Juno Recommends Leftfield: September 2022

Review: A Strangely Isolated Place presents a collection of tracks made by longtime friends and frequent collaborators Luke Entelis (Viul) and Thomas Meluch (Benoît Pioulard), combining their enchanting soundscapes for maximum effect. The album is inspired by the isolation and uncertainty the Covid lockdown caused - "Konec" is Czech word for "end," and refers to the devastating transformation that Luke and Thomas' home city of New York underwent during the pandemic. The finished tracks began as short synth sketches by Luke, with the two friends developing them into fully fledged ambient masterpieces while reflecting on a time spent in lockdown, collaborating to create a series of strangely beautiful interludes and "a sense of vitality breaking through the immediate surrounding dread." Judge for yourself, but in our eyes, it's a job well done.

Review: Those sounds that are so squelchy it feels as though you're going to sink into and through the floor via the subs. Remember them? Pye Corner Audio offer a perfect example of that with the A-side to this wonderfully polished and perfected two-tracker, with 'Circuit Riot' stripping out the unnecessaries to offer a stripped back slice of low-tempo acid crying out for a trippy dancefloor.

Flip it to find quite the opposite, although the appropriately-titled 'Pocket Disco' does keep up the ethic of drawing listeners ever deeper. In this case, though, we're brought into a spiralling looped hook-dominated roller that barely lets up, combining proggy-ness with space disco in a way that's bound to win over a broad range of ears and feet.

Review: Vrioon was the first ever collaboration album between Alva Noto and legendary synth man and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto. 20 years after it became the first instalments of V.I.R.U.S.'s five records together it gets the full reissue treatment. The original tracks from the album are joined by an all new composition 'Landscape Skizze' which was laid down in 2005. The record is defined by alternate piano chords, lush electronic tones and quivering timbres that are delicate yet impactful.

Review: The sophomore solo release of Los Angeles-based artist and producer marine eyes (Cynthia Bernard), moving to the esteemed Past Inside The Present after her soothing debut record, idyll, on Stereoscenic Records in March 2021. Also one half of the ambient duo, awakened souls, she most recently curated the mental health benefit compilation for Past Inside The Present, Healing Together. Filled with the sounds of nature and visions of the clouds and heavens above, chamomile is a totally absorbing listen, wrapping you up in its harmonious chordplay and transporting you to a calmer, sunnier, altogether nicer place.

Review: Shack is back! The master of intricately layered drumming, who has long been twisting our melons with his dark and intriguing experimental sounds, returns to Honest Jons here for some more mind-melting workouts. These feature drums the man himself played in Dakar in February 2020 across three layered and enchanting excursions. The first is a real awakening, the second is more twisted and tight, with toms and echo and bass and hand drums all jumbled up while the third is full of intrigue and mystery, ancient drums run through with modern synth sounds to make for something scrambled yet transcendental.

Review: zake & Wayne Robert Thomas come together to serve up a thoughtful and healing deep dive into "what it means to continue living life in the face of loss and uncertainty." Their album is one of great depth emotional and full of subtle struggles that we can all relate to. 'To Those Who Dwelt in a Land of Deep Darkness' was first put out as a 10" lathe but now gets pressed dup properly to 12" vinyl with three extra tracks taken from the original recording sessions. They say the best art comes out of adversity and that is certainly true here.

Review: A Split Second's cult coldwave EP Flesh was dropped back in 1986 on Antler Records. The band of Marc Heyndrickx, and Peter Bonne (aka Chrismar Chayell) only formed a year earlier but his debut single made a huge impact and has become a real classic of the EBM and wave world ever since. Numerous albums followed well into the 90s but rarely did the pair ever top this - the jerking rhythms, ravey electronics and retro-future chords all resonating as much with audiences now as they did back then.

Review: Astral Industries latest release introduces us to a new name, Dialog. Yet while the project may be fresh, it's creators Dutch electronic maverick Samuel van Dijk and Finnish experimentalist Rasmus Hedland are both vastly experienced, with impressive discographies to boot. The album, which is effectively a slowly evolving suite of four lengthy, untitled tracks, has been described by Astral Industries as a conversational exchange that sees the interplay of dynamic frequencies, evocative imagery and contemporary sonic art. In practice, that means a mixture of out-there, effects-laden electronics, grandiose sound design, ultra-deep ambient soundscapes, mutilated found sound, distant spoken word samples and the kind of stargazing ethos explored on vintage Pete Namlook releases (and Jimmy Cauty's 1990 album as Space).

Review: There has been a steady stream of Nurse With Wound material released and reissued recently, with the fathomless creaks of Salt Marie Celeste still looming in our lower registers. Now Dirter are digging right back to the start to present a definitive version of the very first Nurse With Wound venture, originally recorded back in 1980 with a line-up of Steven Stapleton, Jim Thirlwell and William Bennett. Although it wasn't released until 10 years later, this amalgam of tape cut ups, sludge and noise make for a compelling time capsule on the various extremes of sonic exploration that were to come from all three. As you might well expect, there are additional tracks included here you would never have heard before, making this one for long time fans as well as those just beginning their NWW journey.

Review: With one foot in a kind of ancient religious dance, and another deep in the midst of a 21st Century music studio packed with the kit that makes things sound great, Parisian sonic explorer Dang-Khoa Chau, AKA DK, breaks from releasing on some of electronic music's most revered and respected contemporary labels (L.I.E.S., Second Circle, 12th Isle) for an outing entirely under his own spell.

Taking inspiration from his South East Asian heritage, this is hypnotic stuff that would sound equally at home in a gong bath as it would on some of the more experimental, worldly-travelled dance floors. From the ear worm loops and workshop percussion of 'Metal Frames', to the meditative 'Enlightenment Process', it's an incredibly coherent whole, but broken down into separate parts you have seven tracks that are equally strong on their own.

Review: Cry Sugar is the all-new album from long-time Warp mainstay Hudson Mohawke. It is yet another powerful statement that looks to mix the profane with the spiritual across some thrilling club tunes. The record is said to be inspired by "90s John Williams, film scores and spectacular soundtracks" and runs a gamut of emotions with plenty of dance floor euphoria served up in an array of innovative rhythms. HudMo himself says it is "a demented OST to score the twilight of our cultural meltdown." We say - we love it.

Review: Formed around Peter Kember, AKA Sonic Boom and former Spacemen 3 type, Experimental Audio Research certainly lives up to its name. A daring, high concept music collective that has, at times, featured names including Kevin Martin, Eddie Prevost, and My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields, sometime collabs boast names such as Bowery Electric's Lawrence Chandler and the legendary Delia Derbyshire.

In 1996, the group released Beyond the Pale, a collection of sounds that are largely constructed through post feedback and electronic boundary stretching. Ambient in the truest, most spatial and space-y sense, what's here is truly transportive stuff capable of taking you to an entirely different realm. Packing depth, resonance, and most significantly, power, it's a landmark in the real sense of the word.

Review: Bay Area dub techno titan Bvdub takes things in a monolithic direction on this latest ambient album for Joachim Speith's Affin LTD label. Bvdub is of course more known for his beatless drone works these days than his techno output, but you can still hear the sense of melancholic regalia of his earlier work in these voluminous pieces, one a side across a generously apportioned double pack. These long form pieces swirl and swim with thick layers of reverb and processing, but there's also space for more pronounced elements - take the plaintive piano on 'Twelve Years Apart', for example. Epic ambience abounds across this refined addition to the canon of a prolific artist.

Review: Space is the place - at least, it's the place uppermost in the mind of Indianapolis-based label Past Inside The Present founder zake and his sonic partner Ossa - location given as the north pole according to his Twitter - as they embark on collaborative 10 tracks. The fact that that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration - NASA to you and me - has supplied them with celestial sound emissions for the tracks is a bonus. But ultimately, the real headline factor once it's actually on your turntable is the vivid atmospheres and gorgeous textures that the pair are capable of generating. The album's closer, 'Metric Expansion', is a tremulous glory, peaking and slipping away like rays of sunlight. 'Space & Time', meanwhile, is a simple, gliding analogue delight, and 'Drifting' proves you can carve imperceptible beauty from a couple of well-crafted chords.

Review: One of our favourite labels here at Juno HQ if only because of its superb name. We Release Whatever The Fuck We Want Records serves up another super reissue here, this time of the hugely sought after Haruomi Hosono-produced Interior self-titled debut. It first came in 1982 and finds Daisuke Hinata, Eiki Nonaka, Mitsuru Sawamura, and Tsukasa Betto all produced by Mello Magic Orchestra. It's a blend of feel good ambient, synth pop and gentle electronic minimalism designed for you to sink in deep.

Review: Exploring electroacoustic techniques via piano, guitar, voice, and synthesizer, Istanbul-based composer, performer, and DJ Eylul Deniz makes her debut for the Dark Entries label under the Sunfear project name. The results fall somewhere between ambient, jazz, and experimental music with the addition of het haunting voice adding to the feeling of traditional songwriting being subverted and abstracted. Always taking unexpected turns, the title track even dipping into slow motion hip-hop beats, this Is a sometimes dark, sometimes uplifting exploration into totally original and highly memorable new territory.

Review: The final part of Dark Entries' long-running series of archival Patrick Cowley releases showcases tracks originally recorded for Afternooners, a late '70s gay porn film by director John Coletti. As with previous Cowley releases on Dark Entries, the double album also contains previously unheard material rediscovered from the Fox Studio archives. It's another essential collection of atmospheric synthesizer music in the producer's distinctive style, all told, with tracks ranging from the whistling cheeriness of "Hot Beach" and the sparkling, cowbell-laden throb of "One Hot Afternoon" to the dubbed-out, semi-ambient dreaminess of "Bore & Stroke" and the humid, upbeat "Jungle Orchid".

Review: 'Tapis Roulannt' jumps from the starting blocks as it means to go on, it's a high tempo assault that opts for a subtly lo-fi polish, rendering it less savagely assaulting than it might have been and packing a surprising level of funk thanks to that retro synth refrain and them fidgety high hats.

On the other side we've got 'Casiotone Nails', which drops the energy level down a little in the immediate but is definitely a case of slowly consuming you - guaranteeing that by the end of the track the floor is going to be going off, relentless chug and descending, off-tone hook luring us ever closer to some pretty intense, but not hard, places.

Review: Born in Girona, Spain and based in Berlin since 2019, Alex Busse' Santacruz's Ameeva project previously came to life on the Lowless music label in 2020 and the album 'Fractura del SueNo'. His live set for the 9128 Birthday event took these experimental electronics to a deeper, more personal level, weaving friends' samples and conversations into a rich tapestry of drone and field recordings, creating an immersive and enveloping 40-minute narrative. That's been captured here by the 9128 label, which aims to document significant live performances by artists that previously performed on the 9128.live platform, with results that are imaginative and impressionist, like clouds of synths and other soundscapes with the serene relentlessness and sense of purpose as molten lava moving down the mountainside.

Review: Known for his work with natural sound-making things, such as water, wood, and stones, Japanese composer Yoshiaki Ochi's Natural Sonic is a pretty defining chapter in the artist's career, given it conjures feelings of being in the great outdoors, surrounded by nature's wonder and mystery, within about two seconds of pressing play on delicate percussive opener, 'Dawning'.

From there that imagery only grows more vivid. 'Woods From The Sea', for example, actually sounds like you're hauled up on a beach tapping out rhythms with timber washed up from some shipwreck or other. 'Ear Dreamin'' entices with its trickles and chimes, like exploring some hidden cave or thick rainforest. 'Madal Sonic' is pure tribal stuff. Like an enthralling fantasy, with the narrative open for your to write, this is a deep and truly immersive joy.

Review: Intended as a series of companion pieces to accompany the artist's tenth album 'Solastalgia', 'Agitas Al Sol' is Rafael Anton Irisarri's latest statement of wonder in drone, released three years later. Whereas the 2019 album was like gazing in awe at a slow-motion avalanche hurtling towards us, this follow-up is like surveying the aftermath of said avalanche in real time, allowing for a more tactile submergence in texture, with less drone resounding. Yet another brooding, crackly, tape-loopy mantra on eco-anxiety from the American producer and engineer.

Review: Cherrystones returns with the second of the "Aged" EPs for Emotional Response. Time propels and so does sound, thus orbiting nuances and motion leads us here, to present whatever maybe or interpreted as. Since the acclaimed Aged Of Bronze EP a symbiotic progress of craft arrives in the aptly titled Aged Of Silver. Again each track is like a coded syntax, unlocking the puzzle to aid a listeners journey and experience, building blocks to a utopian scape in form without form notes and pictures living and residing in the dimensions.

Never pandering to trends, his art based on immediacy and the moment, no disposable sub genres that fade as fast as they emerge, transposing and emitting heard and unheard a way to communicate with himself and those that identify.

