Back catalogue: All genres

Review: Trauma Collective returns to shock your system on their fifth release, which comes courtesy of Spain's Rafael M. Espinosa aka Geistform. The Barcelona-based artist, also known for his exploits under the Univac alias, has crafted a singular style that exists at the interzone of IDM, digital noise and electro and having earned him releases on Pi Electronics, Femur and Hands Productions in recent years.

Espinosa executes four programs in sonic warfare on the Antena EP, all sounding akin to complex bitstream amplification. A multi-level barrage of frequencies play offense on opening cut "Proxima B", which sets the theme for more widescreen pulsations that gash the senses, as heard on the syntax error of "Note Repeat" and building up to a climax on the monochromatic soundstage of "Norc" - a jagged and angular exploration in bass artefacts and static redux.

Since unleashing the austere techno of Birmingham legend Mick Harris (as Monrella) and hometown hero Kwartz on unsuspecting ears, the Madrid-based collective has now ventured into more experimental spheres, as heard on the off-kilter mentalism of ASC's Loop Research and the brooding atmosphere of Makunaimadama's limited cassette release last year. Antena is the logical progression for the label's next chapter, where it continues to push the threshold of electronic music's outer limits.

Review: Scale and Scope is a set of four 7" and one-sided coloured flexidisc records where each one contains "an instantiation of an individual microtonal designer scale" all developed by Stefan Goldmann. These experimental sounds pair wispy fragments of melody, the hiss of static electricity, twisted drones and only just audible details that add a range of moods from psychedelic introspection to cosmic wonder. 'Series Y (Gamma)' sounds like the internal thoughts of R2D2, while 'Series D (Delta)' is a futuristic symphony of melody and harmony.

Review: Stamp glides up to a 15th release with the ever-present Ben Gomori the man responsible. The former writer has done it all in his time from playful edits to big house to here, dazzling disco. 'DM Slide' is a classic-sounding cut with busy basslines and silky arps, nice tinny percussion and a glorious vocal that soars way up top. That takes up the a-side while the flip is a dub version that ups the disco energy and removes the vocals so that the cosmic fx are more front and centre. A useful 12" so far.

Review: Founding member of Depeche Mode and celebrated singer songwriter in his own right, Martin Gore's The Third Chimpanzee EP is up there with some of the best solo work he has ever put out, with a particularly unique type of dance-synth vibe that you can't escape from no matter how hard you try. Now we have the remixes, which have a lot to live up to but come with plenty of promise.

After all, the chosen producers involved are all heavyweights in their own right, and were certainly ready to step up to the mantle here. Opening with a pair of tracks made different by two of Brazil's most revered techno heads - ANNA and Wehbba - from there we get Berghain bass experimentalist Barker, the fury of Rrose, and percussive wonder of JLin, and that's before we come to the likes of Chris Liebing and Kangding Ray.

Review: "I resynthesized some vocals that almost sounded human, but not quite. That's why I decided to name the track after a monkey." Depeche Mode mainstay, and one of the UK's finest modern musicians and songwriters, on his website Martin Gore cuts to the quick in explaining his latest solo release, which takes its name directly from Jared Diamond's book about the similarities between animal and human behaviour, The Third Chimpanzee.

It's certainly a pretty wild experience. Like the preceding lone wolf album, MG, here MG the guy gives us five tracks of synth goodness made on modular consoles. Visiting post-ambient, IDM and industrial noise, or rather luring those elements out of their natural comfort zones and into an atmosphere that almost feels as though you're lost in nature, it's a real opportunity for escapism at a time when many of us have never needed one more.

Review: Following the success of last year's Walks, Group Listening returns with a new 12" for PRAH Recordings. The title and artwork both explore themes of decay, expiration and musical renewal and the music was in part inspired by a small DIY festival in Bristol. Paul Jones explains the title represents a radical, open call for change while 'Tell Everyone Everything' is a layered, intense synth soundscape with destined pads and nimble chords that lock you in the here and now. The release also features remixes by Ancient Plastix and Loggsplitter who bring sub-aquatic dub and mind-melting rhythmic intricacies.

