A Song For Friday: M. Geddes Gengras

The first time I heard the name M. Geddes Gengras, it was in 2012 when he was part of a remarkable collaborative album in the FRKWYS series called Icon Give Thank, which saw the synthesist, producer, and composer working with Sun Araw, another electronic adventurer, and reggae legends The Congos. “It goes down like a dub dream with the still-heavenly voices of The Congos weaving in and out through the colorful soundscapes created by the two younger musicians,” I noted at the time, after lamenting that I heard it too late to include it on my Top 10.

I also enjoyed his two 2016 releases, Two Variations and Interior Architecture, especially captivated by the piece that included Seth Kesselman’s clarinet. “Maybe more collaboration is a good thing for Gengras…,” I mused, perhaps predicting the “dreamy 52-minute epic” he and Ben Seretan cooked up in 2023 as Friends Meeting.

While there are some 2025 albums I still need to get to, I was thrilled to get notice of his most collaborative album yet, Guest List, which is out today on Hausu Mountain. Featuring nearly two dozen musical guests from across the worlds of indie rock and avant-garde electronics, Gengras’ generosity of spirit shines through on every track. I’ve already enthused about Seven Dials on every social media platform, reveling in Greg Fox’s splashy drumming and Meg Duffy’s (Hand Habits) absolutely filthy guitar solo. But that song is just one highlight among many.

So why don’t we look at Little Tonshi, which also has Fox on drums and Seretan on guitar? Opening with some starlit synths and a field recording of crickets, the clouds soon part for Fox, who rolls and tumbles his way across his kit in deep rolls on the toms and washy work on the cymbals. Seretan starts working magic with his guitar, creating sustained washes of color. With that template established, Seretan, Fox, and Gengras iterate for six glorious minutes, rising and falling organically as Seretan starts shooting off sparks into the ether. The ultimate result is a sublime suspension that could continue forever if they wanted it to. Listen for yourself.

Little Tonshi, for those who don’t know (I didn’t), is a mountain in the Catskills, near Woodstock, where Gengras makes his home. While the natural world is never far from Gengras’ music, the universe of manmade electronics is well represented in the “synth list” that accompanies the album: Korg Wavestate, Korg Opsix, Make Noise 0-Coast, Moog Sub Phatty, Moog Minitaur, Roland SK-88, Waldorf Quantum, Waldorf M, Yamaha TG-33 & eurorack modules by Make Noise, Synthesis Technology, Modcan, Mutable Instruments. Whatever all of that is, it never sounds less than marvelous in the hands of this master musician. In some ways this album is a summing up of two decades of work, with echoes of dub, jazz, classical, and ambient sounds all rubbing shoulders on the Guest List. You’re more than welcome to join!

Listen to most of the songs for Friday here or below.

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Chanel Beads - Your Day Will Come (Jagjaguwar) It makes an odd kind of sense that Shane Lavery gave his second Chanel Beads album the same name as the first, which came out in 2024. Not because it’s more of the same, but because of the way it amplifies and expands on the sound world of that earlier album. The rhythms are richer, the instrumental layers (including violinist Zachary Paul) have a firmer architecture, and the singing, by Lavery and Maya McGrory, is more confident. The off-kilter nature of the debut was part of its charm, but don’t worry that Lavery and Co. have gotten slick on us. Chanel Beads is still a powerfully original project, finding new ways to shine light on the bruised but unbowed characters that populate the songs.

Dominique And The Diamonds - Honky Tonk Queen (Desert Rose) This first LP by Dominique Gonzalez and her band proves that the “swinging take on country music” she gave us on last year’s self-titled EP was no fluke. Once again featuring the skywriting pedal steel of Tyler English and produced by “fifth Diamond” Glenn Brigman (Triptides), who also plays Rhodes, Wurlitzer, piano, Mellotron, organ, and lead guitar, every song has just the right amount of detail to frame Gonzalez's rich contralto. The swing comes from the tight unit of Hamilton Boyce (bass) and Craig Jacobs (drums), while most of the songs are written by Gomez either on her own or with assistance from Boyce or Jacobs. English gets his own showcase in Rowdy, a self-penned instrumental, and the band also takes on Deep Elem Blues, a traditional song first recorded in 1923 and later assayed by everyone from Jerry Lee Lewis to the Grateful Dead. The Diamonds’ take, featuring a high-flying Wurlitzer solo from Brigman, even more firmly establishes them at the core of American music. It all goes down so easily that you have to remind yourself of the strength it took for Gonzalez, a biracial, bisexual woman, to kick open the doors of the Honky Tonk and crown herself Queen.

Spacemoth - Inward Eye (Greenway) If there were such a moth as a spacemoth, I would imagine it being brilliantly colored with a sleek, aerodynamic body. Its large wingspan could block out the sun or reveal the moon, as it swooped and glided, engaging the eye and the heart. In reality, Spacemoth is the solo project of Oakland, CA multi-instrumentalist, producer, and songwriter, Maryam Qudus, whose second album is a delightful excursion into psych-rock with a touch of the Kosmische. Aside from the drums (mostly Cody Rhodes with some help from Jason Slota and Liam Mountain O’Neill) and some electronics (Beau Sorenson, who also helped with production and mixing, contributes Buchla electric music box, synthesizers, samples, and treatments), Qudus builds up layers of keyboards, guitars, and bass to decorate with the soaring vocals that complete her questing songs. She already helped brighten our year with her work on Hannah Lew’s “lush” solo debut, but this absorbing listen finds Qudus truly spreading her wings.

Alden Hellmuth - Tether (LEITER) There’s a moment in Microfictions, the opening jam on this sophomore release, where Hellmuth’s alto sax seems to be trying to eat itself. As she plays increasingly staccato notes, with Logan Kane, Miller Wrenn (basses), and Justin Brown (drums) following her every move, you wonder if she knows how to lead them out of the tangle. But she does, ending one phrase with a note that fades into reverb, almost like a dub effect, while the rhythm section finds its groove again. That’s when I knew I was going to like this album, and more intrigue down the track listing, some of it due to haana lee’s crucial sound design, effects and processing, only convinced me further. The core players are occasionally augmented by Paul Cornish (piano), Sharada Shashidhar (voice and effects), Yakiv Tsvietinskyi (trumpet), and Caleb Buchanan (guitar and effects), but the vision is all Hellmuth’s. If you need another example of why 2026 is turning into a great year for jazz, look no further.

Josh Mason - Kicking A Dark Horse (Greyfade) While they're all made with modular synthesizers, there’s plenty of variety here, from the seductive yet somehow off sound of opening tracks Unincorporated Community Fight Song and Traumahawk (Volunteer Corps) to the static-fueled transmission of Hellified Ire later on. As you can tell from those titles, Mason, a Florida-based composer, sound artist, and writer, has a way with words, too. As this is the latest entry in Greyfade’s Folio series, the full package includes a handsomely designed book of Mason’s literary excursions, which match the music for evocative disorientation. In the book, the project has a subtitle: “A Temporally Untethered Travelogue Of The State(s) Of Florida,” and includes such passages as:

High summer operates like clockwork in the subtropics.

Do

and go

and get

all the necessities before midday, or brave the coming
deluge, on roads brimming with the thrown up hands of
the current era’s lunacy.

Before the hour strikes, though,
there is a fleeting, but wonderful,
pause

when oxygen and nitrogen are torn from the air and are
charmed as ozone—

I’ll be thinking of that during the next summer storm while playing Mason’s music in the background and letting myself grow ever more temporally untethered.

Robert Honstein - Horizon Line (New Focus) Over the course of three pieces for string quartet, Honstein demonstrates his mastery of the medium, especially with the use of inner voices. Continuous Interior, which appeared on Abbey Fisher’s album of the same name earlier this year, opens the collection in its original version as performed by the Bergamot Quartet. The mood is more pensive than the solo version for percussion and electronics, but Fisher lends a delightful sparkle. The Great Marsh shows off Honstein’s playful side, which was so much in evidence on his last album. Finally, and maybe best of all, is Arctic, a brooding, even haunting, work that features some distorted lines in those inner voices. It’s hard to imagine it being played better than what the Mivos Quartet does here, but I hope others try.

Note: The graphic above is based on a photo by Gabrielle Valenti with digital imagery by Max Allison and Doug Kaplan