Ossaia Cortona

Ossaia Cortona is the roster's most cinematic voice, named for a hamlet outside the Tuscan hill town of Cortona — and the music keeps the promise of the name. The self-titled suite, released on New Year's Day 2025, is seven movements of Italianate instrumental music that behave like establishing shots: 'Sannicolau Mare' opens the map, 'A Prosimetrum' alternates prose and verse the way the medieval form did, 'Un Palazzo Nobiliare Per Un Re' builds a noble palazzo in 102 seconds, and 'Eleganza Costiera' takes the coast road at golden hour.

The suite's heart is direct: 'Ti Voglio Bene' — the Italian for the love you say to family — runs a spare eighty-five seconds, and then the two-part 'Isola Del Pini' closes the record with nearly eight minutes on one island of pines. On a label that opened 2025 with acid doom and dark heavy, releasing this on January 1 was a statement of range: American Record's new year began not with a riff but with a score. The suite is the label's proof that the catalog has a string section in its future.