Northern Spy Records and Bob Holmes of SUSS have invited eight innovators from the wide landscape of instrumental music to curate the first volume of the Across the Horizon series, with the mission of exploration, collaboration and discovery.

Jesse Allen Breckenridge Wells (born 22 November 1994), known professionally as Jesse Welles, or simply Welles, is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist.

The trombonist, in a musical search for the organic origins of life, explore ancestral rhythms and sounds through electro-acoustic landscapes shaped by his modular synth. Rooted in jazz and Middle-Eastern scales, MŸA revolves around the wordless vocals of the band members and guest singers Lynn Adib and Natacha Atlas.’

On Sinister Grift, Panda Bear’s first solo album in five years, Noah Lennox has returned with another statement that feels equally cumulative and unprecedented in his catalog. While his solo records have ranged from starkly intimate expressions of grief to colorful, electronic opuses, his music has never before sounded so warm and immediate. Working in his Lisbon, Portugal home studio with Animal Collective bandmate Josh “Deakin” Dibb, Lennox transforms Panda Bear into something resembling an old-school rock ensemble, playing nearly all the instruments himself and inviting kindred spirits into the process such as Cindy Lee, Spirit of the Beehive’s Rivka Ravede, and - for the first time on a Panda Bear solo album - each of his Animal Collective bandmates.

Two young composers from what today is Austria are featured on this recording. The works, separated in time by 120 years, are contrasting in many respects — in form, mood and artistic aim. In music history we speak of several Viennese “schools”, and here the differences between them are obvious. They are similar only in wealth of imagination and quality.

Incredible album of bleeding-heart catharsis from cellist Oliver Coates, think Arthur Russell doing drone metal with Fennesz, and you’re not far off Coates’ capacity for tear-jerking genius here.

The kaleidoscopic warriors were not long into their 2019 Tascam Tapes European Tour when the Covid19 pandemic broke and they, like so many others, had to turn back and head home. However, DeWolff is not a band to sit still. When it came to studio album number nine, they had no intention of just waiting for things to blow over.

Recorded live at the Phoenix Central Park, Sydney, August 22nd 2024.

Cellist, composer and MacArthur Fellow Tomeka Reid explores new improvisational math with 3+3, the third release by her all-star quartet and her most adventurous project as a leader yet. Featuring Jason Roebke on bass, Tomas Fujiwara on drums, and fellow MacArthur Fellow Mary Halvorson on guitar.

The fictitious tour of far-away lands continues, as anonymous artist Glåsbird follows the scratchy, folk-ambience of Norskfjǫrðr with a return to lonely arctic-island sounds. Novaya Zemlya is a Russian-owned island, stretching from just off the mainland between the Kara and Barents seas, with two islands split by the Matochkin Strait.

Exciting, unpredictable, fascinating and brilliant, Murat is an artist in the 'noble' sense of the term. Bringing together all his emblematic titles, from the youthful seed until today where the Murat style reached its peak with songs that reach here peaks of emotions - the mark of the "greats". Jean-Louis Murat is now in the position of an artist who has reached a form of evidence that allows him all the audacity of a "Best Of" album which is already unanimous. A little magical masterpiece with a rebellious pen that fits perfectly with the times. We reach music lovers all over the world.

The follow-up recording for Max Bennett as a leader includes some sessions that were left off from his debut effort, and includes others from Los Angeles with a different band from the same year of 1955. Vocalist Helen Carr is included on two songs, trombonist Frank Rosolino, pianist Claude Williamson, and drummer Stan Levey contribute on the majority of the cuts, and alto saxophonist Charlie Mariano plays a larger role than on the previous date.

Pelican has always been a band that’s not just from Chicago, but distinctly of Chicago. Formed in 2000 by guitarists Trevor Shelley de Brauw and Laurent Schroeder-Lebec alongside brothers Bryan and Larry Herweg on bass and drums respectively, Pelican’s foundation was built upon the rule-free, genre-agnostic scene synonymous with the Fireside Bowl. “The ‘90s in Chicago was a free-for-all. Everyone was just coming from a place of pure creativity,” says Shelley de Brauw. With Schroeder-Lebec returning to the band following Dallas Thomas’ exit in 2022, this reunified version of Pelican allowed the band to tap back into those influences and build something distinctly new with Flickering Resonance.

The first of Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser's exploitive cosmic space rock albums is also the best, and certainly kicks the seat out of the many jam bands that arose in the '90s. Unlike most "super groups" who collapse under the weight of their own hubris, the Cosmic Jokers, who were never really a proper group anyway, almost improve upon the sound of their precursors, namely Manuel Göttsching and Klaus Schulze from acid-jam-supreme Ash Ra Tempel, and Jurgen Dollase and Harald Grosskopf from blitzkrieg psychedelic Wallenstein.

The LP is comprised of stripped down “Doors Only” versions of five tracks where the horns and strings have been removed (“Tell All The People,” “Touch Me,” “Wishful Sinful,” “Runnin’ Blue,” and “Who Scared You.”) The set also features three of those stripped-back versions with new guitar parts added by Robby Krieger (“Touch Me,” “Wishful Sinful,” and “Runnin’ Blue").