Bös

Recorded 1-3 September 2022 at Hessian Radio Studio, Frankfurt am Main

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

The enterprising NEOS Music label releases an anthology of piano music by Josef Tal (2010-2008), the German-born Israeli composer who did much to advance the cause of new music in Israel during the post-war era and whose varied output confirms him as a significant creative figure.

What’s the music like?

Little heard in the UK (his Third Symphony featured at the 1979 Proms and his chamber opera The Garden at South Bank Centre in 1998), Tal wrote in all the main genres. His piano music, moving from overt Expressionism to innate Atonalism, is accorded focus by its motivic rigour.

This is evident from the earliest piece here – Chaconne being a consummate study in ‘less is more’ such that its variations on an austerely rhetorical theme merge into an intensifying and cumulative whole, capped by an epiphanic calm prior to the inevitability of a final onslaught. Elements of this language are further explored by the Three Pieces which, in their respective volatility, impetuousness or introspection, denote the influence of Schoenberg’s piano pieces -albeit less those emotional extremes of his Op. 11 than that fastidious subtlety of his Op. 23.

A subtlety duly refined in the Six Sonnets, miniatures of a formal ingenuity and expressive poise out of all proportion to their brevity. From there to the Sonata is to emerge at a crucial stylistic juncture in Tal’s output: again, the modest dimensions (each of its three movements lasting around four minutes) only makes more acute that growing ominousness of its initial movement, the plangency of its central Basso Ostinato (a favoured device throughout Tal’s career) then the mounting impetus of its final Rondo toward a viscerally unequivocal close.

Arranged from a theatrical work, By the Rivers of Babylon conveys a measure of eloquence prior to what became the most radical phase of Tal’s composing. Hence the Concerto No. 5 as replaces orchestra with electronics in a substantial single movement which, whatever the timbral limitations of its magnetic tape, ensures a tense while often combative interplay of mutually opposing forces. This intensity is channelled into the Five Densities, such that its starkly contrasted first four pieces find unlikely yet convincing rapprochement in the fifth.

The remaining works form part of a sequence that extends across Tal’s final creative decades. Essay IV moves stealthily between sharply distinct ideas to an ending which does not resolve but simply cease, and Essay V is more demonstrative as it heads to its terse yet forceful close.

Does it all work?

Indeed it does. A figure nowadays admired more for what his music represents than for what it achieves, Tal left a legacy which is highly significant in or of itself (and one which, unlike almost all Israeli composers of his generation, audibly transcends the idiom of Ernest Bloch). His piano output exemplifies that technical precision, underpinning a creative spontaneity, as are hallmarks of his maturity and which help make this music as relevant to our day as to his own. It also makes for an engrossing and sometimes even entertaining listen in its own right.

Is it recommended?

Indeed it is. Only the Sonata has previously been recorded, and Ofra Yitzhaki’s empathy with this music cannot be denied. Superbly recorded and informatively annotated, this deserves an enthusiastic recommendation, with hopefully a follow-up of Tal’s other piano works to come.

Listen / Buy

You can hear excerpts from the album and explore purchase options at the NEOS Music website. Click on the names to read more about pianist Ofra Yitzhaki and composer Josef Tal

Published post no.2,918 – Monday 15 June 2026

Let’s Dance: Defected presents House Masters: Deetron (Defected)

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reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Swiss DJ and producer Deetron gets the Defected anthology treatment with a generous package numbering 34 tracks. A mixture of original productions and remixes, In The House marks the career of a figure first recognised for his creative DJing across three decks, before in 2014 he started his own label, Character.

The remixes cover a wide range, from Jamiroquai and Ben Westbeech to Danny Howells and The Juan Maclean, while the originals include two new exclusives, Filter (House Mix) and Save. While the 34 tracks are available digitally, a 2LP vinyl package runs to eight tracks.

What’s the music like?

Consistently strong and versatile. While Deetron’s main modus operandi is house music, he is equally comfortable moving in the directions of garage or techno, while the distinctive Rollerskate remix of T Ski Valley’s Catch The Beat shows he can bring the funk too.

Of the remixes, there is a sure-footed take on The Juan Maclean’s A Simple Design, and a bass-led beauty to catch the riffing of Todd Terje’s Alfonso Muskedunder. Jamiroquai’s Automaton is a spacious epic, while Ben Westbeech’s smooth as silk vocal goes on a rewarding garage excursion with Rhythm. Deetron proves particularly good at keeping the personality of the original artist in his remixes, keeping Daphni’s nervy momentum in the technicolour Fly Away, or preserving the Inner City vibe of Fiorious’s Future Romance. Arguably trumping all of these, mind, is the brilliant Everything’s Here, taking Danny Howells’ original to a higher Balearic level.

The originals are excellent, led by the urgent piano riffing of Glass, a proper peak-time anthem, or the piano-led Chicago house vibe of AM_909. Dr. Melonball also benefits from a lean piano, while Body Electric hits a rich groove. The House mix of Filter is good to have also, making great use of the stereo picture with its rolling bass drums.

Does it all work?

It does, with the quality maintained through this generous collection. Given they had a whole host of remixes to choose from, Defected have given us an excellent and varied anthology here.

Is it recommended?

Completely. A deserved addition to the series for a DJ whose versatility and quality spread right throughout his music. Deetron has always made music with an eye on the crowd, and this one should be lapped up.

Published post no.2,917 – Sunday 14 June 2026