Cosmin TRG further refines his house and techno tastes on 'Gordian' two years on from his debut album, 'Simulat'. Packaged in the sort of grown-up tip-on gatefold slipcase you'd more expect from Stephen O'Malley's Ideologic Organ imprint, both the titular, conceptual inference to ancient myth and the sleekly developed brand of techno within imply a carefully considered development of the Berlin-based Romanian producer's ideas. Proceeding to jettison any tangible connection with rave and dubstep in favour of a buttoned-up, earnestly focussed conservatism, Cosmin Nicolae offers, "The title refer… Read more

The rarely paralleled trio reconvene for an engrossing fourth album: six recordings made at their yearly concert at SuperDeluxe, Tokyo, January , 2012. Joined by esteemed company, Charlemagne Palestine and Eiko Ishibashi, the core trio spread out further and more succinctly than ever before, oscillating assuredly between ghostly minimalism, feathered jazz fusion and gnarled "cave-man rock". The album opens with Palestine stirring spectral tones from wine glasses, soon joined by the floating vocal presence of Haino and… Read more

Synth Sense close Auxiliary's Symbol series with a grip of sci-fi steppers, cinematic cues and throbbing techno. The A-side unfurls a queasy, gutted half-speed stepper charged with shocking electric textures and HD sound design, plus one piece of new age digital sci-fi simulacra. B-side knuckles down with a lurching 4/4 techno sculpture and cybeR'n'B instrumental vibes recalling Laurel Halo.

Sub-heavy and shifty deep house electronics from the Glasgow-based trio featuring members of Golden Teacher, Silk Cut and Dam Mantle. Rooted in studio improvisations and polished to a patently High Sheen, four grooves roll and swing with a elusively and all-too-rare fluid quality, from the seductively pendulous 'Motivation' to the grubbing, polychromatic vortex of 'Mt. Florida' and on into the refined but frayed jazz-house funk of '1178' and the freakish Detroit-style experimentation of 'Urn' reminding of some mad Three Chairs or Anthony Shakir move.

It’s a long time since the phrase “punk-funk” was used in anything but a pejorative sense, but the battle-hardened band that embodied it it in the mid-2000s show no signs of repenting, and bless them for it. They’ve called this album Thr!!!er because they reckon, like Jacko’s Thriller, that it’s their defining statement: certainly they’re fonkier (as Craig Charles would put it) than ever before, a groove machine that’s well-oiled but not outright slick, and still packs a bit of grit. Spoon drummer Jim Eno took the production reins for this LP and has helped !!! streamline and focus their soun… Read more

*Ssaliva returns with chiming '80s new age bliss, plus a 13-minute excursion from Wanda Group...* Ssaliva proves a perfect new addition to Svetlana Industries workforce with the chiming '80s new age bliss and ambient disco bump of 'Birth Body'. Hailing from Liege, Belgium, Ssaliva meshes a certain flatlands American sensibility with an intrinsically mittel-European mood. This is music for autobahns and dead-straight highways, from the gorgeous wide-open sky synths of 'Fantasy 33' thru the dawning after-hours bump of 'Arcadia', sounding like the stuff you'd imagine Fat Ronnie to pla… Read more

Austin, TX-based Survive render their instantly sold-out, self-released debut tape 'HD009' to the post-new age digital faithful. Sonically situated between the soundtrack to an alien abduction and aloe-scented peace suite meditation that goes very wrong, it comprises an extended demo version of the four-piece's 'Deserted Skies' blurring into over forty minutes of mind-fusing melancholic synth drift getting progressively darker and more stranded as the session unfolds. It's certainly not as sappy as so many of the nu kosmiche brigade tend towards, whether that's pseudo sacred references or che… Read more

Review to follow shortly…

**Excellent debut from the mysterious Joane Skyler - keep a close eye on this one** At a blindspot intersection of the hardcore continuum and bedroom electronica, Joane Skyler creates the magical world of 'Orz', her debut release for ones-to-watch, Reckno. Lucidly colourful, freakishly twisted and packed with swagger, it's like a demented distant cousin of HYpe Williams, Irdial or the Skam crew doing it for the freaky kids. Her breakbeat edits are skewed but fearsomely tight and funky, while melodies zip and unravel, keen and swoon with a beautifully assured sleight of hand, knotting and splitti… Read more

Review to follow shortly…

Review to follow shortly…

Review to follow shortly…

Eugene Hector, the man behind Dro Carey, dropped this grimy avant-acid session on the wicked Reckno label in 2012. Predating his Opal Tapes issue and emerging after the run of bassspectrum-obsessed Dro Carey gear, this stuff feels in flux, veering to a stripped down, bugged-out house and techno style. Most of the tracks are short, grubby sketches, all whirring rhythms and textured motifs suspended in fields of digital detritus and ranging from the desiccated electro-house of 'Clobber' the squirm-bot funk of 'Maler' and one swaggering sci-fi ace 'Wedlock', but there are two sli… Read more

Review to follow shortly…

'Gone Feral' is the deliciously discordant and frayed new glimpse of (James) Holden's upcoming album 'The Inheritors' for Border Community. Leaving the lite-fingered trance a mirage in the past, he appears to have mutated into a far more intriguing beast with a taste for visceral dissonance. The melodies could be from an aquapiezo symphony recorded in a Chernobyl pond while the rhythm is daringly primitive yet elegant, like new Wolf Eyes attempting a waltz, and luckily enough you get them both included as separate 'Drumtool' and 'Synthtool'. Very cool beans.

