New Release Friday: This Week’s Playlist Updates

This week’s selection runs from a saxophonist’s second single through a nonet album rescued from label limbo, a horn-driven record built around displacement and migration, and a Munich vocalist’s collaboration with trumpeter Joo Kraus. Here’s what’s landed.

Hristijan Risteski – Summer

Hristijan Risteski follows the introspective “Coming Home” with “Summer,” the second single from his debut album Waters Dance, due in October. The Macedonian-born, Graz-based saxophonist trained classically on clarinet before moving into jazz, studying at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. The quartet he’s built around him reflects those years in Austria: bassist Hrvoje Kralj is a longtime friend and former roommate, pianist Marko Churnchetz was a discovery from Graz’s live scene, and drummer Chris Smith is a respected figure on the scene in his own right.

Where “Coming Home” sat back, “Summer” moves. It’s an up-tempo, sax-forward track built on a straight-eight Latin groove with a direct, catchy melody — the shortest cut on the album, and by design the lightest. The quartet recorded at ArteSuono Studio in Italy with engineer Stefano Amerio, working from charts that arrived just ten days before the session.

Tobias Hoffmann – Retrospective

Tobias Hoffmann’s Retrospective is getting a second life. The nonet album won the Austrian saxophonist and composer first prize in the Band category at the 2019 Made in New York Jazz Competition, judged by Randy Brecker, Mike Stern and Lenny White, and was released that year on the Austrian label Alessa Records. When Alessa took its catalogue offline, the album disappeared from streaming platforms with it. “It was disappointing to see an album that means so much to me suddenly become inaccessible,” Hoffmann said. Mons Records reissued it on May 15.

The nonet puts Hoffmann on tenor and soprano saxophone alongside Simon Plötzeneder, Stefan Gottfried, Fabian Rucker, Daniel Holzleitner, Christopher Pawluk, Philipp Nykrin, Andreas Waelti and Michael Prowaznik across ten tracks of through-composed large-ensemble writing. Composer Michael Abene praised the group’s ability to produce a “wonderful fat sound… out of five horns and four rhythm.” For Hoffmann, the reissue closes a loop — Retrospective laid the groundwork for the orchestral writing he has pursued since.

Karel Eriksson and the Sound Pollution Eclectic – The Path North

Trombonist and composer Karel Eriksson released The Path North on Mons Records on July 31 with the Sound Pollution Eclectic, the international group he formed in 2017 at the Jazz Institute of KUG in Graz, where he had landed for the faculty presence of trombonist Ed Neumeister. He has been based in Vienna since as a freelance trombonist, composer and arranger. The band, which turns ten next year, draws its lineup from Brazil, Germany, Austria, Sweden and Estonia.

“The Path North has a heavier, more electrified sound than our previous albums,” Eriksson says, and unlike earlier S.P.E. records, it is entirely through-composed rather than built out of studio improvisation. The material was shaped by Khaled Hosseini’s short story “Sea Prayer,” about the experience of displacement, and themes of migration run through tracks including “Warlords & Thieves,” “Sea Prayer” and “Pilangó” — Hungarian for butterfly, and the album’s symbol of hope. Eriksson had wanted to explore electronic effects on wind instruments for some time; finding the right balance between the acoustic and electronic elements became central to the record.

Kilian Sladek – All Yours (feat. Joo Kraus)

Munich-based vocalist and composer Kilian Sladek released “All Yours,” featuring trumpeter Joo Kraus, on August 7 via Bergson Music. It is the latest preview of Colorblind, Sladek’s forthcoming album due October 9 — a deliberate shift from his earlier work with Fragments on Unit Records, with his voice moved to centre stage and the songs written in English throughout. The album took shape over three years of collaboration between Sladek and pianist and producer Sam Hylton.

On “All Yours,” Kraus contributes trumpet, vocals and rap, pushing the track toward the more rhythmically elastic, groove-led side of Colorblind’s sound — a record that leans into neo-soul and R&B while keeping its harmonic language rooted in jazz. “Each guest was written into the specific song they appear on,” Sladek says, “and the collaboration logic sits in the composition, not layered on afterward.” Joshua Milo produced the album alongside Hylton, with Lisa Wilhelm on drums.

New Release Spotify Playlist

The Jazz In Europe New Release playlist features tracks from the new releases reviewed on Jazz In Europe. Updated weekly, it is the best place to discover music selected by our editors — not algorithms. Follow the playlist to keep up with the kind of records we believe deserve attention and to stay ahead of the curve.