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Album: How Many People Does It Take? by Kory Montgomery

Abdelrahman Khaled
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Album: How Many People Does It Take? by Kory Montgomery

Kory Montgomery had his first taste of the road at fifteen, when his band landed an opening slot for B.B. King. Since then, he has opened for Earth, Wind & Fire and the North Mississippi Allstars and toured as guitarist for Andy Frasco & The U.N. After years of writing and recording for other artists, he is finally recording for himself, ten years after his last full-length. How Many People Does It Take?, released on October 9th, collects ideas, stories, and songs from across his life in music, with many of the musicians who shaped that journey alongside him.

The title track is an absolute blast, and it reminds me of Funkadelic songs. The chemistry between the band is incredible, the sense of rhythm and melody is top-notch, and it is just simply a good time. I particularly enjoyed the call and response between the brass and the vocals, and the way the vocals are mixed.”Settle Inn” is warm, inviting, and as melodic as a song can get. The bass is the understated hero here, because its wholesome movements give way to these beautiful melodies, and the ambient drumming does a lot for the atmosphere.

“Humanity” has that unmistakable 70s feel, with a very dynamic arrangement in which the organ and guitars trade who is holding the sustained harmony and the counter melodies, with a warm guitar sound acting as a foil to the vocals. It all builds in such an organic way to an incredible payoff, and the climax of the song became the highlight of the album for me. It is such a cathartic, powerful sound, and those last 30 seconds are pure magic.

The cast that came together includes Eric Benny Bloom of Lettuce, Peter Levin of the Blind Boys of Alabama, and Laur Joamets of the Sturgill Simpson band, among many others. Montgomery’s sound is rooted in the blues but pulls from funk, jazz, rock and soul, and his bio calls it raw, rhythmic, soulful and occasionally reckless. The album is framed as a reckoning with everything that came before it.

His own lesson from all those years is that you can only be as good as the people around you, and that shows in the band chemistry here. It makes How Many People Does It Take? an easy recommendation for anyone who likes their funk and soul with a live-band spark.

 

Album: Healers 2 by The Healers

Abdelrahman Khaled
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Album: Healers 2 by The Healers

Peter Hutchison has been writing songs for decades, and Healers 2 is his tenth full-length release. It revives the acoustic-based ensemble he first assembled in the 1990s, and it follows The Healers‘ 2024 debut. Released on August 28th, the album draws on the tradition of The Band, The Jayhawks, The Waterboys, Wilco and Whiskeytown, blending Americana, folk, country and Celtic influences. Rod Hohl produced it, and he and Hutchison, who wrote the songs and handles vocals and guitar, arranged it together with an ensemble of Brooklyn musicians that includes fiddler Minnie Jordan, pedal steel and bass player Luke Bergman, drummer Konrad Meissner, vocalist Kara Suzanne, guitarist Brian Wilkens and vocalist Bruce Martin.

Photos: Dan Ephram

“Some Nights” is our first taste of that ensemble, and what an incredible one it is. The staple country music textures sit across the metaphorical night sky of the song’s stereo image exactly where they should be. I need to praise that snare sound and single it out, because it really is why the momentum of the song is so addictive. It invites you on a meditative journey and makes you more receptive to the narrative told with the vocals. “Your Guess Is As Good As Mine” is a stellar piece of songwriting. It shines because of how genius the lyrics are and how they are interconnected with the composition, the chords, and the starts and stops of the arrangement.

“Brokenhearted” is the grooviest song on the album, which isn’t exactly what you would expect from a song with that title. The bass here is delectable, and it is sensational how all the rhythm section elements fall right into place. On top of being deliciously groovy, the high bar of songwriting is also cleared, with really great lyricism and great vocal melodies. The album closes with “All Gotta Go,” a meditative, somber piece that ends on a quiet moment. The Celtic and folk influence is clear here, and it is majestic.

Together, the four songs show how much range the band has within a roots framework. Healers 2 was recorded at Studio K and Grand Street Recording in Brooklyn, mixed by Ken Rich and mastered by Fred Kevorkian. “Some Nights,” the first single, is described as a meditation on memory, longing, and finding our way back to one another. It is a strong choice for anyone who likes their Americana made by players who clearly know the tradition.

