‘THE SILENCE IS DEAFENING’ THE NEW ALBUM OUT 23 OCTOBER

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LAUNCH SHOW AT CRAZY COQS ON 15 OCTOBER

"Sublime vocals" - Jazz FM

"Serra occupies terrain Billie Holiday would find familiar, Sade too" - Jazzwise

"Honing the soulful possibilities of improvisatory music" - CLASH

London-based vocalist and songwriter ISQ (Irene Serra) will release her anticipated fifth studio album 'The Silence is Deafening' on 23rd October.

After eight years away, ISQ returns with a significant shift in her sound - darker, guitar-driven and cinematic - infused by alternative pop and jazz soundscapes. The new record is strongly inspired by women's lives; the ones lived loudly and the ones lived in careful silence:

"The songs on this album were a long time in the making,” ISQ explains. “This is my attempt to make sense of a shifting world and of the elusive human condition - its unexpected beauty and moments of light, alongside the sadness, the quiet and the everyday violence it contains. It is a tribute to my mother’s resilience and to the countless women whose stories echo her own.”

Photo by Tatiana Gorilovsky

Across eight tracks, the record moves between the personal and the political -  mountain walks and migrant crossings, mother-daughter relationships and modern dating, deception and survival. It is an album about inheritance: what we are handed, what we carry and what it takes to find your own voice inside it.

"The older I get, the more convinced I become that none of us arrives anywhere entirely by ourselves," she explains.

That idea runs through opener ‘On Shoulders of Giants’, a soft alt-pop tune written during Italian ski tours. With its title taken from Isaac Newton's famous quote, the song began as a love letter to the mountains that grew into something bigger -  a reflection on gratitude and the people who help shape our journeys.

From there, the album turns inward. ‘Faded’ traces the subtle decay of one’s self inside a controlling relationship - inspired by watching a friend disappear into someone else's version of them before finding their way back to clarity. The heartfelt ‘No Time At All’ inspired by days spent with family and a growing conviction that quality time is the thing we should actually be chasing.

Family and migration sit at the album's centre. ‘Kindred Spirit’ was shaped by ISQ's mother's journey from Southern Sicily to Denmark in the early 1980s, and by the story of Carola Rackete, the rescue-boat captain arrested for bringing migrants safely ashore. Ending in a powerful drum solo, it echoes the urgent line of - “In foreign lands I’ll bleed alone / I’ll walk through strife to find my home.”

Rhythmic lead single ‘Animal’ looks at that same journey through a daughter's eyes - the friction of growing up liberal in Copenhagen with a mother raised in traditional Sicily, and the understanding that arrived only with time. As a sensual interlude, the funk-rock of ‘Lady Death’ plays out across male/female perspectives, followed by the album's most harrowing moment in the shape of ‘Angela’, inspired by the UK's "Ask for Angela" campaign.

As the album’s closing statement, ‘She Walks Through Fire’ pulls it all together, reclaiming the witch archetype as a symbol of feminine wisdom, resilience and care for the earth. An important thread running through the song is the way society treats women as they age. Older women's voices are frequently marginalised in media, culture and public life, despite the fact that age often brings perspective, resilience and hard-earned insight.

As ISQ concludes: “‘She Walks Through Fire’ brings together many of the album’s central themes: feminine resilience, intergenerational wisdom, environmental responsibility, social justice and the importance of listening to voices that society too often ignores.”

Vocalist and songwriter Irene Serra has spent over two decades building something quietly singular within the UK's contemporary music scene. Known more by word of mouth than by headline, ISQ is her original compositional project - music that reveals its full weight only in the rooms it was made for: intimate clubs, jazz venues and concert halls where Irene’s presence and the band's collective intensity can truly breathe.

ISQ draws together a sophisticated jazz musicianship, alternative pop sensibilities and rich electronic textures. The current line-up of Richard Sadler (bass), Chris Nickolls (drums/electronics) and Luca Boscagin (guitar) counts credits across Neil Cowley Trio, Andy Sheppard and Cinematic Orchestra among its members, bringing both improvisational fluency and contemporary edge to the project.

Critically praised across her catalogue - from the TimeOut London Critics' Choice 'Too' to the Clash Magazine-lauded 'Requiem For The Faithful' - Irene has built a devoted following over two decades of uncompromising work. This fifth studio album is the work of an artist who has always known exactly what she wanted to say, and is finally ready for everyone else to hear it.

