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Skyjack — the borderless five piece band spread across South Africa and Switzerland — announce their fourth studio album, Let The Sky Open Under Your Feet, out 3rd July.

Recorded in December 2025 at a secluded studio outside Stellenbosch, South Africa, the album captures the vibrant live energy of the band at its most expansive — drawing together free improvisation, South African jazz traditions, chamber music, kinetic groove, and ecstatic collective interplay into a singular body of work.

“This record is a very articulate representation of our sound, having grown deep roots into the earth with high branches reaching upward and outward”, says bassist Shane Cooper. “My desire is always to create sonic universes that can envelope the listener.”

The album’s title comes from a line in a poem by the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi, reflecting the music’s balance between groundedness and transcendence. Here, Skyjack move fluidly between meditative improvisation and lush orchestration across twelve tracks of free-spirited, cosmic journeying. Inspired both by the cultural traditions and natural environments of South Africa, Let The Sky Open Under Your Feet is a testament to the band’s intuitive connection and innate musical curiosity.

It arrives just over a year after Light Cycle (2024), a short gap that reflects the momentum built on tour. After exchanging sketches remotely across two continents, the band reunited in Johannesburg in late 2025, workshopped the new material onstage across South Africa, and then headed directly into the studio, where much of the album was recorded live in first takes — preserving the looseness and unpredictability central to Skyjack’s sound.

Comprised of Kyle Shepherd (piano), Shane Cooper (bass), Jonno Sweetman (drums), Andreas Tschopp (trombone), and Marc Stucki (saxophones), Skyjack first formed in Cape Town in 2013 during a fertile moment in South African jazz, as a new generation of musicians pushed against rigid genre definitions and opened the music outward toward broader sonic possibilities. Over the past decade, the band has built a singular sound drawing equally on South African groove traditions and European improvisation.

Individually, the members move between jazz, electronic music, film scoring, rock, hip-hop and experimental composition, with collaborations spanning artists including William Parker, Lionel Loueke, Zim Ngqawana, Ben LaMar Gay, Jorge Rossy, Shabaka Hutchings, William Kentridge, Makaya McCraven and Sylvie Courvoisier.

Since their self-titled debut in 2015, followed by The Hunter (2019) and Light Cycle (2024), the group has developed a reputation for immersive live performances and music that continuously reshapes itself in motion — rooted in what they describe as “warm menacing African grooves,” while refusing fixed stylistic borders.

Skyjack is what happens when a heavyweight South African jazz trio meets a pair of Swiss reed and brass hotshots. Over the course of a decade, this all-star quintet has forged a reputation as an innovative and adventurous force in contemporary African and European jazz. Combining deep grooves with thrilling rides and avant-garde experimentation, Skyjack is a powerhouse both on stage and in the studio.

Light Cycle is the band's third recorded outing and documents a seasoned outfit at its most ambitious and accomplished. Featuring compositions from all members of the group, the album is a multidimensional creature with a big heart and a powerful imagination. Part science fiction adventure, part sentimental journey, Light Cycle reconciles expansive cosmic soundscapes with a deep grounding in memory and folklore.

Issued as a double-LP on the As-Shams/The Sun label, Skyjack joins both a catalogue and tradition of groundbreaking South African jazz dating back to the 1970s. The album's cover features the work of esteemed Cape Town artist Igshaan Adams.

Those in the know are well aware of Bobby Marin's work, and the fact that he was behind the scenes for some of the best boogaloo and salsa of the '60s and '70s. Yet, until now, no one has explicitly put Bobby's name in the headline and given him his due on the cover of a properly credited Latin soul compilation. This compilation comprises twenty four essential boogaloo, Latin funk, rock and afro disco gems, each one bearing the mark of quality: "A Bobby Marin Production", including songs by Ricardo Marrero, the Ghetto Brothers, Ocho, Louie Ramírez_ A freshly curated overview of his fascinatingly complex back catalog in these genres. Since the late 1980s there have been numerous Latin soul and boogaloo compilations, and certainly much has been written about the history of the music too and an an excellent documentary (We Like It Like That, by Mathew Ramírez Warren) have brought the music to a broader audience. Generally, when discussing the "first wave" of Latin soul and boogaloo, it's the bands and their leaders, the singers and the songs that get all the recognition. But what of the producers, composers, and arrangers behind the music? Over the years, one of the best old-school New York Latin music producers, Bobby Marin, has occasionally been given some well-deserved credit and popped up sporadically in articles or liner notes (Wax Poetics, Fania, Gladys Palmera). However, to the casual public, he is not a household name, even among some fans of boogaloo. There are even some contemporary Latin soul compilations that contain mostly material licensed, produced and / or written by Bobby (or his brother, Richard), and a tip of the hat must go to Bobby's friend Dean Rudland for all his work in this area, as well as to Rocafort Records for digging up the long-lost Nitty Gritty Sextet album. Yet, until now, no one has explicitly put Bobby's name in the headline and given him his due on the cover of a properly credited Latin soul compilation. This collection aims to change that and give the man his Latin soul "props" for the first time on a freshly curated overview of his fascinatingly complex back catalog in this genre.