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Instrumental

Stelios Kyriakidis – Sacrifice: An Acoustic Guitar Lullaby for Bitter-Sweet Release

Posted on 28 May 2026

Capable of fingerpicking any audience into pure transcendence, instrumentalist and composer Stelios Kyriakidis tunes into a frequency your soul knows it can relax to with Sacrifice, a quiescent masterstroke taken from his 2026 album, 9 Moments. The contemporary instrumental score moves with the delicacy of a harp-played lullaby, affectingly visualising the phenomenon of sacrifice, the act of bitter-sweetly relinquishing what was once held close for a chance at a brighter tomorrow.

For all the notes of pensive sorrow, there are swathes more motifs of wonder, hope, and humanity at its most sentimental. Using complex time signatures to ground the meditative chords of the acoustic guitar strings, Kyriakidis orchestrated a score that keeps you actively immersed, constantly pulling you deeper into the ingenuity of the piece while preserving its serene sublimity.

The Greek guitarist and composer has built a musical language rooted in the expressive possibilities of the guitar, with his work stretching into film, dance, and interdisciplinary performance.

With BBC Radio support, performances across London, Berlin, Athens, Indianapolis, and UK festival stages, plus chart recognition through Copenhagen from 508 Days, Kyriakidis carries a softly cinematic authority into 9 Moments.

Sacrifice is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Willie Hill Turned Jazz-Touched Acoustic Serenity into Cathartic Meditation on Gratitude with His Latest Work, Thankful

Posted on 25 May 2026

There are delicate undertones of jazz reverberating through the time signatures of Thankful, the latest single from veteran Durham musician Willie Hill. Interwoven into the pure serenity of the release, those subtle rhythmic shifts instantly tune you into the frequency of catharsis; tension falls away as the bright guitar notes strum with open-hearted purpose, channelling the bliss of gratitude into something restoratively lucid.

As the ultimate aural antidote to the collective anxiety of the world, Thankful is a priceless offering from a celebrated artist whose imprint reflects light, passion, and purpose. Hill uses complex time signatures to ground the meditative acoustic guitar chords, orchestrating a single that keeps pulling you deeper into the ingenuity of the piece while preserving its serene sublimity.

A native of Durham, North Carolina, Hill’s musical life stretches from early bass work with touring R&B and soul acts to his years as a studio founder, engineer, label owner, and recording artist. His history with The Communicators, Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts, Inspire Productions, Joy Records, and North Carolina Central University’s musical circles gives Thankful its sense of lived-in wisdom.

In essence, the single is a wordless mantra, the epitome of mindful spirituality without the saccharine display of new age cliché; it’s a gentle recalibration from an artist who understands how gratitude can become its own form of release.

Thankful is now available to stream on all major platforms, including YouTube.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Nguyen Hong Hai Channels Lynchian Shadow and Kubrickian Theatre Through Cinematic Piano Rock in The Fall Part 1

Posted on 18 May 2026

Nguyen Hong Hai’s scores are made for cinema; his seminal piano work, The Fall Part 1, envelops the sombre world of Ramin Djawadi, the shadowed tones reverberantly synonymous with David Lynch’s surrealism, and the arresting theatricality of Kubrick’s visual style, all underpinned by the leagues of experience and vision associated with Hans Zimmer.

After an extended prelude of symphonic keys, the instrumental release gradually introduces dusky thrums of bass springs, which echo through the expanse of the production, highlighting it with hues of Americana. Around the midway mark, the composition takes a more orchestral turn before winding into a spiritually absolving feat of slow-burning progressive rock, where classical grandeur, cinematic restraint, and guitar-led intensity move with painterly purpose.

Born in Hanoi in 1969, Nguyen Hong Hai brings the sensibility of a fine art painter specialising in oil and lacquer into his musical language. After years immersed in classical, rock, and metal music, he began studying theory and composition in 2023, earning recognition across international competitions, including awards for The Fall Part 1. The piece also feeds into his wider Mother Earth cycle, giving the track a mythic scale rooted in natural transition, visual imagination, and emotional descent.

The Fall Part 1 is now available to stream on all major platforms, including YouTube.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

IUS Built Lore Through His Dark Contemporary Classical Score of Medieval Mourning, ‘Where I Fall You Will Rise’

Posted on 14 May 2026

Disarmingly foreboding atmospheres are simmered down to a fine art in IUS’ collection of cinematic instrumental compositions, where the darker spectres of contemporary classical music move through the chameleonic shifts of progressive rock. In his latest arrangement, Where I Fall You Will Rise, Peter Far, the solo savant behind the IUS mask, evokes an arcanely sombre aura around the quivering of the strings as they reach the pitch of mourning.