Following on from a vinyl issue of Mark Leckey's "Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore" and an EP by Powell, The Death of Rave presents the first longform, beat-less composition by Patrick Stottrop aka Kareem. Since 1996 the Berlin-based artist has produced nearly 20 singles and albums for both his Zhark Recordings and Ramadan labels, Kanzelramt’s K2 0 subprint, and Paris’s Fondation Sonore, forging a strong identity split between uncompromising industrial techno and RZA-like instrumental hip hop, all with a blackened streak of gothic finesse. Following a hiatus during the late ‘00s, in… Read more

Mark Nelson's cherished Pan American quietly slip back into our consciousness as a band proper, now adding the estimable talents of Steven Hess (Cleared/Haptic) and Nelson's former Labradford bandmate, Robert Donne to the project. While Nelson assuredly handles all production, the live feel is definitely more prominent, folding in the patter of Hess's percussion and Bobby Donne's languid bass at the centre of seven beautifully diffuse soundscapes bordering on the frontier lands of post-rock, dub techno and ambient electronica, yet never clearly falling within any one sector. Ev… Read more

A welcome return for Akron/Family, proffering a potent and expanded vision of open-structured cosmic rock. According to the band, the album’s canyon-straddling, star-gazing scale is inspired by the landscape-obsessed, deeply American sci-fi imaginings of Frank Herbert,“the plots within plots of Dune mirrored in many layers of sound.” This is a proper epic, make no mistake, and the band sound more fucked-up, grizzled and committed than before; at the same time they’ve evidently matured as songwriters, performers and arrangers, delivering an album light-years-ahead of their early releases o… Read more

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**Soured and mesmerizing folk-drone hinting at classic kosmische, current dark Americana and European electro-acoustic music** "Primordial moves and stone cold drones from this New York duo of Taketo Shimada & Tres Warren. Save for a small long gone edition of CDRs, Mirage is the third full-length release by Messages, recorded in 2008 before their first two albums and has remained unreleased until now. This record documents the duo's earliest long form drone explorations and intonations, most of which were recorded during long sessions in Tres' basement bunker in the East Village. Mixing orbits o… Read more

"Recorded in a beautiful and isolated house in the Yorkshire Dales, ‘Fain’ draws on more traditional English and Scottish folk melodies than anything Wolf People have done before, but not straying from the drop-out fuzz-rock route they’ve made their own. The influences are vast - British rock bands like Groundhogs, Dark, Mighty Baby and Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac are evident in the swirling and distorted guitars throughout ‘Fain’, along with the 60s revival folk of Fairport Convention, Nic Jones, and Trees. Additionally the band have looked towards Scandinavian’s rich psychedelic traditions bot… Read more

Conny Plank productions remixed by Kreidler, Walls, Eye and Popnoname.

Conny Plank productions remixed by Kreidler, Walls, Eye and Popnoname.

Tranquil, melancholic chamber pop from Ryan Vail. 'Fade' marries plush string symphonics with subtle subbass padding around Ryan's heartbroken vocal and 'Become' errs close to the vocal trickery and minimalism of early James Blake. There are deep house and dubstep remixes for those that need them.

Lorca turns to UK house veterans 2020 Visions' Midnight series with three swinging, smoky burners backed with Citizen remix. Expanding and refining the styles of his Left Blank and Dummy issues, Lorca curls off the aerated garage-soul gait of 'Giant Stars' and the nimble shimmy of 'Have I Told You' and the pristine contours of 'Searching', all unfortunately containing some annoying trace of hackneyed vocal pitching. They're sweet otherwise.

Seahawks remixed by Laurel Halo, Quiet Village, Advisory Circle, Cos/Mes and more.

**First digital issue of this obscure 1981 post-punk obscurity with wicked elements of minimal wave, raucous punk and worldly influence. Includes bonus tracks not heard on the original LP** "An errant project of suburban Los Angeles art collective World Imitation Productions, Monitor was the sonic outlet of four young artists grappling with their terror and amazement in the convergence of the late 1970s punk scene and Southern California's consumerist decadence. As with the collective's visual artwork and events, Monitor blends archaic influences with modern technology into one of the era's most … Read more

**Bonkers little Mexican champeta version of 'Purple Haze' - sounds like Bruce Haack on holiday** "Meridian Brothers return with a brand new single that features an off-kilter, champeta version of Jimi Hendrix’s classic track ‘Purple Haze’. Straddling the line between new and old, Meridian Brothers’ mischievous blend of Latin rhythms and psychedelic grooves is the creation of Eblis Álvarez, one of the key figures of the experimental music scene in Bogota. In September 2012 Soundway Records released his album ‘Desperanza’ that features ‘Guaracha U.F.O’, selected by Gilles Peterson … Read more

Tropics presents his sensitive pop-soul ecologies on London's burgeoning Five Easy Pieces imprint. Sweeter than his previous for Svetlana Industries, 'Home And Consonance' glydes in on a bed of chiming melodies and rustling jazz-funky drums smudged deep in the mix, before he links in duet with the equally effete vocals of Gavin Turek on the femme-friendly late night boogie soul of 'Courage'. Sustaining that velvety atmosphere, 'Don't You Know' strokes in some tidy rhodes and lowlit jazz drums and 'Fleeting Haunt' rides into the sunset/dawn with a cotton-headed soul buzz on.

"Soundway Records present Kenya Special: Selected East African Recordings from the 1970s & ‘80s - a treasure-trove of rare and unusual recordings from East Africa. It follows on from Soundway’s much acclaimed African ‘Special’ series that to date has focused on the highlife and afrobeat output from 1970s Nigeria and Ghana. Kenya Special is a collection of 32 recordings (most of which were only ever released on small-run 45rpm 7" singles) that stand out as being different or unique as well as some classic genre standards. From Kiku… Read more