Vibraphone records tend to arrive either drenched in cocktail-lounge gloss or bristling with academic rigour, and it takes a rare confidence to sidestep both traps on a debut. Andrei Marian manages it on "Ethics Unimposed," the first full statement from the Moldovan vibraphonist and composer, recorded with his trio Triptology and released this April. The record wears its dual heritage plainly: trained across Moldova and Belgium, Marian writes music that keeps one foot inside jazz tradition even as the other reaches for something less settled, more inventive, harder to pin down.

Karlsruhe doesn't often make the shortlist of cities you'd expect a garage-rock uprising to spring from, but Wax Bird have never been much interested in doing things the expected way. "Heroes" opens their new EP like a door kicked off its hinges — three chords, a snarl, and a clarinet where you'd least expect one — and the effect is immediate: this is a band that plays as though the amplifiers might be repossessed by morning.