 

The Love I Hide by Elias Dream

Abdelrahman Khaled
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The Love I Hide by Elias Dream

Würzburg artist Elias Dream centers a quiet kind of guilt in “The Love I Hide,” released on August 14th. The song follows a man lying awake beside someone who truly loves him while his heart still belongs to another woman. Nothing is wrong with the relationship, which is exactly what makes it harder, and one line from the chorus captures the conflict: “I’m holding her hand, but I’m dreaming of you.” Elias says he didn’t want anyone to be the villain, and he doesn’t present forbidden love as something romantic. The focus is the private struggle nobody sees when they look at you.

Musically, the song sounds much warmer than others that use modern production and AI-assisted workflows, thanks to the Hammond organ Elias plays so beautifully. Narratively, the song is really about what happens between the lines, because though the lyrics are quite verbose, the song is ultimately about intricacies that can’t be put into words. There is no rationale for this kind of feeling. The heart wants what it wants, and you can’t change that. You can’t hold it back no matter what.

This is the second story-first single from Elias Dream in as many days, following “Goodbye, My Love,” which came out on August 13th. He describes his songs as short films, and he does his own mixing and mastering, so the two read as companion pieces from an artist who likes to build scenes, characters, and turning points rather than simply describe a mood. He frames “The Love I Hide” around a question it doesn’t try to settle: can you truly love someone and still be unable to forget somebody else? In his words, the song offers no easy answer, and maybe there isn’t one.

NOT QUITE OVER IT YET..

Cherine Abulwafa
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NOT QUITE OVER IT YET..

You spot them across the room. For a second, everything feels familiar; then reality catches up. The person you once knew so well suddenly feels like a stranger, and all those supposedly settled feelings come rushing back. This is the emotional territory of So Hard, the latest single from Swiss electronic-pop project Pull n Way. With Mylène Gillian’s luminous vocals set against Andy Prinz’s sleek, rhythmic production, the track turns an ordinary encounter into a small but striking pop drama.

Written with UK songwriter Anna Neale, So Hard explores the persistence of feelings that refuse to follow the rules of moving on. Rather than sinking into heartbreak, Pull n Way give it a beat to move to. Glowing synths, a steady rhythmic pulse, and an instantly memorable hook create a bright, radio-ready sound that contrasts beautifully with the emotional tension beneath it. There is something almost ironic about how easily a song about unresolved feelings can make you want to hit replay.

Gillian’s vocals are the track’s real anchor. Warm and clear, her delivery brings an effortless intimacy to the glossy production, giving the song’s emotional tension room to breathe. There’s a musical fluidity to her phrasing that keeps the performance expressive without ever feeling overworked.

The single also marks another chapter for Pull n Way, the Swiss project formed by Gillian and producer Andy Prinz. Following early radio favourites such as Anything and You & Me, their 2019 debut album Colours and a string of successful electronic collaborations, the duo returned in 2026 after an extended pause during which Gillian became a mother. The comeback has already gained international traction, with promotional figures reporting airplay across 110 radio stations in 42 countries by late September.

So Hard finds Pull n Way comfortably in their element: polished, melodic and emotionally accessible. It beautifully captures that awkward space between remembering someone and realising you may never really find your way back to them again..

CattSue’s Heartstrings and Highways Turns Memory Into a Living American Songbook

Michael Stover
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CattSue’s Heartstrings and Highways Turns Memory Into a Living American Songbook

Country music has always understood that the family story is never entirely private. A mother’s sacrifice, a father’s words, a child growing up, a person facing addiction, a survivor reclaiming her identity—these experiences may begin inside one household, but once they enter a song, they become part of something larger.

That is the space CattSue occupies on Heartstrings and Highways.

Across 11 tracks, she builds an album from family history, grief, motherhood, romantic devotion, faith, addiction, resilience, and advocacy. Nearly every song was written solely by CattSue, giving the record a strong autobiographical spine. She remains present throughout, not as a persona, but as a witness to her own life.

The title suggests motion, yet much of Heartstrings and Highways is really about what refuses to move on.

“A Whisper on the Wind” is one of the clearest examples. CattSue lost her mother when she was only four and a half years old, and the song works through the fragile mechanics of childhood memory: photographs, place names, a Mrs. Beasley doll, and a face remembered more clearly than a voice. The absence of memory becomes its own kind of presence.

CattSue turns those fragments into song.

“More Time” reaches toward her father differently. Here, the memories are fuller: riverbanks, Eagles games, familiar stories, encouragement that continued long after he was gone. The song understands that grief often centers not on grand declarations, but on the repetition of ordinary life.

One more Sunday. One more ride. One more chance to hear the same story again.

That attention to domestic experience gives the album much of its emotional identity.

“Little Man” traces the reversal at the center of parenthood, as the small child who once reached for his mother’s hand becomes the adult capable of holding hers. “Mother’s Heart,” meanwhile, refuses easy sentimentality. It acknowledges sacrifice, disappointment, economic pressure, and the painful fact that motherhood does not guarantee emotional reciprocity.

The album’s treatment of survival is equally direct.

“Broken” does not offer the fantasy of complete repair. Its narrator is still carrying pain, still uncertain, still choosing to continue. Healing here is not invulnerability. It is persistence.

“In the Light” gives that idea its broadest social meaning. Written for survivors of trafficking, abuse, and exploitation, the song is informed by CattSue’s personal connection to human trafficking through a family member and friends who were trafficked.

Its strongest choice is to center reclamation rather than victimhood.

The language of taking back one’s name, voice, and life shifts the song away from pity and toward agency. By the final chorus, the individual voice becomes collective. “I” becomes “we.”

That transforms a personal survival song into a communal declaration.

Elsewhere, “Gold Star Heart” considers military sacrifice through remembrance, while “Many Moods of the River” turns landscape into an emotional archive, allowing water and changing light to carry the presence of someone who is gone.

Then comes “When the Clouds Come Home,” co-written with David Murphy, and the focus shifts toward addiction.

The metaphor is effective because the clouds do not merely arrive.

They come home.

Addiction is framed as something familiar, cyclical, and intimate. The darkness knows the route back. The thunder is recognizable before it fully arrives.

Yet the song also insists on connection. The battle is shared. Isolation can be broken.

By the end of Heartstrings and Highways, the larger pattern is clear. This is an album about the way private experience becomes identity, then language, then something other people can inhabit.

CattSue’s writing is direct, vulnerable, and rarely ironic.

That matters.

Heartstrings and Highways chooses sincerity without apology, and the result is a record about how personal stories become part of a wider human inheritance—passed from parent to child, survivor to survivor, singer to listener.

The highways carry us forward.

The heartstrings explain what we take with us.

Add a stronger critical verdictTighten the opening for impact

 

Disco Dreams Releases Immersive Electronic Single “All The Time”

Sistra News Team
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Disco Dreams Releases Immersive Electronic Single “All The Time”

Electronic artist Disco Dreams shares “All The Time,” a pop-focused electronica track that blends nostalgic textures with modern production.

Drawn to the allure of electronic music from a young age and inspired by psychedelic melodies across a range of genres, Disco Dreams continues his exploration of immersive, emotionally driven soundscapes. “All The Time” sits comfortably within his evolving style, capturing both the energy of the dance floor and the introspective atmosphere of dreamlike sonic exploration.

The track is designed to transport listeners into a vibrant emotional world, combining warm nostalgic elements with contemporary electronic production. An official music video featuring a close collaborator is currently generating attention on the artist’s Instagram and is scheduled for release in the coming weeks.

Disco Dreams crafts music that prioritises atmosphere and feeling, creating songs that move between uplifting dance energy and quieter, more reflective spaces. His work reflects a continued interest in the intersection of pop sensibility and electronic depth.

About Disco Dreams
Disco Dreams is an electronic artist whose music blends nostalgic textures with modern production. Inspired by psychedelic melodies and a lifelong connection to electronic sound, he creates immersive, pop-focused electronica designed to transport listeners into vibrant and emotional sonic worlds. “All The Time” continues that journey.

“All The Time” is available now.

Elias Dream Releases Emotional Cinematic Ballad “Forever by Your Side”

Sistra News Team
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Elias Dream Releases Emotional Cinematic Ballad “Forever by Your Side”

Elias Dream shares “Forever by Your Side,” a deeply emotional cinematic pop/soft-rock song about the kind of love that remains steady through fear, pain, and the moments when words are no longer enough.

Storytelling sits at the centre of the track. Intimate vocals gradually open into a powerful arrangement, carried by the warm, organic Hammond B3 that has become a signature of the Elias Dream sound. The artist’s intention is clear: listeners should not only hear the song, but feel the story behind it.

Elias Dream is a storytelling-oriented artist who combines rap, melodic singing, rock influences, and cinematic production. His songs unfold like short films, exploring themes of love, loss, fear, hope, and the difficult decisions that can change a life. A recurring hallmark of the sound is the Hammond B3 with Leslie, whose warm character creates a distinctive contrast against modern production. Rather than simply describing emotions, Elias Dream builds scenes, characters, and turning points designed to draw the listener into the narrative.

With “Forever by Your Side,” he continues that approach, delivering another intimate yet expansive piece of cinematic storytelling in song form.

About Elias Dream
Elias Dream is a storytelling-focused artist whose work blends rap, melodic vocals, rock elements, and cinematic production. His songs unfold like short films centred on emotional narratives of love, loss, fear, hope, and life-changing decisions. A defining feature of the sound is the warm, organic Hammond B3 with Leslie. “Forever by Your Side” continues this commitment to immersive, character-driven music.

“Forever by Your Side” is available now on major platforms.

C’batch Continues His Archival Journey with Six-Track EP “I Guess You Want It This Way”

Sistra News Team
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C’batch Continues His Archival Journey with Six-Track EP “I Guess You Want It This Way”
White Plains, New York – Composer, producer, and guitarist C’batch releases I Guess You Want It This Way, a six-track EP that finally completes a song whose roots reach back approximately 26 years. The project forms the latest chapter in his ongoing 2026 exploration of musical archives.
Originally inspired by his Jamaican-born wife Yvette’s longtime encouragement to write a reggae song, the composition remained unfinished in C’batch’s archives. Its hook, harmony, and verse melody refused to disappear. In 2026 he returned to the material, completed the lyrics, and reimagined the song through six distinct interpretations. The EP is dedicated to legendary Jamaican guitarist Ernest Ranglin, whom C’batch met at Heathrow Airport in 2001.
Released through Stevette Music, Inc., I Guess You Want It This Way connects decades of songwriting with reggae, soul, R&B, and contemporary production. It is less a newly discovered song than an unfinished musical conversation finally completed and brought into the present as part of C’batch’s broader archival creative journey.
Stephen H. Cumberbatch, professionally known as C’batch, is a composer, producer, guitarist, and independent recording artist from White Plains, New York. A longtime ASCAP member and skilled keyboard, synthesizer, and sampler programmer, his work spans R&B, soul, dance, funk, reggae, jazz-influenced, and cinematic music. His history reaches back to New York’s influential early-1980s dance scene, with published works including “I Need You Now” by Sinnamon (featuring Bernard Fowler), “Let Me Do You” by NV (featuring Will Downing and mixed by Shep Pettibone), “Playgirls” by Kreamsicle and “Geisha Love” by Eleanore Mills. “I Need You Now” became an enduring club recording that has been extensively sampled across electronic and dance music.
In 1984, Stephen and Yvette established Stevette Music, which was subsequently incorporated as Stevette Music, Inc. in 2014. Four decades later, it remains the home for C’batch’s extensive catalogue. In 2026, he began systematically opening his musical archives, drawing on decades of compositions and ideas that move freely across soul, R&B, dance, rock, reggae, ambient and cinematic styles. His recent music video “Next Time (I Won’t Be Falling/You’ve Got Me Falling)” received an Honorable Mention for Best Pop Music Video at the International Music Video Awards.
I Guess You Want It This Way continues that journey, bringing an unfinished chapter from the past into the present, one more recording finally emerging from the archives.
About C’batchC’batch (Stephen H. Cumberbatch) is a White Plains, New York-based composer, producer, guitarist and independent artist whose career spans more than four decades. From the early-1980s New York club scene to his current archival releases, his work moves across R&B, soul, dance, funk, reggae and cinematic music. Through Stevette Music, Inc., established with his wife Yvette in 1984 and incorporated in 2014, he continues to release archival and newly completed material that reflects a lifetime of musical exploration. I Guess You Want It This Way is the latest release in that ongoing creative journey.
I Guess You Want It This Way is available now via Stevette Music, Inc.

Ananda Xenia Shakti’s “A Revolution in Love” Reimagines the Dance Floor as a Place of Spiritual Awakening

Michael Stover
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Ananda Xenia Shakti’s “A Revolution in Love” Reimagines the Dance Floor as a Place of Spiritual Awakening

On her new Deep House single, the former punk rocker trades confrontation for compassion, discovering that electronic music can be as much about personal transformation as physical liberation.

Dance music has always promised transcendence. From the underground clubs of 1970s New York to the sprawling electronic festivals of the present, its central proposition has remained remarkably consistent: surrender to the rhythm, dissolve the boundaries between yourself and everyone around you, and experience something resembling freedom. Usually, the music leaves the interpretation to the listener. Ananda Xenia Shakti would rather start a conversation about it.

Her new single, “A Revolution in Love,” arriving November 6th on MTS Records, is an unusual proposition in contemporary Deep House: an extended spiritual meditation delivered through spoken word, built around an electronic framework, and concerned less with romantic desire than with the complicated business of being human.

For Shakti, this isn’t an unexpected philosophical detour. It’s the destination of a decades-long journey that began in Toronto’s punk underground, where she performed with The B-Girls, toured with The Clash, and participated in a musical culture defined by resistance to convention. Her subsequent embrace of Eastern spiritual traditions didn’t necessarily abandon that rebellious instinct. It redirected it.

The distinction matters because “A Revolution in Love” approaches spirituality with the conviction of someone who has experienced alienation rather than merely studied enlightenment.

Early in the song, Shakti acknowledges periods when human existence seemed devoid of kindness, meaning, or resolution. It’s a striking admission within a composition otherwise devoted to optimism. Her conception of love isn’t built upon avoiding suffering but upon recognizing what suffering can reveal.

“Being human is a revolution in love,” she declares, returning to the phrase as both thesis and affirmation.

Repetition is essential to the idea. In conventional dance music, recurring phrases become hooks, gradually shedding their literal meaning as they merge with the rhythm. Shakti attempts something different, using repetition to deepen a philosophical argument. Each return to the central declaration asks listeners to reconsider what initially sounds like an uncomplicated spiritual slogan.

The production, credited to Kabumi, Kudos Lokey, and Shakti, draws on an instrumental soundtrack connected to a remix of Keinemusik’s “The Day I Met You.” Its Deep House foundation provides a contemporary setting for lyrics that might otherwise belong to a guided meditation or spoken-word performance.

That combination is both the song’s defining quality and its artistic gamble.

Electronic music excels at communicating emotions that resist language. Shakti, conversely, is determined to articulate almost everything. She discusses suffering, freedom, interconnectedness, acceptance, and the possibility of radical love with little concern for conventional pop-song economy.

For listeners accustomed to concise vocal hooks, her expansive declarations may feel demanding. Yet that resistance to commercial simplicity gives the composition its identity. Shakti isn’t interested in reducing spiritual experience to something easily packaged.

The recording’s backstory provides an especially revealing dimension. Its original vocals were captured in one take during a collaboration that began in Costa Rica. After further development in India, the production returned to Toronto, where Shakti elected to preserve that initial performance.

The geographic circle mirrors the emotional one.

As a teenager, Shakti sought belonging on Toronto dance floors, long before she possessed the spiritual vocabulary to explain what she was searching for. Decades later, she has returned to electronic dance music with a different understanding of the same impulse.

The accompanying video’s return to the streets of her youth reinforces that reconciliation between rebellion and acceptance.

