A gorgeous, slow-moving, haunting stretch of virtual synthesis, courtesy of the musician who goes by Nvra. There’s a growing category of online footage of tracks documented underway in real time using the VCV Rack software platform. VCV is a software emulator of modular synthesizers, meaning one can, affordably, patch together multiple instances of modules that, in the real/physical world, would add up to a pretty penny. Instead, there’s a pretty visualization of what’s happening. The developer of VCV has commented that despite it being an audio production tool, the graphics challenge is in some ways the greater one, due to the sheer amount of elements that might be shown at a given time. As the tool has matured, it’s provided more options to stylize the way the modules appear, and that has, no doubt, helped encourage people to post videos of their work online, and in public. Nvra’s track, titled simply “Collider,” is a lush, carefully paced series of swells, some tonal, some seemingly vocal, and then occasionally highlighted with little sonic glints and melodic snippets.

Another live performance, this one an extended synth drone, by Otsubo Kazuhisa, who’s based in Japan. It’s a thrumming, compelling performance, with multiple layers of whirring and humming all going at once, ranging from a high shimmer, to a husky foundation, with gleaming pulses somewhere in between. At times, especially around three quarters of the way through, it sounds like voices are emanating from the void, and those voices make some of what came before sound almost glottal and gutteral in retrospect. Per its title, the track was recorded on November 9, 2025, though only released as of November 17. More at instagram.com/otsubo.

I associate the sqsl account on YouTube as a demo zone for the always intriguing app output of seqsual.com. The seqsual product line consists of fascinating, design-forward, task-specific iPad apps for music-making. These include controllers, sequencers, and sample players. But this video is something different. Unless I’ve missed a detail, none of the synthesizer modules employed here — all hardware — are related to the seqsual catalog. (I do recognize this gear from another a video, one for the seqsual app Canvas, which interacts with physical modular synths, but that isn’t in use here.) This apparatus is a whole other realm, drawn from other music instrument manufacturers, and what’s happening is a delirious frenzy of signal swapping, all glitched and stuttered — a surveillance nocturne, as it were. Maybe it’s a hint at an upcoming seqsual release. The gestural reuse of existing sonic material certainly taps into seqsual’s overall activity. Great stuff, in any case. (I believe the name of the software developer, who I think is based in Finland, is Michal Macura, who also goes by Miso.)

As a longtime admirer of the guitarist Julian Lage, I’ve only wanted more from him in one area: more of him doing less. His is such a prodigious talent that, even with the casualness he emanates, even given his ease with his fellow players, his performances can sound not so much ornate or busy as, at some point, what might be described as additive, like an extra layer (or two) of complexity is eventually introduced where space might have provided another way to explore the given material.

Now comes “Opal,” the first track off a forthcoming full-length album, Scenes from Above, delivering exactly this sort of purposeful spareness — and wow does it deliver. The album, due out from Blue Note in late January 2026, features Lage’s new group: a quartet with keyboardist John Medeski, bassist Jorge Roeder, and drummer Kenny Wollesen. The plainly stated melody at the heart of “Opal” never goes into overdrive. Where Lage might earlier have expanded on themes at length, here he strips them back and lets them enter a state of repose. He takes pauses, and not for another member to solo, but for the substrate of the piece to be given room and time. There are eloquent pauses and muted refrains.

The first single from Scenes from Above, “Opal” is up on streaming services, and better yet there is live video version, which is even less embellished than the album take, lacking the bits of fractured piano, and lingering instead on Medeski’s near-subliminal organ. Up above is the live video take, and here is the album version: