New releases last four weeks: All genres

Review: Well Curated is a series of releases and parties that - in its own words - "reflects the ethnomusicology of the last 50 years of music" - and aims to reach into all genres, merging classic styles and breaking down barriers. Steve Spacek occupies the A-side with the breezy broken beat and soul-in-space of 'Alone In Da Sun', while Lukid's 'Hair Of The Dog' is a more intense counterpart, with wobbling sub-bass and swirling, surging atmospherics hovering above.

Review: Originally released in 2005, Silenced captures the essence of The Black Dog's enigmatic allure, transporting listeners to otherworldly realms with its lush, tuneful compositions and angular genius. Each track on the album is a testament to the group's unparalleled ability to surprise and entrance, evoking a sense of both unease and beauty. For fans of The Black Dog, Silenced serves as a welcome treat, while also serving as an entry point for those new to the group's mesmerising soundscapes. Definitelt one of their best full length albums yet to date.

Review: Finally, the debut Bochum Welt album Module 2 has been reissued after an initial run on Rephlex. Bochum Welt (Gianluigi Di Costanzo) has just recently celebrated 30 years of releasing music. His brand of IDM, electro and techno has been often copied but never equaled. His futuristic music seems to always be forward thinking and ultimately, timeless sounding. This edition is on matching green vinyl and includes all the classic material of the first release. Fans of AFX, Squarepusher and Cylob are sure to be aware of Bochum Welt. But for those who aren't....

Review: Estonian label RR Gems continues to fly the flag for the finest experimental jazz music, introducing the world to the sound of EEG Coherence. Recorded at the legendary Hotel 2 Tango studios in Montreal, their debut album is a flowing, engrossing affair which flirts with free jazz forms while keeping a certain smoky, groove-minded vibe at the centre of the rhythm section. It lopes and slopes, letting prominent guitar work needle its way around looming basslines and splashy, spaced-out drums with splashes of vocals, flutes, sax and keys darting about in the mix for good measure. If you value free jazz you can latch onto, this album is a must-check.

Review: The legendary experimental German band Einsturzende Neubauten is back with their first album since 2020, Rampen (apm: alien pop music). Since their formation in 1980, the band his sought out to blaze their own trail in making what others would assume is noise into their own brand music. Their own music language was created and brought with them legions of followers that have added a bit of Einsturzende Neubauten's influence to their own sounds. The band has once again pushed their sound even further - alien pop music. This edition comes on yellow vinyl.

Review: Einsturzende Neubauten's description by label Potomoak - as a band that constantly evolves - is accurate enough. Over forty years on from their debut album Kollaps in 1981, Rampen appears as the latest and most unruly incarnation of their sound yet. Here, Blixa Bargeld, N. U. Unruh, Alexander Hacke, Jochen Arbeit, Rudolph Moser and Felix Gebhard present their least predictable and conventional sides: APM is described as alien pop music; the songs therein have been specially crafted not only for our universe but for every adjacent parallel universe to ours, with every slight multiversal variation in humanity's collective tastes held firmly in mind. The album fully lives up to its billing as anti-pop as alien pop, its challenging twists and turns fully sating the difficult whims of society's outcasts and cosmic punks.

Review: Industrial music formed amidst the concrete decay of post-war Berlin, Einsturzende Neubauten emerged as pioneers of genre. Their sonic alchemy fuses unconventional instruments crafted from scrap metal and construction tools with traditional ones, creating a raw and unsettling symphony. Their new double album "Rampen (APM: Alien Pop Music)" showcases their sonic prowess. Despite the abrasiveness of their sound, the group's music is imbued with a sense of theatricality. Blixa Bargeld's stoic vocals narrate surreal tales of urban decay and existential unease, while the band's live performances evoke industrial rituals. Over the years, the band's music has evolved, incorporating elements of ambient and even pop into their sound. Yet, their core ethos remains intact: to challenge musical boundaries and create a sonic tapestry that reflects the harsh realities of the modern world. This album still helps cement the band moving forward but still respecting their past.