Find ISQ online: https://www.isqmusic.com/

London-based vocalist and songwriter ISQ (Irene Serra) announces her fifth studio album 'The Silence is Deafening', arriving on 23rd October and previewed by single 'Animal', out 22nd May.

Animal available here

 "Sublime vocals" - Jazz FM

"Serra occupies terrain Billie Holiday would find familiar, Sade too" - Jazzwise

"A melting pot of genres - jazz, pop, acoustic and experimental - which all blend together to entrancing effect" - TimeOut

"Honing the soulful possibilities of improvisatory music" – Clash

The befitting lead single is a rhythmic alt-pop tune that draws on the tension between different generations. Warm and determined, it sits with the complexity of a mother-daughter relationship. The clashes and the closeness, the misunderstandings that only years and perspective can untangle.

ISQ: "Animal is about the mother/daughter relationship in all its complexity; how it shifts, clashes, softens and deepens across time,” Irene explains. “What I once experienced as difference, I now see as bravery and resilience. It's a very personal track, but I think it taps into something universal about mothers, daughters, and the sometimes messy way love evolves over time."

After eight years away, ISQ returns with the meticulously created 'The Silence is Deafening' (out 23rd October) marking a significant shift in her sound - darker, guitar-driven and cinematic - sitting somewhere between alternative and Massive Attack. It is a record preoccupied with women's lives; the ones lived loudly and the ones lived in careful silence: "The songs on this album were a long time in the making,” Irene explains. “This is my attempt to make sense of a shifting world and of the elusive human condition - its unexpected beauty and moments of light, alongside the sadness, the quiet and the everyday violence it contains. It is a tribute to my mother’s resilience and to the countless women whose stories echo her own.”

Vocalist and songwriter Irene Serra has spent over two decades building something quietly singular within the UK's contemporary music scene. Known more by word of mouth than by headline, ISQ is her original compositional project - music that reveals its full weight only in the rooms it was made for: intimate clubs, jazz venues and concert halls where Irene’s presence and the band's collective intensity can truly breathe.

ISQ draws together a sophisticated jazz musicianship, alternative pop sensibilities and rich electronic textures. The current line-up of Richard Sadler (bass), Chris Nickolls (drums/electronics) and Luca Boscagin (guitar) counts credits across Neil Cowley Trio, Andy Sheppard and Cinematic Orchestra among its members, bringing both improvisational fluency and contemporary edge to the project.

Critically praised across her catalogue - from the TimeOut London Critics' Choice 'Too' to the Clash Magazine-lauded 'Requiem For The Faithful' - Irene has built a devoted following over two decades of uncompromising work. This fifth studio album is the work of an artist who has always known exactly what she wanted to say, and is finally ready for everyone else to hear it.

Thank you to Measure PR for sharing with us

ISQ website here

Ruta Di presents: Onwards & Upwards Released: 16th October 2026

Available here

London-based, Lithuanian singer-songwriter, guitarist and composer Ruta Di is proud to present her new album Onwards & Upwards. Widely known for her virtuosity and dexterity on both guitar and vocals, Ruta Di pairs wonderfully tasteful solos with infectious hooks. Japanese jazz magazine The Walkers described her as “a hot topic for her exceptional guitar playing”, highlighting her distinctive presence as both an instrumentalist and bandleader. Ruta’s music has received support and recognition from platforms including BBC Radio, Jazz FM, D’Angelico Guitars and Women in Jazz. Her captivating live performances have seen her grace the stage at prestigious events such as Cheltenham Jazz Festival (Jazz Arena Stage), EFG London Jazz Festival, and Rochester International Jazz Festival (USA). She was also selected to represent emerging England-based jazz artists at the Jazz Promotion Network Conference. Ruta’s virtuosic guitar playing, instrumental vocals and strong ensemble writing, brings together improvisation, texture and melodic clarity, all of which fuses together perfectly on her new album.

Speaking about Onwards & Upwards, Ruta says: “This album began with a melody I wrote after my grandmother passed away. I wanted to write a song for her, something that could express what I was feeling. I searched for words many times, but none of them felt true enough. Eventually, I left the melody without lyrics… when I began performing the piece live, I noticed that people connected with it deeply. Without words, listeners seemed to find their own meanings inside the music. The melodies became open spaces — places for memory, feeling, imagination, and reflection. That experience changed the way I thought about music and about the voice itself. The human voice can express something beyond language. Sometimes feelings arrive before words. Sometimes they remain outside them completely. This music was born from that space.” She continues: “I became fascinated by how music can communicate beyond literal understanding. A listener may not know the meaning of the words, but can still feel atmosphere, emotion, rhythm, tension, tenderness, or longing within the sound itself. Voice Beyond Words became the thread connecting these compositions: music shaped by jazz, folk traditions, improvisation, and storytelling, where the voice is used not only to explain, but also to feel, remember, and communicate in another way.”

Ruta Di has assembled a dynamic ensemble of collaborators and guests, including saxophonists Duncan Eagles, Leo Richardson and Alan Short, as well as many other talented musicians – all key players in international jazz with their own strong reputations throughout the scene. Onwards & Upwards is an inspiring album that wholeheartedly reflects Ruta Di’s unique talent.

Thank you to Dynamic Agency for sharing with us

Ruta Di website click here

The debut single by Japanese guitarist and composer Erika Toda, who is currently based in NYC. The song brings together the melodic language of blues and jazz with elements of rock, folk, and contemporary improvisation.

Available here

“Yakei (夜景)” (Japanese for night view) is the first release under Erika Toda’s own name, a guitarist / composer stepping out as a bandleader. ‘I wrote “Yakei” in about an hour, following where the melody naturally led me. It’s built around a simple, singable blues language, which I colored with richer harmonic movement. While writing it, I imagined a quiet nighttime cityscape, with lights scattered across the distance.’ ERIKA TODA

Toda recorded it with fellow musicians in NY: Kevin Du on piano (also co-producer), Aidan Taylor on upright bass and Alon Benjamini on drums. It was tracked at East Side Sound Studio and mixed and mastered at Oak Tapes Mastering.

Erika Toda is a Japanese guitarist, songwriter and educator based in New York City. Her playing draws on jazz, blues, rock, pop, Latin to Afro-Cuban music. She started guitar at nine and was playing professionally in Japan before coming to the U.S. in 2022, first to San Francisco State University, then to NYU Steinhardt, where she earned a Master of Music studying with Peter Bernstein, Adam Rogers, Drew Gress and Rich Shemaria. In New York she co-leads ChotoLoco, a duo with drummer Alon Benjamini that blends live jazz improvisation with electronic soundscapes; the duo released “Umi” and “Catosphere” in 2025.

CREDITS Erika Toda: Guitar, composition Kevin Du: Piano, co-production Aidan Taylor: Upright bass Alon Benjamini: Drums, recording, mix, mastering, post-production Nicolas Pollak: Recording engineer Dana Golan: Photography Dana Roth: Animation, cover art GUITAR ON: ChotoLoco — “Catosphere”, “Umi” (2025) Somewhere, a Butterfly Sings — Kevin Du Looking To The Sky — Liam Laird “Forage” — Amanda Magaña “Lost Ones” — Connor Sobieri

Erika Toda website click here

Thank you to Erika for sharing with us!

Guitar Master Jocelyn Gould Releases Organ Trio Album So Delighted on Oct. 9, with Special Guests Christine Jensen, Joey Landreth & More

Pre order here

JUNO Award-winning guitarist and composer Jocelyn Gould honors the organ trio tradition with So Delighted, her October 9 release via LaReserve Records. Arranging five original tunes and five standards for guitar, drums and Hammond B3, plus a few instrumental guests, Gould celebrates the legacy of her heroes with a lively gesture that brings listeners together across generations.

“Many of my favorite guitar players came up in organ bands throughout history, like Grant Green, Wes Montgomery, and Kenny Burrell,” says Gould. “They all played, at some point, in an organ trio, my favorite being Jimmy Smith’s band. So it feels like an important thing to do as a guitarist.”

Like the guitar masters who came before her, Gould is a storyteller. For the past decade, she’s been gaining international momentum and critical praise for her ability to develop narratives, live and in the studio, through technical facility and melodic finesse. As a composer, she creates personal responses to her influences, past and contemporary. Her music always serves the moment. “For this record, I wanted something cheerful, I suppose — something that would make people feel good,” she says. “I think we kind of need that these days.”

