Greg Foat, Gigi Masin – Dolphin

Greg Foat and Gigi Masin's Dolphin brings together two musicians whose recent paths made this meeting feel overdue: Foat after a prolific run including Symphonie Pacifique and The Mage, Masin after the renewed attention around his 1986 album Wind and later work with Gaussian Curve. This 2023 collaboration grew from Foat first hearing Wind in 2016 and wanting to record with Masin ever since, giving the album a real sense of long-formed admiration finally turning into music.

Recorded remotely across 2021 and 2022, the record was built from shared compositions developed online before final sessions at Chale Abbey Studios on the Isle of Wight. Foat and Masin are joined there by Moses Boyd on drums, Tom Herbert on bass, and Siobhan Cosgrove on flute and clarinet, additions that help the album move between jazz, ambient drift, and gentle rhythmic lift without losing its calm center.

What makes Dolphin especially appealing is the balance of mood and detail. The reflective single “Viento Calido” adds a wistful pull, while “Sabena” serves as a tribute to Masin's wife, who died in 2022, deepening the album's air of tenderness and quiet grief. Pitchfork noted how effectively the record balances Foat's rhythmic side with Masin's ambient sensibility, and that combination gives Dolphin its lasting shape: warm, spacious, and subtly emotional rather than overstated.

Reviews

a subtle breakthrough in the way it balances the rhythmic and ambient poles of his sound. - Pitchfork