Review: Japanese industrial noise duo The Grogerigegege are something of an urban legend within the underground music scene. Apparently meeting at a sex club where a shared appreciation for envelope pushing sex acts, punishing aural sonics and a bizarre avant-garde perspective on art would lock them together for ensuing decades of musical mayhem. Known for incorporating nudity, violence, broken glass and hoovers into their live set, the pair would even take a lengthy respite while one of the members simply disappeared for years on end before reconnecting with his counterpart. As If It Had Always Been Determined Since This Day Was Born transports listeners back to the pair's earliest forays into calculated extremity with blown out, overdriven remixes taken directly from the master tapes of their first 7" single released back in 1988. This includes the long sought after remaster of 'Mistress' originally used in the legendary Enoshima Beach Flexi Burning Live (which the pair opted to burn all original pressings of rather than make readily available). You do have to remember these are the same lads who sold dried out octopus tentacles in cassette cases during one tour as a limited release, and smashed up the master recording of another work and put the broken pieces in a metallic box that the listener shook to hear the album, hence the title You Are The Music Maker. If the utter lunacy of The Grogerigegege isn't detailed enough here, well this pressing comes complete with 5500 word essay-style liner notes penned by 55 year old Gero himself (Juntaro Yamanouchi).

Review: Cult English electronic duo I Monster aka Sheffield based record producers Dean Honer and Jarrod Gosling dropped Neveroddoreven, their second studio album, on 21 July 2003. A little later than first planned, it now gets a special 20th Anniversary re-issue on CD as well as this double gatefold. It incudes the original album plus three new singles and the much loved acoustic version of 'Daydream in Blue' which even if you don't think you know, you will, because ti has been rather ubiquitous in ad campaigns for brands including Ford and Magnum Ice Cream. Also helping to keep this band relevant after all these years was their single 'Who Is She' going viral on TikTok in 2023 and picking up 290M Spotify streams.

Review: .Rhetorical Islands was originally pieced together from Giuseppe Ielasi's work for l'Audible Festival in Paris. An event dedicated to pushing forward thinking, mind-expanding, experimental and just plain strange sounds, his efforts certainly fit in with all of those terms. Presented here as ten standalone tracks, all without name and many without the usual elements we expect from a 'track', this first vinyl pressing of the work is really an extension of the original idea, rather than a time capsule of it. "Isolated sound worlds" is the phrase Ielasi used to describe what's happening here, and it's certainly true that the individual parts stand alone and can each be heard as autonomous. But together they also make a strange kind of sense, complementing, almost feeding into each other, even at the most stark juxtaposition. Ultimately, then, it's about interpretation, making what we choose from the ingredients.

Review: The second solo releases from Edward Ka-Spel to appear on the Lumberton Trading Company label offers eight spectacularly original compositions from the outsider artist. These are tracks that bore their way into the heart and mind through startlingly personal moods and meanings. The atmosphere is often tense, and, when it's not, 'surreal' is the word that springs to mind - albeit more unusual hallucination than comical experiment. 'Platform 5' might be the best example of how unnerving things can get, the low, rumbling synth bassline underpinning spoken word, distant, almost inaudible harmonic refrain and eerie chorus. 'No Show Tomorrow' asks "what if they had a war and nobody showed up' to seemingly disconnected tones, notes and noises. 'They Seek Her Here' ups the tempo with a synth-wave-breaks trip through dystopian spaces.

Review: Tape Reworks Vol. 2 is the new 12" remix edition of the 2021 album Tape Works Vol. 1 (2021), by the UK's leading musique concrete ensemble Langham Research Centre. With the latter album following up the introductory Tape Works Vol. 1 (2017), which recollected the group's earliest experiments, the second album focused entirely on more recent, original splicings, cuttings and respoolings of the former modernist statement. Now, in turn, come two new remixes of the project by Kara Lis Coverdale and Beatriz Ferreyra, the former of 'Movable Fields' and the latter of 'Nachholbedurfnis'. Coverdale's version is an arresting, looming abstraction, capturing a sense of cosmic loneliness through exoplanetary whistles and deep subs gleaned from the original album's pickups of brutalist buildings; Ferreyra's is jerkier and stranger in palate, utilising glassy transitional sound effects and rapid, sped-up-slowed-down warbles.

Review: Few bands have sidestepped expectations as cannily as Mount Kimbie. Initially a duo but now expanded into a quartet, the British band has previously excelled in mixing, matching and fusing a wide range of experimental and left of centre electronic music influences. On The Sunset Violet, their first full-length as a quartet, they've shifted sonically once more, leaning into their indie-rock influences on a set recorded in California. The latter aspect - and the impact of being surrounded by sunshine and desert - is reflected in the warmth and haziness of the sound, which draws on the layered vocals and guitars of vintage shoegaze while also reaching for more familiar aspects of the band's previous experimental electronic sounds (for proof, check the ghostly musical vision that is King Krule collaboration 'Boxing').

