Back in stock: Bass

Review: Parisian producer Bambounou has long been part of the 50 Weapons family, having offered up a series of well-received singles and a debut album for the label since 2012. Centrum is his second LP, and sees him in a typically inventive mood, offering up a range of techno tracks blessed with curiously off-kilter rhythms, crackly found sounds, tumbling melodies and jumpy electronics. While there are dancefloor moments - see the Detroit-influenced, outer-space grooves of "Fire Woman", spiraling psychedelia of "S.A.C" and the kickdrum-propelled thump of "Excluding Natalia" - many of the more potent moments are far more influenced by IDM and ambient.

Review: .German low end collective Bass Come Save Me unleash a new 45 with a strong Portland portrait as Boomarm's Gulls makes their debut on the label with a warm beat that will keep the chills at bay this winter. Add Jamaica's Wayne Daniel on the vocals and another Portland native Madgesdiq on the conscious bars and there's a vibe that sits somewhere between Roots Manuva, YT and Wyclef. Yeah it's that toasty. Stay blessy.

Review: Kalocain's debut vinyl release is a haunting trip through sound and science and is underpinned by some seriously weighty bass. The title track bridges ancestral echoes and present-day rhythms, while 'W.N.G.' unveils cryptic mysteries from a forgotten past. 'Ivermectin' crafts surreal molecular melodies that look to "decipher the enigma of sonic DNA." Remixes by Normal 4, Patricia Kokett, and Jacques Satre twist each original into new and bizarre realms. Evaldas Bubinas aka Hermandrowning, adds eerie artwork that fuses sound and visuals into an uncanny harmony to close out a high-concept, high-class package.

Review: Laska returns to his and Re:Ni's RE:LAX imprint for the first time since launching it with 'Body Score' 18 months ago and once again it's a powerful dispatch that manages to hit so many spots without falling down any genre category trapping. 'Wonda' is a mystical, tribal weave of textures and energy underpinned by some booming, warm bass tones. For a slightly slower, more cosmic tango in the stars head for 'Kwaze'. Complete with guidance from Phelimuncasi, this is a beguiling trip into the dreamiest side of the dance without so much as lifting a toe from mother earth. Imagine if Andrew Weatherall and Muadeep once collaborated and you might be dancing the same dance...

Review: ***B-STOCK: Sleeve damaged but otherwise in excellent condition***


Jim Coles' decision back in 2010 to implement a swerve in his sonic trajectory away from his hip-hop past as 2tall in favour of a more all-encompassing approach that touches on various strands of bass culture as Om Unit has paid off and then some. Subsequent releases on Exit, Autonomic, Civil Music, Metalheadz and his own Cosmic Bridge imprint have all shown Om Unit eminently capable of tempo shifting productions that appeal to fans of Bass music, Drum & Bass and footwork alike. The latter has been explored further while the Dream Continuum collaboration with Machinedrum on Planet Mu and his Philip D. Kick alias where the link between Chicago's juke heritage and UK Jungle was explored. All this and more is included on Threads, a debut Om Unit LP for Civil Music that deftly collates various strands (or threads) of his production career over the past fifteen years for a cohesive 15 track set that veers through of hip hop, dubstep, jungle and even house.

Review: ***B-STOCK: Creasing to corner of outer sleeve but otherwise in excellent condition***


The third in Switzerland's best and truest retro dance throwback series; here the Mental Groove Classic series returns with a treasure trove of rare and hard to find tracks plucked from the personal collection of label founder Olivier Ducret, a pivotal figure in Switzerland's acid house and rave-era party scene. Only the best, brightest and most effulgent of house, techno, bleep and analog jams are heard on this series, bringing that heady, yet much sought-after, cross-section of dreaminess and rawness to our wanting ears. From the dreamy breathalizings and Himalayan hollerings of Uncle 22's 'Pain', to the deep ficus-bathed melodic blossomings of Point Zero's 'Coastal', it's clear that the ability to portray wateriness and fluidity in the otherwise (stereotypically) arid drum machine and sequencer form was something extant; a superpower shared collectively in the Swiss psyche of the time.

Review: ***B-STOCK: Sleeve damaged but otherwise in excellent condition***


The Mental Groove Classics is a new series of reissues documenting the sweats and oversights of Olivier Ducret, a pivotal figure in Switzerland's acid house and rave-era party scene. Ducret's Mental Groove label collected and discographized many of the 90s' brightest and yet roughest gems of the time; as both Volume 1 and this follow-up demonstrate, there is an unabashed rawness shared by the likes of Airtight's 'Housewerks FXTC' and Techno Grooves' 'Hiawa' here, the kind of rawness in sound that the various music-makers of today may only emulate, yet may never truly fully replicate, if not for the simple fact of overproduction and/or the all-too-easiness of overindulgence and possibility enabled by digital audio tech. To contrast, this one's simple, drum-machinic grooves mesh rather effortlessly with a transcendent trance, one which reaches a dubby apogee on The Moody Boys' C-sider 'Jammin', not long before a wonky French touch leaves a lasting tactile impression on Nagai Eri's D2, 'Delta'.

Review: Remarkably surreal club reconstructions from Uruguayan ur-producer Lechuga Zafiro. 'Desde los oidos de un sapo' ('From The Ears Of A Toad') is a truly elastic entanglement of designed sound refit for the floor, though we'd not be surprised if a private laboratory set aside for the safe containment and study of sonic bio-anomalies would hope to acquire this one too. Zafiro flexes his hylid hamstrings on this wriggling wet lurch through post-Baile sonics and field recorded club jamborees, emphasising the naturalistically percussive and fretfully textured. Basing his musical identity on field recordings of hard materials - metal, wood, rock, glass - as well as, somehow, animal tissue - from toads, birds, sea lions and pigs (let's hope they were at least taxidermied first) - these seven cochlear leapfrogs make for a highly exploratory sonic escape; Zafiro dares to define the next applicative generation of sound design for the dance.