Dancing with Salt | Outside the Changes, Q1 2025

Let's try a new segment that I'll call Outside the Changes: sharing my personal favourite new creative music releases I've heard over the past few months that I wouldn't normally cover here – that means nothing from Canada, and as usual nothing from my clients.

We'll start with releases from the recently-ended first quarter of 2025. I'll list them in alphabetical order by artist name. I have ten for you today, plus four honourable mentions. Let's do it...

Amy Denio: Varieté

The fiddle music that begins on "Femme Faceoff" feels like those Scandinavian folk tunes I played in the North Shore Celtic Ensemble and have heard at the Rogue Folk Club. It continues through to about "Rendezvous". The album's first and third act are closer to chamber music and don't quite draw me to revisit the project as much as that fiddly middle.

Chaerin Im: Midnight Resets

A moving keys-and-guitar quartet with electric bass led by the keyboardist Im. Favourite tracks: "Khyte", "Dancer Dom", and "Summer Dream Forever" with guest tenor saxophonist Nicolò Ricci. I discovered this while writing the big Jamie Lee feature and thought a couple times about shoehorning it into that story, but cooler heads prevailed.

Marshall Allen: New Dawn

Give it next year's Grammy already! The music grooves and soothes, and what it means to drop a debut album at age 100 is unfathomable. Probably more accessible to an uninitiated like me than much Sun Ra. One of the bassists in the ensemble cast is Jamaaladeen Tacuma, who's here now to play an Infidels Jazz show called Harmolodic League tonight.

Matt Carmichael: dancing with embers

No artist influenced me more in let's say 2022-23 than Carmichael and his Scottish folk designs. He brings back the band from his second album Marram plus guests on guitars and more. There's a tune of his I lifted from a live set back then, new at the time. Calling it "Untitled", I played it at an Infidels show. Now I know it's called "stone skimmer".