Back catalogue: Bass

Review: Loraine James continues to trust her instincts and serve us some of the most honest and original music within the leftfield electronic sphere right now. Having recently paid tribute to the work of Julius Eastman on Build Something Beautiful For Me, now she retunes to Hyperdub with the record she claims the teenage version of her would have made. The label text makes explicit reference to the likes of DNTEL and Telefon Tel Aviv as well as math rock, but James is also way out in her own zone metabolising such influences into unique expression. There are some wonderful guest spots from the likes of RiTchie, Marina Herlop and Eden Samara, while James herself centres her voice for some of the album's most poignant moments. Gentle Confrontation is another outstanding chapter in James' ever-intriguing story.

Review: In Colour is of course the long awaited debut solo album from The xx's in-house knob twiddler Jamie 'xx' Smith, arriving through regular home Young Turks backed with a whole host of guest appearances. The more obsessive Jamie xx fans out there (of which we wager there are many) will no doubt already have burned out their laptops and retinas basking in the all too colourful pre-release streams of In Colour, but it's always nice to grip an album in your hands. The eleven tracks on In Colours come across like a low key ode to the rave from Jamie and pals, with Four Tet, Romy & Oli xx, Young Thug and Popcaan featuring, and yes there is also plenty of steel pan. "Hold Tight", which sounds like Jamie's attempt at forest techno, is a definite highlight!

Review: In Waves is Jamie xx's second full-length solo album, and the patented thematic follow-up to 2015's In Colour. The former album marked the height of a certain formative summer in dance music history, in which the UK at large opened its eyes to the potent admixture of its various musical heritages and seemed to meld them into one (perhaps this was best represented by Jamie's membership of a chart-topping indie band, and nonetheless simultaneous indulgence of solo beatcraft and DJing, which saw to a technicolour crock of collaborations we never thought possible, such as with Gil Scott-Heron and Young Thug). In Waves, however, posits the question of where we might've gone since. Channelling as ever Jamie's essential "soft-rounded" drums and clean, yet sample-heavy embellishments sifted from various classic soul and funk records, In Waves nonetheless sacrifices the sentimental ballad-dirges heard on In Colour for a more club-bound portrayal of a comparatively disinhibited night out. Livelier than In Colour, we're transported right on back to a certain kind of dancefloor, one that we'd felt remiss of for almost a good half of the decade in between the two albums.