Alex Wilson and Omar Rios Melendez
The Art Of Deep Connection
(Marquee Records)
★★★★★

IT CAN be a relief not to hear human voices in a given music offering. Well, much of classical music gets away with it. Same goes for this instrumental duo of the London-based Nicaraguan guitarist Omar Rios Melendez and his partner in crime the Zurich-based pianist Alex Wilson — a Swiss/British national.

Alforja Campesina/Peasant Saddlebag, by Nicaragua’s legendary singer/songwriter Carlos Mejia Godoy, is of incomparable sonic beauty.

If you’re of a certain age you’ll be delighted by the piano-led arrangement of the passionate Besame Mucho/Kiss Me A Lot, written and composed in 1930 by Mexican teenager Consuela Velasquez.

Considered Nicaragua’s second national anthem, the spirited La Mora limpia/La Mora Is Clean, by Justo Santos (1952), gets its title from ritual shout by La Mora plantation workers at the end of the workday. It’s a Mejia Godoy staple.

A rare musical moment you’ll keep going back to.

Hello Cosmos
Come Out Tonight
(Cosmic Glue)
★★★★★

IT’S a blessing to be counted diligently that this bunch are not ones for mincing words: “Celebrate mediocracy, recycle past glories, own someone else’s stories,” sings in-your-face Ben Robinson adding: “I’m gonna take life out for dinner, not gonna sit here in fear” in the explosive Grind Into The Shrine. 

This is relentless, metronomic rock propelled by Robinson’s drumming brother Simon and magnificently embroidered by Angela Chan’s viola — their mission in Ben’s words: “We all need to wake each other up, get off the cool aid of digital apps, social media and algorithmic scrolling…/ comatosed by ultraprocessed food and algorithms firing shallow dopamine hits.”

Big Buddies pulsates relentlessly: “You’re stuck on repeat / Rewrite the script,” while the monumental, anthemic F.UK Z.UK takes a chainsaw to the tech companies: “Monopolise everything we see / monopolise you / monopolise me / tech companies are terrorists.”

A momentous, morale-boosting vademecum to anti-capitalist resistance.

Harry Christelis
Preserving Fictions
(Clonmell Jazz Social)
★★★★★

THIS quartet will populate any space (Royal Albert Hall in May and Edinburgh Traverse in October) with tonal meanderings that accompany and support rather than vie for undivided attention.

The sound often appears dispersed with the instruments pursuing separate ideas and sporadically merging into a single voice as in Blues Of The Birds. 

The crux to the impressive and highly emotive sonic narratives is the blind faith these four place in each other. Christos Stylianides on trumpet, bassist Andrea Di Biase and Dave Storey on percussion, lovingly cocoon “boss” Harry Christelis — who composed all the themes — on And So We March On.

The ambience is often one of pensive melancholy as in the mesmerising How Old Are You?, the monochromatic Short Fiction or the spirited We Whittled A Spoon. Stylianides is breathtaking in Sotsirhc, the drumming beguiling throughout and the bass positively the dark matter of this uniquely captivating universe.

Touring throughout 2026.