Taupe - waxing | waning (2026)

Taupe’s latest album release, "waxing | waning" delivers jazz experimentalism, skronk, avant-rock, and electronics, by the Glasgow-based trio, due out via Minority Records. Across its seven tracks, "waxing | waning" captures Taupe’s approach – bold and boundary - pushing – shaped by a fresh shift in the band’s dynamic and compositional approach.

Comprising Mike Parr-Burman (guitar, bass guitar, electronics), Jamie Stockbridge (alto and baritone saxophones) and Alex Palmer (drum kit, percussion), Taupe work up a storm of skronk, free jazz and harmolodic frenzy whose closest relations include Zu, Melt Banana and John Zorn. However, "waxing | waning" is from its opening, stuttering blasts, an exercise in seeking out and claiming new territory, finding unique and novel permutations in which jazz, rock, electronics interbreed at breakneck pace. Here is a group determined to say and do things they don’t get to say and do elsewhere in their musical lives.

"waxing | waning" doesn’t offer balm in its beauty (always beautiful even if not always “pretty”). It acts as a model of resistance not just to the norm but to what has become normalised in today’s world. As the group themselves put it, “rather than provide an easy antidote or pleasant distraction, the sounds presented in this collection of music embody a visceral reaction, a scream into the expanse, a rejection of convention and numb conformity.”