Review: Ilian Tape's ITX Series provides another opportunity to sink into some deeply escapist ambient and drone soundscapes from the usually dance floor-focused breakbeat and techno label. MPU101 has served up a few of these EPs before and they always find them coax plenty of magic out of their analogue machines. 'TEAM 700_76' is a nice and bleary-eyed post-Blade Runner soundtrack, 'BLOCK-1_2AREA666' has a darker undercurrent of menace, 'TrailerparkBeauty' brings some twinkling celestial keys and 'Sunset Memories' closes on frazzled chords that speak of heat damage from a scorching sun.

Review: Horror of the Hexham Heads by The Night Monitor is a haunting and immersive journey into the realms of the unexplained. Inspired by the eerie electronic experimentation of the 1970s and the enigmatic lore of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, The Night Monitor skillfully weaves layers of analog synthesis and spectral ambience to create a spine-tingling sonic landscape. Listeners are invited to explore the murky depths of the paranormal saga surrounding the Hexham Heads, a pair of stone heads that mysteriously appeared in the town in 1971, with dissonant whispers and pulsating rhythms guiding them through the unknown. The result is a genuinely chilling experience that resonates with mystery and intrigue, capturing the essence of one of the weirdest supernatural news stories of the 1970s. Bob Fischer of Fortean Times aptly describes it as a "glorious celebration" of the unexplained.

Review: The Mego label name is synonymous with quality electronic music now for 30 years this year. One of the most important labels in Austria is still going as strong as ever. 33 34 is the second album by NPVR (Nik Colk Void and Peter Rehberg) and first in seven years. This album thrives on modular synthesis and otherworldly sound craftmanship. The eerie 'Keep Former' really intrigues the senses while 'Invisible Man' has an experimental and cool rhythm to it. 'Ok But No' sounds like you are waiting in some sort of teleport machine. Very cool. If you are into finding unique and different sounding music that is futuristic and soundtrack-like, then this is for you. This LP comes with MP3 download code and is limited to 300 copies.

Review: Turin's reputation as an enclave of Italian alternative music and culture is well known. Southern Europe's Motor City has the stunning piazzas and palazzos we want from its country, but also the huge industrial areas, many now in decline or waiting to be redeveloped, that catalyse so much in electronic and industrial music. Meanwhile, a few miles beyond town we find spectacular countryside, national parks, mountain ranges, and inspiration for deep ambient. SabaSaba were born from and into this, and the duo have established themselves as one of the region's foremost purveyors of unusual tunes. Unknown City is a like a blueprint for what a contemporary horror score could be, whether that's the slow release of the John Carpenter-esque 'Night Plotters', haunting chants and shimmers of 'Wrists Free', eerie atmospheres of 'False Speech', or anything in between.

Review: At least one person has described Scythe's work as "expertly modulated space blues and isolationist architectures." First emerging from the ether (or at least that's how we like to think of it) through a series of clandestine cassette releases on Low Company in 2019 and 2020, Head X'Change almost feels like the culmination of all that has come before. A weird and truly wonderful place to spend time. A collaborative project between David West and R.A. Jones, elements of kosmische intermingle with a kind of earthy ambience, DIY electronics leading into white noise moments or new age melodies. At times it's so joyfully opiate you wonder if there's any way of getting back up off the pillow. In other moments, there's tension, eeriness, and uncertainty. Once you're in, it's a wild ride indeed.

Review: Brothers in sounds (and lineage) Mark and Clive Ives deal with two of the biggest issues impacting music right now on one incredible record.WOO have a reputation for taking parts of archived sounds and formulating new things from those segments, and in this case the work is born from excerpts of four-track tape recordings made in the late-1980s. They then began reflecting on the "imminent nature of humanoid robots", and starting to create Xylophonics/Robot X. From artificial intelligence to reuse and sample politics and economics, these themes seem to guide the sounds themselves, which feel strangely nostalgic and futuristic, a vision of tomorrow that is inseprtable from the humans that made it - their understanding of the unfolding machine age through weird distorted jazz tech, deconstructed dub and psychedelic electronica. So, remembering all this is a reconfigured version of stuff made almost 35 years ago is truly mind-blowing.

Review: In Li Yield's Chinese homeland, the title of this album translates back to English as 'childhood' or 'dishevelled hair'. Both are fitting. The London-based multi-instrumentalist and composer follows on from 2021's spellbinding OF with a second full-length record, and this time looks to try and immortalise the experience of growing up young, seeing the world through wide open eyes and learning by engaging with it. The technical back story is impressive - Nonage is packed with outtakes of old Chinese TV shows, mechanical toys and instruments that were made by the artist for this project. Yilei's own childhood piano jams, and half-memories, are also interspersed. In the end, it's a beguiling listen, intriguing and curious, and consistently hazy, just like those recollections from when you were only just able to reach the counter top.