The centuries cascade away when you immerse yourself in Where I Fall You Will Rise, which almost allows a panorama of medieval grief to sprawl before your senses, conjuring empathy for the faceless fallen who IUS summons through the filmic triumph. It feels built for candlelit ruins, fractured battlefields, abandoned chapels, and the mythic space between memory and myth.

As a London-based musician, guitarist, composer, and sound designer, Far shapes IUS as a project with serious visual gravity, giving the music a natural place across film, series, games, trailers, and any screen-led world that needs atmosphere with emotional weight. Released as part of the seven-track independent instrumental album Observers II, Where I Fall You Will Rise deepens the sense that lore will build around the project itself as his repertoire of affectingly poignant compositions grows.

Where I Fall You Will Rise is now available to stream on all major platforms, including SoundCloud.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Farkhad Khudyev’s Orchestral World Fusion Masterwork, The Sounds of Eternity (Dedicated to World Peace), Quietened Existentialism Through a Reckoning of Cultural Memory and Catharsis Through Crescendo

Posted on 7 May 2026

Just as the Golden Age of Cinema is synonymous with high production values and narrative clarity, the same can be said for the live recording of The Sounds of Eternity (Dedicated to World Peace) by Farkhad Khudyev as he commands the University of Texas Symphony Orchestra. There’s a filmic, arcane grace to the composition, which draws you away from the trappings, gloss and excess of modernity towards the strife, beauty, loss and triumph our lineages have suffered through to arrive here, where The Sounds of Eternity rings like something you’ve forgotten to remember, but has always been there.

It’s the ultimate antidote to existentialism; how could you possibly question the meaning of life as the symphonically filmic veracity of the score affirms existence and obscures the surface noise through the spatial command of orchestral instrumentation as it cries, caresses and kindles catharsis.

There’s a revolving tableau of emotions in the 25-minute duration, which allows each crescendo to feel more visceral than the last; it’s a call to something primal, spiritual, historically rooted. With mugham singer Alim Qasimov, naghara virtuoso Natig Shirinov, kamancha master Imamyar Hasanov, and dancer Laman Hendricks folded into the orchestral vision, Khudyev realises his long-held ambition of bringing Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the West into one rapturous space.

Born in Turkmenistan, of Azerbaijani origin, and later shaped in the United States, he channels that cultural breadth into a work devoted to peace and the ever-embracing power of love.

The Sounds of Eternity (Dedicated to World Peace) is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

 Review by Amelia Vandergast

Mulholland Jive – Jurassic Shark: A Jazz Fusion Jive Through Funk Infested Waters

Posted on 1 May 2026

Mulholland Jive dragged us back into the water with Jurassic Shark, a jazz-fusion instrumental that bites down with schlock-horror wit, cult-cinema camp, and enough rhythmic libido to jolt the blood back into the limbs of the terminally jaded musos. Clearly one for sly pop culture nods and tongue-in-cheek wordplay, Mulholland Jive delivered a release that knows precisely how ridiculous its title is, then backs it up with musicianship sharp enough to leave teeth marks.

As you’d expect from a rock-licked, funk-charged jazz-fusion piece, there are a fair few more chords than in the Jaws theme. The arrangement swings with swanky vitality, a Viagra for the rhythmic pulses, as the synths blaze with a video-game gleam and the keyboards drive the track into a state of ornate frenzy. The oddity lies in how the keys manage to feel both feral and finely wrought, while the brusque tempo and feverish momentum keep you pinned to the edge of your seat. There are traces of Frank Zappa’s irreverence, Cory Wong’s funk attack, and Casiopea’s gleaming technical fire in the spectacle held together with an irreplicable sonic signature

The project is the brainchild of Irish multi-instrumentalist and Cambridge-based composer Ben Mulholland, brought to life through a rotating 9-piece band already seasoned by festivals, headline slots, radio play, and songwriting recognition. It is easy to anticipate Mulholland Jive becoming as big as Henge in the festival circuit this summer.

Jurassic Shark is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

 Review by Amelia Vandergast

Jim Samuel – Last Ride: A Jazz Fusion Panorama of a Perpetual Summer

Posted on 26 April 2026

As cinematic as what you’d expect to hear in a James Bond soundtrack as a sports car winds along the streets of Sardinia or Portofino, the seminal instrumental release, Last Ride, by the jazz fusionist Jim Samuel, reaches the epitome of sun-kissed opulence born from savant-esque talent.

The instrumental score balances an equilibrium of zeal, stridency, swanky exoticism, and the bittersweetness of finality to deliver an emotionally contoured and coloured tour de force. With touches of Latin jazz bringing the temperature of the arrangement up to a degree that’s sublime to bask in, the horn stabs delivering moon-lit terrace romanticism, the fingerpicked guitar balancing notes of morosity and intimacy, and the beat keeping the whole composition kinetic in such a multifaceted way, Last Ride is more of a panorama than a vignette, one capable of opening a temporal gateway to the radiance of a perennial summer.

