Bass charts

Review: The latest drop in the Mysticisms Dubplate series welcomes back Persian for another round of reggae-inspired electronics. Once again the artist draws from across a spectrum of bass, digidub and breaks and also throws some jungle into the melting pot. Opener 'Survival Dub' is powered by classic breakbeats and great mic work that is sure to liven up any party. 'Smoke Mari' then slows it down to a fat dub with a vocal sample from a well-known smoker's anthem with plenty of mind-melting effects and stepping rhythms. On the flipside is 'There Is No Love' with a prime junglist drop and last of all comes 'Zatoichi's Troubles' which has devastating bass.

Review: 
After his surprise drop with music writer and producer Blackdown on the Keysound label last month, the enigmatic Burial is now back with a fresh new EP all of his own. It comes on his longtime home of Hyperdub and features two more of his deft designed, ghostly deep dubstep post-nightbus joints. 'Chemz' is a strict raver filled with rushed up sounds, plenty of dance floor love and big hooks that is many different tracks, moods and vibes all rolled into one. As always, these Burial sounds look back to go forwards and do so in thrilling fashion.

Review: NX12X is the first in a new series of experimental records from this label and the artists given the keys for the inaugural release are Goldsmiths student and modular synth maestro Sam Hostettler and electronic innovator La Leif who tackle a pair of tracks each. Hostettler's sounds are the moody, heavy ambient atmospheres of 'Pointalims' and the more light and airy li-fi soundscapes of 'Opalescence.' La Leif offers broken beats with a skeletal feel and a burial-style synth aesthetic on 'Kyoto' and then crunchy breaks and fizzing, distorted synth malfunctions of 'Kimochi.'

Review: Originally released digitally in 2013, Pink collated a series of 12" releases from Kieran Hebden issued over an 18 month period on his Text label. Hebden and record club and subscription service Vinyl Me, Please have teamed up to give Pink a double vinyl release for any Four Tet fans that weren't quick enough to nab those 12"s at the time. There is plenty of classic Four Tet to be had here too. "Jupiters" experiments with swung garage beats in an unmistakably UK Bass style, while "128 Harps" is a whipcrack MPC workout given his light melodic touch and "Peace On Earth" is a beatless 11 minutes of analogue kosmische. But it's the centrepiece of Hebden's Fabriclive mix, the brilliantly moody "Pyramid", and the loose limbed jazz-house of "Pinnacles" that really set this album apart from his other long-playing efforts, two examples of timeless dance music which demonstrate why after nearly 15 years in the game Hebden is only improving with age.

Review: This surprise new EP finds celebrated music writer and producer Blackdown on the same EP as Burial for the first time since the latter remixed the former 15 years ago. There is a heavy Detroit influence in the far-sighted synths of 'This Journey' (VIP), with angsty vocal samples stitched into the bristling, swinging rhythm. Burial's 'Dark Gethsemane' bares all the producer's usual hallmarks - pitched up vocals, deft samples and a catchy 2-step shuffle. Blackdown then offers up a remix filled with chattery claps and UK funky rhythms to open the B-side, while Burial's 'Space Cadet' is another 2-step classic with its heady way up in the heavens.

Review: Maintaining his trajectory into the upper echelons of alt-pop with carte blanche to do as he pleases, James Blake returns with his sixth studio album Playing Robots Into Heaven. From his brief dalliance with the post-dubstep underground into his sombre strain of electronic indie songwriting, Blake has confounded expectations at every turn and the drop of lead single 'Big Hammer' should maintain that trend. There's no big vocal turn from his delicate voice, but rather a twitchy, sub-loaded beat somewhere on the outer edges of trap with some diced up MC samples, pointing to an exciting foray into unpredictable waters from a truly gifted major league maverick.

Review: One riddim track, three hugely distinctive voices; Dub-Stuy continue their riddim series with "Santa Muerte Riddim". Loose, spacious, mystic and led by cold steel string twangs, Jonah Freed's beat sings on its own merits but each vocalist adds their own touch. Rider Shafique takes the lead with his signature smoky tones and poetics, Jahdan Blakkamoore contrasts between his gravelly spoken word and musicality on the chorus before Pupajim lets the beat breathe a little more before going full harmonic ham. Holy moly.

Review: Glasgow's Full Dose delivers its first injection of the year with Lvcchesi offering up a fascinating EP. Opener 'Vsna' is all about scratchy ambient textures, implied rhythms and bleak atmospheres, much like the work of early Actress. 'Vespucci' then lays down more of a club groove, with hissing and spitting electro beats and more great synth craft before 'Ominino' is a mix of caustic textures, frosted synths and explosive loops that is as eerie as they come. Last of all is an S&H Late Nite Hot mix that is just as unsettling, with whirring machine sound and a soulful feminine voice lost amongst the busted sounds.

Review: Make Your Own Meaning continues to convey its unique techno message with a new statement of intent from label head Lurka. The artist has been busy of late and continues to be on a roll with another fascinating four tracker that genuinely serves up some original sounds and rhythms. 'Trip' gets things underway with organic percussive patterns stacked up over drilling bass to make for a prickly groove. 'Airlock' is similar but darker and heavier and 'Sick Flips' keeps the nimble feel going with dancing perc, rigid synths and scratchy sound effects all coalescing over broken drum patterns. Last of all is another dense, busy and multi-layered melange of tiny percussive sounds, synths and clipped rhythms that will make any floor move.

Review: 'Raven' is the name of the largest species of crow in the corvid family of birds. It's also the name of the second upcoming studio album by Kelela, which comes a whopping six years after her debut Take Me Apart - making this a hotly-awaited LP to say the least. Describing the album as an expression of loneliness as a black femme working in the dance music industry, she's made sure to bring along plenty of company, making this a largely collaborative affair. You've got Kaytranada, LSDXOXO, AceMo and Fauzia on there, all working in ultra-glossy, emotive future takes on dancehall, breakbeat and ballad.

Review: DJ Crisps is starting to make some handy garage moves after a couple of various artists' appearances and a fine EP on Time Is Now Germany in July. Now they link up with Oldboy who appeared on Burnski's other label Vivid back in 2022. As you should expect these are four hardcore and rudely garage cuts with plenty of swagger, naughty samples and bass-face potential. 'On My Way' is the standout with its shuffling one-two drum punch, distant police sirens and warped basslines underneath a timeless and irresistible female vocal full of soul. A summer scorcher for sure alongside three more very useful weapons.

Review: Peak Oil welcomes UK duo Wrecked Lightship for 'Antiposition', a debut EP on the label from the pair of Laurie Osborne (once known as Appleblim) and Adam Winchester aka Dot Product. The pair refine their sound and bring a range of innovative rhythms here with elements of dub, d&b, tribal sounds and deft sound design across hard-to-define cuts. 'Hex' is a cosmic broken techno trip, 'Bizarre Servants' is a slower and heavier dub and 'Sunken Skies' is prickly and kinetic as it flirts with live sounding drum & bass tropes and 'Diminished Ark' as well as with wispy sine waves, refracted melodies and barely there rhythms.

Review: Is there any artist in electronic music that releases as little music yet remains as highly revered as Burial? We can't think of any. As it happens, this new Streetlands EP is actually the hallowed UK producer's second outing of 2022 after the ambient offering Antidawn back in January. As always it finds him back on Kode9's Hyperdub label. 'Hospital Chapel' is eerie atmosphere and lo-fi samples, 'Streelands' is another sparse ambient cut that is full of melancholy and 'Exokind' is the soundtrack of a faraway planet with distant solar winds and only the smallest of microbial activities for you to tune into before a signature angelic vocal brings the beauty.

Review: Burial's first full-length EP since 2012's 'Rival Dealer' hears the South London enigma plunge the depths of his newest dark ambient sound, wrenching the emo essences of rave from their breakbeats to produce a purely ambient affair. Spanning every emotion from depression to triumph, 'Antidawn' opens with a cough, in a seeming nod to the COVID lockdowns of recent years. Meanwhile, disparate sections buzz and weave in and out of one another on 'Shadow Paradise' and 'Strange Neighbourhood', never quite landing on their feet before being whisked away again. One of Burial's most defining world-building works.

Review: Of all the artists past and present who claim to let their music do their talking for them, Burial is one of the elite band of whom this truly is the case. In fact, so reluctant is he to engage with the cult-of-personality hoopla that surrounds almost every modern producer and musician of merit, that he remains a genuine recluse; he has never appeared live, only one obliquely-angled publicity photograph is known to exist, and the number of interviews he has given can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Yet despite this, his music speaks loud and wide, and the world has been listening ever since his 'South London Boroughs' EP debut on Hyperdub in March 2005. His eponymous album, which began life as a low-key release in May 2006, is now widely regarded as the benchmark release of the ever-widening dubstep genre, picking up unanimous critical acclaim along the way, and ending the year heavily featured in many 'best of' polls. Now Burial returns with 'Untrue', a new record of weird soul music, which lovingly processes spectral female voices into vaporised R&B and smudged 2step garage. Vocal lines are blurred, smeared, pitched up pitched down and pitch bent until their content is cast adrift from their original context and they whisper their saccharin sweet nothings into the void. The album continues with the debut's crackle-drenched yearning and bustling syncopations, haunted by the ghosts of rave, but also reveals some new Burial treats with a more glowing, upbeat energy. Kicking off with the skittering 2step syncopations and vocal science of 'Archangel', 'Near Dark' and 'Ghost Hardware', before long it descends into a space of radiant divas and ambience. Where 'Burial' first was humid, suffocating and unrelentingly sad, 'Untrue' is less sunless. Many of the tracks are so sweet, they become toxic, underscored by the almost geological rumbles of growling basslines. Unlike the overpoweringly melancholic prevailing mood of before, Burial's sound is now better defined as a downcast euphoria typified by the epic, muted optimism of the album's last track 'Raver'. Forget central heating the radioactivity of this album is all that you'll need to keep you warm this winter. 'Untrue' is available as full 13 track digipack CD, including recent underground hit 'Ghost Hardware', and 9 track DJ friendly double vinyl set, from which some of the beatless pieces have been edited.

Review: Milan's Simone Trabucchi, whom we know by the name of Dracula Lewis thanks to a rich catalogue of related material, launches his new STILL moniker on Berlin's unfailingly explorative PAN label. The result, however, is something we haven't been exposed to before and, for Italian electronic music, it marks a fascinating new journey into the 'outernational' realm. Each one of these 9 sonic experiments is made up of peculiar ethnic blends that span from Rastafarian culture to Pan-Asian influences; most of them are tagged as 'riddims', attempting to form new and visceral forms of futuristic sound-system culture for the next century. We're not kidding when we say that this is the first time in a while that we've heard something genuinely different, genre-blending and in a sense, utterly mystifying. Dancehall is in all of these tunes' DNA, but the execution is peppered with all sorts of sci-fi-leaning tricks and electronics, making it the perfect sort of material for fans of both dance music cultures. Don't sleep on this one. It's another nutty episode of PAN.

Review: The DDS label, short for Distort Decay Sustain, has given artists like Demdike Stare a platform on which to express themselves through over the years, but it was really Equiknoxx's LP from 2016, Bird Sound Power, which opened their doors to a whole new category of listener. In fact, it was that LP, with all its stunning, dub-wise experimentation, which has led to Mark Ernestus being called up for a pair of remixes. As you probably know, this is a rare case, so this 12" is sort of a special piece - "Congo Get Slap" is given the pure Ernestus rundown, with a charging, minimalistic percussion being swallowed whole by the raucous dub stabs caving in from all angles; the remix of "Flagged Up" is a much slower, more brooding affair in the same vein as the mythical cuts residing on imprints like Basic Channel and Chain Reaction - nothing but deep, meditative dub flexing for the mind. BIG!

Review: Given the hype that surrounded the release of the first Moderat set back in 2009, we can surely expect more of the same for this second outing from Apparat and Modeselektor. Those familiar with the first album's woozy blend of IDM, Thom Yorke indebted vocal dreaminess, porchlight techno and post-dubstep rhythms will immediately feel right at home. Online reviews have focused largely on II's atmospheric warmth, and the way in which the Berlin-based trio seems to have refined their sound. Both are valid critiques; certainly, there's a maturity and musical complexity to the album that betters much of their previous works. It's not much of a dancefloor set, but that's entirely the point; this is locked-in headphone listening for the wide-eyed generation.

Review: To mark a century of releases, admirable Bristol imprint Tectonic has served up something rather special: an EP of future bass business that sees long-serving grime MC Riko Dan adding his flow to fresh beats from some of the label's heaviest hitters. Check, for example, the woozy "purple" synths, ragged sub-bass and stepping beats of the Joker-produced "Hard Food", the indsustrial-strength grime assault of the Pinch-produced "Vibration" and the sparse, clandestine rumble of "Hungry", where Riko Dan's gruff patois flow rises above a skeletal groove. Elsewhere, the Ziro-helmed "Alright Then" sounds like a club anthem in waiting, and Walton's remix of "Big Slug" - a previous club cut from Pinch and Mumdance - is an ethereal, string-laden treat.

Review: Over the course of his career to date, shadowy London producer Filter Dread has proved to be one bass music's most imaginative producers, offering up a range of EPs that snugly sit in the cracks between sub-genres. On "Ice Rave", his debut album, he continues this approach, romping through a collection of weighty, club-ready cuts that variously touch on dancehall/140 fusion ("Ice B8ass"), eight-bit electro ("Space Conga"), mind-altering post-grime intensity ("Time To Let Go"), hybrid hardcore/dubstep insanity ("Ice Rave") and mutant tech-funk (the skittish and doom-laden "Tekker Wave"). In other words, it's a sub-heavy sprint just overflowing with ideas.

Review: Loraine James is the latest going talent to make a bold statement on Hyperdub. Her new album reflects the sounds of the London she grew up in while also exploring issues around identity and queerness. Grime, UK drill, electronica and jazz all colour the album and can be as abrasive and confrontational as it can sweet and soothing. Our picks are "London Ting/Dark As Fuck": a caustic brew of distorted drums and frazzled synths with angst ridden vocals and "For You & I" which is a soothing beauty despite its hyperdriven loops. A personal and expressive album that also acts as a fine snapshot of London as it sounds right now.

Review: Having previously worked with SBTRKT, Kanye West, Drake, Jesse Ware and Frank Ocean, amongst others, Sampha is no newcomer. This, though, is the British singer, songwriter and producer's debut album, and it's something of an understated gem. One particularly enthusiastic reviewer called it "an R&B album for the ages"; while that may be pushing it a bit, there's no denying that Process is an impressive collection of tracks. The beats are inventive, the electronics crisp, the samples carefully chosen, and the musical touches pitched just right. At the centre of it all stands Sampha, delivering thoughtful, heartfelt and sometimes poignant lyrics in his wonderfully evocative voice.

Review: Single LP Editrion: While their 50 Weapons imprint may be winding up, Modeselektor's Monkeytown imprint is still in full swing, releasing all sorts of interesting electronic music lately from producers as diverse as Robot Koch, Omar Souleyman and Howling. This time label head honchos Bronsert and Szary team up with good mate Sascha Ring aka Apparat for another session as well.. Moderat, of course! Highlights include the bittersweet and bass heavy pop inflections of "Bad Kingdom" featuring Ring's powerful vocals, the epically future beats of "Let In The Light" or "Ilona" and the upbeat dusty deep house of "Milk". Superb production on display throughout the album and don't forget to check out the killer remixes by Skee Mask and Benjamin Damage (amongst others) available soon as well.

Review: The Horo label wouldn't be complete without the mischievous industrial patterns of Pact Infernal, a mysterious artist who specialises in all things on the grey end of the scale. Infernality is the artist's second LP for the imprint and, compared to his debut CD album, this dwells on much vaster, more cinematic landscapes that remind us of Prurient's top material. The A-side, a cavernous stretch of earth that goes from "Purification" to "Meditations", has been constructed with the notion of tribalism very much front of mind, and this builds at a constant rate to reach the climax of the B-side. "Principles" heads back to the nether zone with its eerie swarms of bass, while "Infernality" drops the listener into a thick swamp of loose beats and mind-bending background effects. The second vinyl follows the same steady path to all-out doom, dipping and rising at every turn with the help of powerful bass recipes floating in mid-air. It's an album of gloom, passion, dread and euphoria, all at the same time. Excellent stuff.