Downtempo / Balearic Recommendations May 2016

Review: Having seemingly been taken aback by their success over the last two years, Vancouver's Mood Hut crew has decided to go back to basics with an album - the crew's first - from the previously unheralded Disco Mantras. Naturally, they're keeping tight-lipped about the identity of its' creators, but it appears to be a collaborative effort containing various members of their extended family. Musically, it's as rich, attractive and loved-up as we've come to expect, with their usual blazed, new age ambient house sounds being joined by influences that range from spaced-out disco and humid African rhythms, to horizontal jazz-funk and scratchy, dust-laden dub reggae. The result is a blazed, early morning classic in the making.

Review: Balearic Blah Blah make a fashionably late entrance into 2016 with a fittingly beautiful double-A that's standardly super-limited. Nothing is known about Senor M but here's what we can confirm: "Carbo" is the ultimate beach tune with its soft ebb and flow chords, lazy, slouching breakbeat and precision crafted Japanese sample. "Time" is just a tiny bit more upbeat with its sun-kissed dub vibe and sweeping nod to a long sought after classic. We waste time spoiling the surprise...

Review: Snap up this piece of history on wax; Bristolian trip hop legends performing live at the Royal Albert Hall. In the words of Let Them Eat Vinyl "On one summer night in 1998, Massive Attack set the standard that all future performers would try to live up to for years to come." Following up the success of the album Mezzanine released in 1997, Robert del Naja (3D) and Mushroom G and the extended cast of Tricky and Horace Andy play all the hits, including ones on the seminal Blue Lines ("Daydreaming"/"Safe From Harm") and its successor Protection ("Karmacoma"). Horace Andy is at his finest on the amazing "Man Next Door" while The Cocteau Twins' Liz Fraser turned in a career highlight with her unmistakable voice on "Angel".

Review: Ghostly International has picked up a lot as of late, and it's high time that this excellent label started to bring us new and exciting talent again. Here we have Com Truise - Tom Cruise's alias when he hangs around the scientology meets (just kidding!) - and five masterful slices of synth-heavy dance music. "Sunspot" is a delicate scorcher boasting a beautiful pattern of melodies, "Forgive" goes for the new age look and feel, "Diffraction" sits somewhere between disco and balearic, the title track "Silicon Tare" is the kind of beat-heavy tune you'd be listening to on a beach in LA, and "Du Zirconia" stutters its beats over a grainy bassline that recalls 1980's boogie. Sick.