Bringing together a tight trio featuring Ben Paterson on organ and Fabio Ragnelli on drums, So Delighted documents a moment in Gould’s meteoric trajectory as poignant as it is inspired. “If I were to look back at my career later, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the peak right now,” says Gould, reflecting on her busy calendar and her recent collaborations. Album guests include Christine Jensen (saxophone), Jon Challoner (trumpet), and Americana legend Joey Landreth (guitar), artists whose music motivates Gould to push her own work in different directions.

“I’ve always wanted to collaborate with Christine, and this is the first time we’ve had the chance to work together,” says Gould. “Joey is another one. “He is really in the pedal world, solid body, those sounds. And he really helped introduce me to certain guitar communities. And Jon is just a wonderful trumpet player — it’s a heavy Canadian band [laughs].”

The album opens with a contradiction from Oscar Peterson. Nearly a rhythm changes tune but not, “Cakewalk” allows Gould to express her lyrical mastery over multiple choruses, while Paterson delivers a bouncing bebop-infused solo ahead of the drum trades. “It made sense to open with something super swinging,” says Gould. Invited by friend and fellow Canadian Celine Peterson, Gould performed at many centennial events she organized to celebrate her legendary father in 2025. “We’d say on the gigs, he must have had a sense of humor because he called this tune ‘Cakewalk’ but it’s really hard [laughs].”

Gould’s “Amethyst” serves as a feature for Challoner and shares her appreciation for straight feels on the organ. “I wrote this to be in that style,” she says. “And it’s kind of meant to be a groove type of tune.” Strange and beautiful, “June Moon” transmits another side of Gould’s composing. A lamenting saxophone introduces the mood, before the song moves through different emotional resonances. “All of Christine’s writing is so contemporary, so I was trying to write something with her in mind. And she knocked it out of the park.”

Though all the artists have played “The Song is You” more times than they can count, the band rehearsed it before hitting record. “Because of the hits [laughs],” says Gould. “You really have to be paying attention on this one.” And named for her cat, “Cleo’s Countdown” careens into the atmosphere with a tricky intro from Ragnelli. “That was Fabio’s idea,” says Gould. “It sort of throws you off because you don’t know where beat one is. And then we come in and it ends up being a minor blues.”

On “Girl Talk,” the artists land a laidback pocket on Neal Hefti’s ode to misogynists past. “The lyrics to the song are just hilariously sexist, so I just think it’s funny to play as a girl,” says Gould. Paterson’s solo curls into a textural growl with a strong nod to Erroll Garner’s signature laid-way-back block chords. But the artists deliver in solemnity and restraint on Gerald Wilson’s “Teri,” a song he wrote for the daughter he lost to cancer. “My playing is really simple,” says Gould. “To me, it sounds like a funeral and I wanted to honor that sound.”

Bold features for Landreth, “Grin Seeker” and “The Game Changer” close out the record with surprising effects and sections. On the former, he colors chords with a wah-wah pedal, and references a slide sound without using one. “He’s really known for his slide,” says Gould. First appearing on her 2020 release Elegant Traveler, “The Game Changer” receives new treatment from Gould, including an intro serving Americana roots traditions. “I had Joey and I had organ so I thought, it’s time to do a second pass at this.”

For Gould, So Delighted represents both a light-hearted gesture and a meaningful moment in her career so far. “These days I’m so busy, working so much — everything’s kind of going better than I ever could have hoped,” she says. “So I’m definitely in a pretty exciting place right now. And everyone I’ve talked to who’s a bit older is excited about where my career’s at right now. I wouldn’t be surprised if I look back on this time and think, those years were crazy.”

Thank you to Lydia Liebman Promotions for sharing with us

What An Interesting Girl is the new album by vocalist and composer Vanisha Gould, releasing via Cellar Music Group. Gould is joined by pianist Chris McCarthy, bassist Charlie Lincoln and drummer Samuel Bolduc on the 10-track album. Gould and Cory Weeds produced the session, with Weeds serving as executive producer.

Available here

“They are the things I’ve obsessed over, laughed at, romanticized, misunderstood, fallen in love with, and eventually turned into music,” Gould says. “A bottle of gin. A stray cat. A glance across a crowded room. A man who won’t call. A man who calls too much. Billie Holiday. Mary Lou Williams. The stories are different, but they all belong to the same curious mind.”