There are shades of Herb Alpert in the suave brass phrasing, Gato Barbieri in the sultry heat, and Quincy Jones in the screen-ready sense of movement and polish, yet Jim Samuel shapes the atmosphere with a flair and distinction that defines him far more than fleeting reminisces.

That command comes with history. Formerly a keyboardist and songwriter for 60s Northern Soul outfit Bob Brady and the Con Chords, Jim Samuel returned to music after decades away and has since worked with jazz figures including Gerald Albright, Tom Scott, and Scott Ambush, while building international momentum ahead of a fresh run of singles through 2026 and 2027.

Last Ride is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Brachialis’ debut alt-electronica score, Wavetable, is a cascade of cerebrally visceral reverberation

Posted on 25 April 2026

Brachialis pulled the curtains back for a screening of IDM cinema with his debut release, Wavetable. Right from the intro, the pulsating reverberations in the kinetically hypnotic production take their hold with the poise and conviction of a viper strike, subduing you to the transcendence that oscillates around the resonance-rich release, which compels you to inch up the volume so you become totally immersed in the waves of vibration that take you to the ebb and flow of a higher plateau.

In the vein of his influences, Brachialis makes every motif in his experimental synthesis of sound a masterstroke, so that by the time you’ve reached the final crescendo, more of a breakbeat barricade than a wall of sound, you’ll be as aware of your physical reaction to Wavetable as much as your emotional reaction.

It’s the kind of release that anatomises under your skin; its cerebral intensity ensuring there’s little that remains dormant within you. With shades of Max Cooper, Rival Consoles, Thom Yorke, Nils Frahm and James Holden in the tension, detail and atmosphere, Wavetable is defined more by prestige than genre; it speaks in a frequency entirely of its own creation.

Drawing from an early foundation in orchestral film music, Brachialis approaches sound as something to shape and sculpt, refining broad sonic palettes into tense, deliberate movements through analogue and digital production.

Whether Brachialis veers further down the path of a soundtrack composer or an alt-electronica powerhouse in the vein of Spencer Brown, he’s got an illustrious career ahead of him and his viscerally lush sound.

Wavetable is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Eric St. Godard’s Jazz Instrumental ‘Lovely Rose’ Scintillates with Swanky Serendipity

Posted on 21 April 2026

Jazz debonair, Eric St. Godard, exhibited seduction’s capacity to become once again synonymous with style and sophistication through ‘Lovely Rose’. As the opening instrumental score from his debut album, New Beginnings, it doesn’t so much ease you in; the opening salvo scintillates you into the presence of the artist and composer who has earned his stripes as a jazz savant by giving it a truly freeform sense of limitless potential, daring to rile traditionalists, and appealing instead to those who have always wanted an accessible gateway into jazz.

Leave your hat, coat and preconceptions at the door, because Beautiful Rose, in all of its swanky ability to make every new progression feel like a surge of serendipity, pulls you down a rabbit hole of passion instead of dragging you into a pit of pretension. With the way the curveballs hit in the most affectingly satisfying ways, it is almost as though Godard has a psychic intuition into when you want the visceral force of the sax and the smokier cinematic opulence that delivers and demands tenderness.

There is a louche elegance in the arrangement that recalls the sophistication of Chet Baker and the easy magnetism of Duke Ellington’s more decadent moments, while the openness in the phrasing gives the composition a modern accessibility. Every turn of the melody carries a flirtation with spontaneity, and the whole score glides with the kind of suave confidence that turns curiosity into full immersion.

Lovely Rose is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Spiritual Ambience became Cosmic Transcendence in POSITIVE ENERGIES’ Latest Meditation Music Masterwork

Posted on 21 April 2026

POSITIVE ENERGIES opened a sonic doorway to the oneness of the universe with the cosmic transcendence of their latest seminal meditation music piece, which sprawls across galaxies within the span of 11 minutes.

Accompanied by a visualiser on YouTube, which continues to garner attention after racking up 20k streams, the composition is bathed in a celestial glow; the iridescence envelops the reverberations of the sustained notes that have a way of defying their own quiescence and radiating through your core. It’s a stunning piece of spiritual ambience and as expansive as the galactic ground covered in the spacy arrangement; it is enough to never leave you under the illusion that space is empty again.

There is a sublime sense of suspension in the composition, with the minimalist notes extending the meditative state and drawing the mind further into contemplation. POSITIVE ENERGIES has a unique way of channelling a meditative sense of immersion through a spiritually direct lens, inviting stillness, concentration, and deep internal release.

Created by composer and arranger Behrang Ghodrati, POSITIVE ENERGIES draws from a substantial background in film, theatre, animation, and instrumental composition. Through this healing music project, Ghodrati has built a growing sanctuary for meditation, sleep, yoga, and emotional balance.

Meditation music by POSITIVE ENERGIES is now available to stream on YouTube. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast