Broken Beat/Nu Jazz/Nu Soul charts

Review: Theo Parrish's masterful Sound Sculptures Vol 1 on triple LP format gets a timely repressing!! In total here there are 9 of the 27 tracks from the full double CD version but these still run the gamut of Theo's inimitable talents, from rough and tumble disco edits to saccharine soul, raw beatdown and leftfield esoterica. Be sure to check the Omar S- featuring "Synthetic Flemm" and long time Juno favourite "Flotation Device". If ever there was a selection of tracks that fully showcased the incredible breadth of production talent this man has, this is it. Not to be missed!

Review: Terapia Records is a Milan-born record label created by Luca Ferrara and Michele Fallabrino aka Complementary Minds. Here they present the very first release in its catalogue, a stunning LP titled Butch Haynes introduces Complementary Minds Vol. 1. Featuring a wide selection of moods and grooves throughout its whopping amount of tracks, some of the highlights include: the late night boogie-down vibe of 'Flower Diva" the late night deepness of 'Q Orchestra' (The Lost Tape mix) with its Moodymann influenced vibe, through to the knackered and off-kilter business of 'Myers Boogie Man' and the dreamy classic house emotion of 'Contact 911' with its early Chicago vibe featuring celestial Larry Heard-like synth sounds.

Review: Hats off to Jamal Moss for the tongue-in-cheek title of his latest album as Hieroglyphic being, which is naturally another pleasingly wild, freewheeling, imaginative and out-there excursion in his now trademark style. It sees him sprint between mutant electronic jazz ('Circumploar'), out-there analogue techno ('21 Days'), organ-rich post-beatdown chuggers ('Foreboding Self Pleasure'), reverb-laden ambient soundscapes ('A Dream Within a Dream', 'Delta Opus L'), industrial-strength dancefloor weirdness ('The Prograde Direction'), sub-heavy lo-fi deep house ('Black Love On An Early Sunday Morning'), sparse electronic future funk ('Future Shocked'), and jacking, sci-fi seeped brilliance ('The Andromeda Strain'). In other words, it's another excellent collection from one of dance music's genuine geniuses.

Review: Spiritual endurance tester Joaquin "Joe" Claussell returns for another topup for the Yellow Jackets series. Volume Eight is yet another heliotropic hummer, with the two ingenious progressive, naturalisti-house cuts found thereon (two new versions of 'Erratic Telepathy' and 'Who Do You Love', the latter by Josh Honeycomb) bringing much tweezy and brain-furthering motif to the two-side mix form. The first track is especially impressive for the counterpoint set up between the right-panned marimba and the left-panned filter-synth, the latter of which dances like a magic firefly against the former's lemni-spatial mallet-bed. The B-sider is much more soulful, bringing interspersive vocals and subtle hat layering to a an all-out funky freakout.

Review: Mood Hut's semi-regular forays into ambient-adjacent territory are always worth checking, largely for their preference for hallucinatory sounds, new age melodies and loved-up textures over academic concepts and po-faced experimentalism. Their latest chill-out room friendly missive, which comes courtesy of Chinese producer Knopha, embraces this approach while also offering nods to his own off-kilter dancefloor productions. So, opener 'Fizz', a languid, post-club shuffler, is followed by the jazz-flecked, opiate ambient soul of 'The Light', and the sun-bright joy of 'Mizu Le Gout', where loose-limbed breakbeats, star-burst melodies and cut-up vocal snippets catch the ear. Arguably best of all, though, is the EP-closing 'Corundrum', where Mediterranean guitar sounds and echoing electronic motifs cluster around a UK garage-influenced ambient house groove.

Review: The inimitable Jamal Moss comes forth with his second offering for Madrid's Apnea records. 'The Moon Dance' unfurls over 11 tracks- in turns pensive, elegiac, and slammin'. Between the sedate expanse of opener 'When The Earths Shadow Falls On The Moon' and the final cymbal strokes of gauche, machine funk closer 'Mawu', Moss lifts us on yet another Afrofuturist space flight of fancy, passing through superclusters of deep house, tactile techno and stroboscopic piano jams along the way.
Standout moments include the smoove-as-u-like-it intergalactic lounge jazz diversion 'The Moondance Moon Walk Version'; its steezy stride-piano vamp seamlessly intertwining with Moss' signature babbling acid intrusions, the irresistibly groovy bump of 'Tethered 2 The Divinely Spaces With In' and the hypnotic sway of 'Celestial Poems Of The Lady With 10000 Names', which opens up from Terrence Dixon-esque introspection into broad windy city string washes and synapse-tickling bleeps. With this collection, Moss pens yet another crucial chapter in the seemingly bottomless hieroglyphic being scroll. While 'The Moon Dance' is one of his most accessible and harmonious works to date, it doesn't lose an ounce of the rawness and immediacy of his previous work. Essential listening!

Review: With Yoyaku's record shop staff handling A&R, the YYK No Label imprint has become impressively unpredictable. Recently, they've served up 21st century progressive house from Varhat, a killer collaboration between Chez Damier and Ben Vedren and an experimental synth-pop album from People People. Here they turn to Swizz jazz drummer Samuel Rohrer, an artist with extensive experience of delivering hybrid acoustic-electronic tech-house and minimal techno excursions. That's what's on offer here, with Rohrer blending vintage electronics and his own drums and percussion with synthesiser sequences, machine beats and intoxicating aural textures. This approach is best exemplified by the Tangerine Dream-goes-tech-house flex of 'Rewired Paradise' and the sludgy, pitched-down 'Memory Reset', though ambient jazz number 'Into The Void Where Things Go (Part II)' is also brilliant.