Ultimately, “A Revolution in Love” challenges the assumption that dance music must choose between intellectual ambition and emotional release. Its spiritual language won’t persuade everyone, nor does it need to.

What makes the project compelling is its insistence that the dance floor’s oldest promise—connection—might also be its most enduring purpose.

Shakti isn’t trying to escape the human experience through music. She’s trying to find a more generous way of inhabiting it.

And within a culture increasingly organized around division, that qualifies as a meaningful kind of rebellion.

“A Revolution in Love” will be released November 6, 2026, via MTS Records.

 

Bonnie Milne’s “Coco In Motion” Finds the Music Hidden in the Passage of Time

Michael Stover
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Bonnie Milne’s “Coco In Motion” Finds the Music Hidden in the Passage of Time

Music has always possessed a curious relationship with time. Unlike painting or sculpture, it cannot be experienced all at once. It unfolds, disappears, and survives only in memory, its meaning constantly revised by whatever comes next. For composers attempting to translate human experience into sound, this quality presents both a challenge and an opportunity. Bonnie Milne, the Canadian pianist and composer, makes that paradox central to “Coco In Motion,” a new instrumental work arriving October 30th on MTS Records.

The composition takes its inspiration from Milne’s eldest son, whose seemingly inexhaustible energy, beginning in childhood, suggested a life defined by perpetual movement. Rather than attempt a literal musical portrait, Milne constructs a shifting landscape of tempos, dynamics, and harmonic colors, allowing the rhythms of an individual existence to become the organizing principles of the music.

There is something distinctly modern about this approach, even as its foundations belong to a long tradition of instrumental storytelling. From Schumann’s miniature character studies to the impressionistic atmospheres of Debussy, composers have repeatedly sought to capture fleeting psychological states through changes in texture and harmony. Milne’s work participates in this tradition without appearing particularly concerned with announcing its historical credentials.

Her piano provides the composition’s structural foundation, but its role extends beyond melodic narration. Additional keyboard passages introduce countermelodies and harmonic movement, suggesting the simultaneous experiences that constitute a human life. A primary musical idea need not disappear when another emerges; the two may coexist, generating an impression of continuity amid change.

The instrumental ensemble is particularly intriguing. Cellist Kevin Fox supplies a darker, more resonant tonal presence, an expressive counterweight to the piano’s brightness. The cello, with its proximity to the human vocal range, has long served composers seeking to communicate emotions that resist verbal description.

More unusual is the inclusion of Adam Zimmerman’s soprano guitar, an instrument specially constructed for the performer by a classical guitar maker. Its delicate, silvery timbre introduces a contrasting register of intimacy. Where the cello suggests emotional gravity, the guitar offers something more fragile: the vulnerability that persists beneath even the most confident expressions of youth.

The recording process reflects a similarly intimate sensibility. Ross Love recorded Milne on his Shigeru piano, alongside Zimmerman’s performances, at his home studio in Orillia, Ontario. The material subsequently traveled to Adam Fair’s Villa Sound in Collingwood, where Fox’s cello was added and Fair completed the mixing.

The composition’s underlying conception is especially affecting because it resists the conventional tendency to represent childhood exclusively through innocence or nostalgia. Milne instead acknowledges its volatility. Motion becomes a metaphor not merely for activity but for the gradual accumulation of experience, with unexpected harmonic detours reflecting life’s resistance to orderly development.

One might hear in this premise an echo of a larger philosophical question: whether identity consists of a stable essence or an uninterrupted process of becoming. Milne’s answer, expressed through the interaction of instruments and changing musical gestures, appears to favor the latter.

Following “Glimpses,” her recent collaboration with Dave Hewitt, “Coco In Motion” extends Milne’s exploration of personal experience as the basis for contemporary instrumental composition.

The work’s most persuasive idea is also its simplest. A parent cannot preserve a child’s life by arresting its progress. Memory, however, offers another possibility: not stopping time, but giving its passage a recognizable shape.

In “Coco In Motion,” the act of composition becomes an act of attention. A mother observes a life unfolding, and music offers a way of keeping pace with it.

 

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