Jazz
Contagious Music · 23 October 2026
“Covell”, the new album by bassist Billy Mohler, came out on 23 October 2026 on Contagious Music, as a limited-edition 12-inch vinyl – each copy pressed in a different colour – and digitally. The vinyl has seven tracks, from “The Reckoning” to “Slowdive”, and the digital version adds an alternate take of “Rituals”. All the material is by Mohler except “Round Trip”, by Ornette Coleman. It’s his fourth album on Contagious Music, after “Anatomy” (2022), “Ultraviolet” (2023) and “The Eternal” (2025).
Mohler plays here in a trio with Mark Turner and Joe LaBarbera. As Mohler tells it on Bandcamp, the three had played this programme at a show at Covell, and the person who had booked them, Ryan Julio, suggested making a record of it; engineer Bryce Gonzales proposed recording it in the same place. They booked an afternoon, ran through what they had played the week before, and in three hours the album was done: it was recorded through a Highland Dynamics tube console onto a Nagra tape machine, and mixed as it was being tracked. The credits place the session at the Hotel Covell in Los Angeles, with production by Dan Seeff and mastering by Nate Wood. The cover is a painting by Mohler himself.
Text by Aina Torrents