Review: Outlier experimental label Eating Music brings back more for us to chew on here in the form of a varied four tracker from various artists. It is Mindexxx that opens with 'Track 1' which layers up snaking synths and deeply buried dark bass that grows in intensity and washes over you like a Tsunami. Laughing Ears then cuts back to a tender mood with soft piano chords and slowly unfolding rhythms that are warm and lithe. Gooooose's 'The Dusk Of Digital Age' is a churchy affair with textured drones shot through with beams of synth light and Knopha's 'Off-Peak Season Tourists' layers up choral vocals and jumbled drum sounds into something hypnotic and escapist.

Review: Los Angeles-based The Black Lodge began as an intimate gathering place and ritual organised around exploring, sharing and experimenting with diverse forms of electronic music. This is the fourth collection of cuts from various artists of The Black Lodge multiverse. The Poetic Painter M, an alias of Nation chief Traxx, opens up the A-side with the dark late night acid of 'Elusive Clarity Of 1 Mind', followed by Pablo R Ruiz from Detroit providing the spooky lo-fi/sci-fi groove 'El Rey De Amor'. Over on the flip, Michigan's Fashion Flesh serves up a harsh experimental soundscape on 'Kisses' and closes with the tunnelling industrial funk of Fauna53's 'Jam1' (Asymmetrical weirdo orchestra edit).

Review: Versatile's new Uprooted project, masterminded by serial curator and long-time label contributor Vidal Benjamin, has an intriguing concept. It focuses on the 'duality' of musicians who grow up in one place, then move to another and absorb that culture. The two tracks on release number one were picked by Vladimir Ikovic, who has selected a track a piece from Belgrade, the city of his birth, and Dusseldorf, his current home. On the Serbian side, he offers up 'Track 1' by Rex Ilusivii, Goran Vejvoda and Milan Mladenovic, a trippy, slow-motion slab of dubbed-out, Eno-influenced slab of post-punk experimentalism from 1984. Flip for some rough, powerful, mind-mangling proto-techno from 1981: the stylish, lo-fi and pleasingly intense 'NBKE' by CHBB. Inspired obscurities that are well worth a listen.

Review: It can often take months or even years of therapy to even begin to start addressing the real reason you're in the room talking to a trained professional. For Gazelle Twin, it has taken three albums - and more than a decade - to get to a point where it feels comfortable enough to turn her razor sharp songwriting gaze inwards. So, whereas before we heard observations on outward looking subject matter, here we take a turn for the insular. The result is an altogether darker experience, musically and thematically. There's a constant sense of drama and tension to this art-pop odyssey, and subjects such as childhood trauma - and its impact on our adult selves - are never off the table. Almost operatic, while there's plenty here to challenge, not least the universal expectation that later in life things get less scary, ultimately Black Dog is also about overcoming and confronting our most existential fears.

Review: Tom Middleton and Mark Pritchard created a landmark of ambient music when they released 76:14 back in the 90s. Their Global Communication project was never just about ambient though, and it also coursed through deep house and more besides. In the spirit of progress, Middleton has returned to thinking about the project from a contemporary perspective, stepping forth as GCOM with the epic scope of E2 XO. From stirring orchestral suites to high octane DSP, it's an expansive listening experience that shows Middleton pushing himself into new terrain in the studio. Whether you tie it back to the prior material or not, it's a towering piece of work from an elder statesman of UK electronica.

Review: Never heard of Zoroastrianism? Nothing to do with Zorro, this ancient religion is still practiced by a comparatively small number of people today, and has its roots on the Iranian plateau. Hugely overlooked in the modern world, not least given its incredible influence over may of the tropes we associate with recognisable creeds - heaven, hell, good, evil - here M Geddes Gengras and Psychic Reality pay homage to the history of what might be Western Asia's most mythologised and yet misunderstood nation, while also introducing modern sonic elements and effects.

The result is something that's unarguably original. Ambient work that is vivid and transportive, it's highly rhythmic stuff from start to finish, with tracks like 'The Incremental Spirit' taking that format to the nth degree, while the likes of 'Wilde Pastures' break with a more abstract idea of what these sounds can be.

Review: General Magic's first sonic explorations began a whole three decades ago now and to mark the occasion Editions Mego serves up Bosky. The Austrian duo of Ramon Bauer and Andi Pieper originally emerged with experimental techno releases like Frantz and Rechenkonig with their wonky, avant-garde rhythms. Following a long hiatus, their 2023 comeback Nein Aber Ja reignited their sonic curiosity and this record continues their legacy with unpredictable compositions blending synthetic voices, wild percussion and surreal textures. Tracks like 'Club Duchamp' and 'Noorenhalt' showcase their signature playfulness while Tina Frank's abstract artwork sets the tone. Bosko is a futuristic fusion of robotic punk and perplexing funk, perfectly suited for today's AI age.

Review: Another exceptional double album deep dive from Umor Rex mainstays Andreas Gerth and Carl Oesterhelt, respectively one-half of Driftmachine, and the artist who debuted with the landmark 11 Pieces for Synthesizer album. As ever, trying to summon adjectives to correctly describe what's here isn't easy, but let's give it a go anyway. Mysterious, dark, haunting, but also ultimately very beautiful - albeit often in a slightly chilling way - it's highly rhythmic patient stuff. A fitting title, it's hard not to picture tribalism, gatherings, premeditated practices and timeless traditions when becoming absorbed by the hypnotic contents here. It's transportive stuff, both in terms of time and place, era and style, a sense of loops and cycles being the real omnipresent thread here. Earthen ambient, strange factory floor downtempo, cinematic synths and more. The kind of record that's only possible when two people haul themselves up in a remote village with an abundance of instruments and see what happens.

Review: Dark Entries are reusing two albums from Philadelphia-based experimental duo The Ghostwriters. their debut as well as this follow-up, Objects in Mirrors Are Closer Than They Appear from 1981. Formed by the late Buchla innovator Charles Cohen and multi-instrumentalist Jeff Cain in 1971, the duo initially performed as Anomali before evolving into The Ghostwriters. Their work is a mix of improvisation and composition and it always stood out for its unique electroacoustic sound shaped through collaborations with visual artists and choreographers. Objects in Mirrors delivers eight minimalist tracks to get stuck into from the chaotic groove of 'Fix It in the Mix' to the ethereal "Moon Chant.' This remastered edition includes photos, and liner notes, and will donate proceeds to SOSA (Safe from Online Sex Abuse).

Review: Stone's Throw has never really made any wrong moves in our opinion, and here the label puts its full force behind a deceptively powerful album. Taking us to places that are deeper than perhaps what the imprint is best known for, this is immersive, hypnotic, otherworldly stuff made from a variety of plugged in machines, analogue and otherwise, including a semi-modular synth. The result is a journey-style collection packed with atmosphere but one that's also painstakingly detailed and textured. Sound waves are rendered almost visible by the movements, drones, tracks and other pieces here, drum and effects machines producing the kind of noises that mesmerise and suck you in further as time passes. Tunes to get lost in, the only remaining question is whether anyone will ever want to return.

Review: Gilroy Mere aka Oliver Cherer shows off two different sides of his sound on this new Gilden Gate album for Clay Pipe. It is the latest in a long line of superb sounds over the course of two decades which have distilled folktronic, singer-songwriter, jazz, ghost-pop and guitar tinged disco rock. Here he soundtracks sun-kissed beaches and rural Suffolk on side one and then goes underwater to explore through music the lost city of Dunwich,

Review: RECOMMENDED
The re-discovery and re-appraisal of Beverly Glenn-Copeland's work is one of the more surprising outcomes of the pandemic's great pause, which for some people at least meant having more time to dive into the archives of cultural history, from music to literature to movies. Not that the spotlight isn't wholly deserving. As this 1986 album shows, the artist was well ahead of their time, with this strange, heady brew of electronic exoticism, experimental ambient and percussive poetry easy to mistake for a contemporary record.

Glenn-Copeland's own story is also a pretty interesting one. Now 76 years old, the maestro spent years identifying as a lesbian woman, before investigations in gender discourse led to the revelation that a transgender man was a more comfortable identity for the music maker, who also lays claim to a catalogue of kids' TV scores, including Sesame Street and Shiny Time Station.

Review: Japanese percussive and rhythmic experts Goat have finally graced us with a new album. It's taken around eight years to materialise, and band leader Koshiro Hino apparently described the process as "90% pain", which sounds like there's quite the tale to tell. No doubt all will be revealed to fans in due course, but for now let's just say one of the world's most enigmatic, talented (read: unfathomably tight) and complex groups are back on incredibly fine form. As ever with this crew, attempting to come up with reference points to guide would-be-buyers as to wether this is for them feels redundant simply because it should be impossible not to find Joy In Goat captivating. Fans of Miles Davis and Autechre alike should be bowled over, with highly technical, drum-led arrangements that sound like they could only possibly be machine made coming out of what is essentially a piece of expressive performance art on record.

Review: You'll probably already be acquainted with the name Manuel Gottsching - and you should be - but just in case you aren't, he was a pillar of Ash Ra Tempel's golden years and, among other of his contemporaries, was a pioneer of the genre that is often dubbed 'new age'. E2-E4 was a 1984 solo album from the man, and is certainly up there with the likes of Steve Reich's best minimal material, although it has often gone relatively unnoticed. MG Art from Germany have done us the favour of reissuing this monumental release, and we're utterly awestruck by how contemporary and fresh this album still is. In fact, one could say that a tune like "31'38" is the basis for the sound championed by new labels like Mood Hut, where a significantly danceable beat is laid above placid, warm harmonics. Similarly, "23'00" is just as balearic and phased out but, once again, we just can't believe how great this music still sounds more than thirty years later. Warmly recommended.

Review: Oskaa-born but truly otherworldly producer Daichi Furukawa, aka Ground, is back with a new album that is here to bend your mind and distort your reality with his fourth world follow-up to 2018's cult favourite Sunizm. This experimental odyssey truly defies genre, logic, and linearity as it assembles a chaotic yet mesmerising fusion of organic samples, synthetic textures, tribal rhythms and cosmic noise that are fantastic and freaky. Yaoyorozoo is one of those records that feels both ancient and futuristic as it taps into beautiful and unsettling, inviting and disorienting rhythms and sample sources. Across 73 minutes, it mutates like a dream-always shifting, never settling, so it makes for a cerebral collage for wide-open minds and ears only.

Review: German pair Markus Guentner and Joachim Spieth rightly got plenty of acclaim for their 2023 ambient album Overlay and now it gets revisited with a top selection of remixes that breathe new life into the original compositions. Prominent ambient and experimental artists such as Hollie Kenniff, Rafael Anton Irisarri and Pole all show their class while newer names like Abul Mogard smears synths into a misty wonder on 'Scope', Galan/Vogt layer in angelic vocal tones to 'Valenz' and Leandro Fresco brings a lightness of touch that fills with optimism on opener 'Apastron. Guentner and Spieth themselves provide two alternate versions of their originals that bring new emotional and sonic depth.

Review: "The Next World Sound Series is a collection of work by contemporary sound artists working in long form instrumental composition and translated to the tangible medium of vinyl. These modern day offerings capture the analog quality and experience of last century electronic recordings, presented to you with today's technological advances in home playback, for your environmental listening pleasure." Or so say heads at the iconic and truly enigmatic label Dark Entries of this latest addition to their catalogue. A collection of work that spans the strangely frantic sci-fi tones of 'Oberenginen 0930' to the almost monastic drone of 'Soma', dubbed and muffled drums and vocals on 'Lixsm', club-ready broken beats of 'Destruct', and the evocative futurist refrains and samples of 'John Gore'. As expansive as it is exploratory and adventurous, you'll need to set aside some serious listening time for your first play here.

Review: "One might thus regard the Welsh rarebit as a Machine in which a process is applied to the conditioning and perception of the world of bread and cheese." Suffice to say, John White might not have had the same ideas about what constitutes Machine Music back in 1976 as you do today. This is also the first time we've ever managed to get a reference to Welsh rarebit into the first line of writing about a record, so everyone is learning something today. "The Machines" White refers to are the individual tracks themselves, all recorded between 1967 and 1972 and all comprising different combinations of a thing. Six pairs of "bass melody instruments" made 'Autumn Countdown Machine', different permutations of "the articulations 'ging, gang, gong, gung, ho!'" comprise 'Jews Harp Machine'. And 'Son of Gothic Chord' is crafted from the sequential chord progression of four keyboard players, spanning an octave. Conceptual experimental and wildly imaginative stuff on the borderline of electronica, abstract, mathematical and something otherworldly.