Taupe’s latest album release, waxing | waning delivers jazz experimentalism, ‘skronk’, avant-rock, and electronics, by the Glasgow-based trio, due out now on Minority Records. Across its seven tracks, waxing | waning captures Taupe’s approach – bold and boundarypushing – shaped by a fresh shift in the band’s dynamic and compositional approach.

Taupe’s waxing | waning, co-composed and realised by its players in a studio that was once an undertaker’s premises in Glasgow, is an absolutely affirmative album, an act of cultural defiance in desperate times.

Comprising Mike Parr-Burman (guitar, bass guitar, electronics), Jamie Stockbridge (alto and baritone saxophones) and Alex Palmer (drum kit, percussion), Taupe work up a storm of skronk, free jazz and harmolodic frenzy whose closest relations include Zu, Melt Banana and John Zorn. However, waxing | waning is from its opening, stuttering blasts, an exercise in seeking out and claiming new territory, finding unique and novel permutations in which jazz, rock, electronics interbreed at breakneck pace. Here is a group determined to say and do things they don’t get to say and do elsewhere in their musical lives.

Taupe are a Glasgow-based trio whose free(math)avant(skronk) concoctions fuse sour sonics, effervescent improvisation and sludgy, doom-laden riffage into a sound both unruly and sharply honed. Often seeming to operate by a kind of spooky telekinesis, they pivot from turbulent, unwieldy chaos into taut, metronomic precision, cultivating an approach that feels both volatile and vividly alive. Steeped in a DIY ethos, Taupe balance wonky charm with exacting focus, bridging the no-wave disorder of DNA or James Chance with the squeaky-clean intricacy of groups like goat (jp) and Horse Lords, all while maintaining an anarchic spirit that takes any pretensions out to the woodshed.

Experimental trio Taupe erupt onto the sonic landscape with their new single “Lemonade Tycoon”, out 13 November 2025. The single offers a tantalizing glimpse of Taupe’s third album, waxing | waning, set for release on 6 March 2026 via Czech label Minority Records.

Lemonade Tycoon nods playfully to the classic business simulation game of the same name while forging a sound wholly its own. Its final sequence, a live drum improvisation captured via a saxophone clip-on mic and routed through saxophonist Jamie Stockbridge’s intricate effects pedal chain, creates a spectral echo, sparkling and chaotic like shaken lemonade, simultaneously precise and unruly.

Taupe’s concoction of free(math)avant(skronk) moves fluidly between sour sonics, effervescent improvisations, and sludgy, doom-laden riffs. The trio wields an almost spooky telekinesis, pivoting from taut, metronomic precision to turbulent chaos with effortless grace. Ever-informed by a DIY ethos, their music carries a wonky charm, bridging the nostalgic disorder of no-wave icons like DNA and James Chance with the squeaky-clean precision of contemporary experimentalists such as Goat (JP) and Horse Lords (USA). Live, their performances rumble with a fun, anarchic spirit, discarding pretension and self-seriousness in favor of kinetic, immersive sound.

Minority Records is releasing a unique boxset Politique du silence with three early albums from Sylvain Chauveau, French composer of minimalist neoclassical music.

“When I made my first albums as a composer, I was obsessed with minimalism, and this quote from the film director Robert Bresson summed up my state of mind. I set myself three principles: 1) Use silence as a starting point, 2) Only add sound when it's absolutely essential, 3) Don't imitate the Anglo-Saxon musicians I admired, but draw on the musical culture of my country, France which lead me to listen intensively to Satie, Debussy and Ravel.” Chauveau explains the background to his work.

The collection Politique du silence contains the recordings of Des plumes dans la tête (2004), Un autre Décembre (2003) and Nocturne impalpable (2001) on coloured 180 gram vinyls. The cover features artwork by French photographer Valéry Lorenzo.

“When I discovered the simple and powerful black and white pictures by Valéry Lorenzo, in the 90s, I immediately fell in love with them. We became good friends and since then I ask him to let me use one of his photos for most of my album covers, or to make my portrait for press shots. It has become a real collaboration, music and images, for more than 25 years. It was then logical to ask him again for the cover of this boxset, like a gentle reflection on my piano and strings era.It's a true honor for me to see my early music recollected, repackaged, remastered after all this time. Which gives me hope that this music, in which I've put all my soul and heart during the years 2001 to 2003, is maybe not forgotten yet.” Chauveau himself adds of his collaboration with Valéry Lorenzo.

The boxset Politique du silence is being released in two editions: a standard version and a limited version of 50 accompanied by a numbered and signed large-format photograph by Valéry Lorenzo. The limited edition will be available only through the Minority Records e-shop.

Intricate structures with an intertwining of spontaneity and randomness, meeting the diverse genre influences of the band members from medieval music to shoegaze to noise. That is Unravel, the new album, and first in six years, from Czech band Manon Meurt.

"Unravel reflects the different stages of dissociation, a person's thoughts, observations - whether of the environment or of oneself - and admiration for the beauty and cruelty that nature mirrors," multi-instrumentalist and lyricist Kateřina Elznicová says of the album.

Produced by Eddie Steven’s (Freakpower, Zero 7, Moloko, Róisín Murphy) the album was pieced together from recorded fragments, meticulously pieced together. The title Unravel refers to the development of the band, unravelling what they are to find the full potential of their music as well as uncovering the layered nature of the songs and emotions.

The combination of industrial material with plant motifs in the work Untitled_1 by Ukrainian artist Liza Libenko, which adorns the cover of Unravel, strongly attracted the band. After all, floral motifs have always been close to Manon Meurt's music. Libenko, a student of the Academy of Fine Arts and a finalist of the prestigious Austrian Strabag Artaward International Prize, has recently been working on overcoming the narrative boundaries of the canvas, the paintings "attack" the viewer. Sunflowers are a powerful symbol of life and the sun; in Libenko's paintings they are black and burnt, serving as an allegory for contemporary conditions. The work was photographed by photographer and artist Marcel Rozhoň, and the final processing of the Unravel album was done by graphic artist Zuzana Malá.

The album Unravel is released right now on all streaming platforms, CD and 180 gram LP in two colour variants.

Ambient industrial planes laced with electronics and pop as well as an attractive elusiveness—this is the new song Timeless from Czech band Manon Meurt. The second single from the forthcoming album Unravel, produced by Eddie Stevens, is coming out on Minority Records.

“Genre-wise, Timeless is an antipole of our autumn single Mirrors. Eddie has widened our sound spectrum and on Timeless, he emphasized the dynamics and the way we tell the story,” the drummer Jiří Bendl says.

British producer and musician Eddie Stevens became famous for his collaboration with Moloko and Róisín Murphy, however, he has been gaining accolades on the Czech and Slovak music scene as well where he has produced several award-winning albums.

“Timeless was written during the evenings on the way from work in trams and in the car, where life’s hum intensifies. Everyone is headed somewhere, in a rush, and the horizon is changing colour above all this, as if to oppose the hustle and bustle with its magnificence and to remind us of the triviality of this haste, of its fleetingness. I enjoy watching this hum, it reminds me how great it is that I can disconnect from it for a moment and just take in the present moment,” explained Kateřina Elznicová, the author of the lyrics and multi-instrumentalist, about the origin of the song.