Noel Langley - Syzygy (2026) [Hi-Res]

British trumpeter, composer and producer Noel Langley has released Syzygy, his second solo album: 15 tracks of spiritual jazz marking 60 years of music-making. That journey began at the age of four, when he first played the cornet in his local Salvation Army brass band. Langley has long held a central place on the UK jazz scene: a lead trumpeter, member of Loose Tubes, founder of the London Jazz Orchestra, musical director of Hermeto Pascoal’s London Big Band, and an in-demand session player across film, TV and pop, with credits alongside Adele, Radiohead, Lou Reed and Queens of the Stone Age. In recent years he has produced the award-winning albums of his partner, Yazz Ahmed, and now brings that experience to his own music.

The core of the record is an experimental session with pianist Alcyona Mick, recorded in February 2020 at SJE Arts in Oxford: three pieces written for the occasion and four free improvisations, with Mick playing both prepared piano and a slightly wheezy church organ. Everything was captured unplanned, unrehearsed and unedited, celebrating pure spontaneity and the raw authenticity of first interpretations — a true syzygy, the alignment of two creative minds in the magical acoustics of a sacred space.

Between the duets sit atmospheric tracks that grew out of Langley’s score for the documentary May Day (by Mai Hua and Jerry Hyde). During the pandemic, in his home studio, he built earthy, visceral soundscapes using only the instruments at hand: conch shells, trumpets made from animal horns and bones, and percussion gathered on his travels around the world. These fragments were repurposed to shape the album’s overarching narrative arc.

For Langley, the record reflects a spiritual journey away from the structured doctrines of his upbringing toward a more holistic, shamanistic spirituality, rooted in the wonder and mystery of the natural world and in a place within the unbroken continuum of elders and ancestors who first lifted a conch shell to their lips to summon the tribe.

Tracklist:
01-01 Noel Langley - Unspoken [2:12]
01-02 Noel Langley, Alcyona Mick - Lonely Angel Song (feat. Alcyona Mick) [3:51]
01-03 Noel Langley, Alcyona Mick - All's Fair (feat. Alcyona Mick) [5:17]
01-04 Noel Langley - Such Sweet Sorrow [4:12]
01-05 Noel Langley - Palo Santo [2:31]
01-06 Noel Langley, Alcyona Mick - Beyond Our Ken (feat. Alcyona Mick) [4:41]
01-07 Noel Langley, Alcyona Mick - Fire Sprite (feat. Alcyona Mick) [1:01]
01-08 Noel Langley, Alcyona Mick - The Old Church, Llangelynin (feat. Alcyona Mick) [2:13]
01-09 Noel Langley, Alcyona Mick - Contemplation (feat. Alcyona Mick) [3:00]
01-10 Noel Langley, Alcyona Mick - Monde Verde (feat. Alcyona Mick) [3:31]
01-11 Noel Langley - Deer-bone Trumpet, Skin and Feathers [2:59]
01-12 Noel Langley, Alcyona Mick - Syzygy (feat. Alcyona Mick) [3:24]
01-13 Noel Langley - The Elders [1:37]
01-14 Noel Langley, Alcyona Mick - Benediction (feat. Alcyona Mick) [1:31]
01-15 Noel Langley, Thomas Popiolek - Houses To The Sun (feat. Thomas Popiolek) [2:06]