The album follows Gould’s 2024 release She’s Not Shiny, She’s Not Smooth. NPR included its single “Demure” among the Best Songs of 2024, with Nate Chinen praising Gould’s “swinging, Bob Dorough-esque deadpan” and calling the song “a clever indictment” of unsolicited advice directed at women. Chinen has also called Gould “a major talent who combines a blues cry with a storyteller’s point of view.” DownBeat praised her clarity, humor, knowledge and pathos, while JazzTimes cited her “plush contralto” and “keen emotional intelligence.”

Pianist Chris McCarthy is Gould’s closest musical collaborator. They have recorded four projects together: the duo album Life’s a Gig, Gould’s She’s Not Shiny, She’s Not Smooth and What An Interesting Girl, and McCarthy’s Too Late To Quit, due September 18 via La Reserve. Gould appears on five tracks from the latter, whose vocal music McCarthy wrote with her voice in mind. “I’ve logged more hours playing with Vanisha than anyone else on Earth,” he has said. Gould has called McCarthy her “right hand man,” adding, “He can make anything sound like a masterpiece.”

Lincoln and Bolduc complete Gould’s working quartet. The same lineup has appeared at Mezzrow, Dizzy’s Club and The Jazz Gallery, where the group presented In the Margins: The Vanisha Gould Songbook in February 2026.

Raised in Southern California, Gould earned her degree from Berklee College of Music and moved to New York in 2015. She established herself at clubs including Smalls, Mezzrow and The Jazz Gallery and went on to perform throughout Europe and Russia. In 2023, The Jazz Gallery awarded Gould its Composition Residency Commission, supporting work that integrated text, voice and visual storytelling.

Gould’s first album as a co-leader, In Her Words, arrived in 2021. Created with vocalist Lucy Yeghiazaryan and supported by the NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music and Theatre, the 12-track program joined original compositions with selected standards in songs centered on women’s lives. Its repertoire included Gould’s “Cute Boy” and “Gypsy Feet” alongside Billie Holiday’s “My Man.”

She returned in January 2024 with Life’s a Gig, an eight-song duo album with McCarthy. The program placed Gould’s originals alongside “What a Little Moonlight Can Do,” “No Moon at All,” Thelonious Monk’s “Monk’s Dream” and Dolly Parton’s “Jolene.” Later that year, Gould released She’s Not Shiny, She’s Not Smooth, a collection of original compositions written after her Jazz Gallery commission broke a period of writer’s block.

The earlier album grew from Gould’s decision to stop demanding perfection from herself. “This album was created when I realized I can’t be perfect,” she said. “And you know what? Dammit, I like that.” Its program included “Demure,” “Get Out of My Way,” “Don’t Worry Bout Me,” “Donovan” and the title track, giving Gould the release that earned her NPR recognition and led into What An Interesting Girl.

“Ginsong” addresses gin as a lover, an elixir and a “great fixer,” with each sip promising pleasure, forgetfulness and freedom. “My Sweet Kitty,” released July 10 as the first single, began with the stray cats in Gould’s neighborhood. Its narrator has little in common with the handsome but irritating man in her life, apart from his fondness for the titular animal. Eventually, the song becomes what Gould calls “something far less innocent.”

“Fool Me Twice” follows a woman who knows she should move on but remains willing to repeat an old mistake. She recognizes the pattern, disregards her better judgment and asks the man to “tell me lies just one last time.” Midway through the lyric, she corrects her own assignment of blame: “Shame on you / No / Shame on me.”

Another composition began after Gould forgot the words to a Billie Holiday song onstage and supplied lyrics of her own. “Lament/The Devil” arose while Gould listened to Madonna’s recording of the Evita soundtrack and heard a connection between the ending of “Lament” and Mary Lou Williams’ “The Devil.” About a year later, she learned that Eva Perón and Williams were born one day apart. “Make of that what you will,” she writes.

Most of the compositions entered Gould’s repertoire long before the January session and changed across hundreds of performances. “By the time we recorded them,” she says, “they felt less like songs I had written and more like old friends I wanted to introduce to one another.”

What An Interesting Girl was recorded at GB’s Juke Joint in Long Island City on January 12, 2026, the album was engineered, mixed and mastered by Colin Mohnacs.The digital deluxe edition adds four bonus tracks. “The album isn’t really a statement,” Gould concludes. “It’s an observation. These songs are a portrait of the things that captured my attention long enough to become music. Apparently, they say quite a lot about the girl who wrote them.”

Thank you to Lydia Liebman for sharing with us

Vanisha Gould website here