Earl Patrick pivots sharply away from his usual indie-folk and guitar-driven comfort zones for his newest release, the wildly inventive album "Conditioned By Machines". The Portland, Oregon-based composer, singer-songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist has spent over two decades building a dense, eight-album catalog. Here, however, he entirely flips the script. Feeling that classical flute music too often prioritizes gesture over pure melody, he set out...

One rarely encounters a title as forthright in its ambition as what Nikiré offers with "ETERNITY beneath the stars of God." This single from Tom Arild Junge’s philosophical project is not something you’d play while sorting the recycling; it demands, and subsequently creates, a specific kind of quiet. The Enya comparison is there, certainly—a female voice gliding over vast, ambient soundscapes—but the effect is...