A capsule of touched emotions bearing gifts for those in the present and wishing to be present, a key with keys analogue for Silver Tongues and Brass monkeys living in the shadow of a Scorpian's Tail.

Review: There's an awful lot going on here, and as such plenty to talk about. Alternative Funk: Volume 1 is both a compilation and reissue, with the original outing landing on cassette in the early-1980s on VP231, a label set up by Pacific 231, AKA Pierre Jolivet. The albums were the brainchild of Axel Kyrou and Francis Man, founders of the legendary Vox Populi!, and their aim was to showcase far out sounds, at least som of which were their own.

What we have in the modern iteration is a snapshot of that expansive and often hallucinatory aural odyssey, with seminal and lesser known artists resting side-by-side on the track list. Stylistically broad, running the gamut from dub percussion to cold wave and industrial, it's yet more evidence of just how fertile a decade the 80s were.

Review: The guaranteed quality stamp of Low Company will be much-missed when it's gone, and they present the debut solo album by Yuta Matsumura as one of their final releases before calling time. It's as strikingly original and easy to love as you might hope, centered around piano, bass and flute, and with a warm dub embellishment filling in the gaps. At times you can hear the avant-pop 80s stylings of Talk Talk, The The et al hovering around the edges of these songs, in which Matsumura pointedly moved away from the guitar-oriented work of his bands Low Life, M.O.B and Orion. It's slightly dreamy, but also rather acerbic in its tone, certainly not akin to most of the pop readily associated with Japan. It's intimate and fragile like a bedroom production, but sounds too vivid to be minimal wave, and it might just be one of the best records you hear this year.

Review: Weird, enigmatic, and unarguably wonderful would be three ways to describe the names that have been brought together on this reissue of part of a compilation series that first landed on cassette via the VP231 imprint as the 1980s got into gear. A collector's item in the truest sense, Alternative Funk Vol.2 is a strange yet recognisable beast, with so much here being almost familiar but alien at the same time.

Over the course of the track list, then, you'll find proto-e-funk (Dee Nasty's 'Orientic Groove'), block party electro hip hop ('Asphalt Zombie' by Scoop!), broken, guitar-lick-heavy funk that's almost definitely been sampled for pop and house mash ups, only set to the vocals of a militant German sex droid ('Der Sound Kosten' by Melsjest), and spoken word poetry worthy of Hunter S. Thompson layered over driving breaks (Randall Kenney's 'Norma Jones'), alongside a host of even trippier, experimental and abstract stuff.

Review: Linea Aspera is the London duo of Ryan Ambridge (Synths/Programming) and Alison Lewis (Vocals/Synths). They began the project in November 2011, technically drawing inspiration from electronic music from the early 1980s. Within the duo, Alison writes and performs all vocal elements, while Ryan is responsible for the writing and performing of the electronics, as well as recording and mixing of the final recordings. For their debut album they utilized small, simple analog synthesizer set up: Roland SH-09, Roland Juno 6, Vermona DRM MKiii, Korg Poly 800 and Analogue Solutions Semblance. Linea Aspera's sound includes clear influences from early electronic body music, classic synth-pop and, in some instances, industrial and noise. Lyrically the band incorporates the sciences of osteology, neuroscience, and anthropology weaving a new medical language around themes of desire, despair and renewal. Linea Aspera serve up an icebox of dark doom riding on Alison's powerful vocals with a soft but sharp touch.

Review: Tenka aka Meitei and Berlin-based, Japanese scent designer, Ryoko have combined to make a scent that complements this new album from Tenka. It is well worth finding it if you can. The album itself is his first since his trilogy series and once again establishes him as a leading voice in the contemporary electronic scene of Japan. Hydration finds him looking to "work without the boundaries of theme, storytelling or audience expectations" and spent many hours in nearby mountain forests to find inspiration. That plays out with colour, sound, smell, humidity, touch, atmosphere and taste all colouring the grooves.

Review: During the 2000s, Christian Fennesz was on an astonishing run of form, creating and perfecting a trademark sound where fractured shards of heavily processed sound and distant field recordings cloaked slowly evolving ambient chords and melodies - many created using heavily effects laden guitars - in a weightless, mood-enhancing sound soup. Every one of the albums he released in this period are worth a listen, but 2008's Black Sea - which has finally been reissued on vinyl in freshly remastered form - is undoubtedly one of the most accessible and intoxicating, if only for the subtle exoticism and deft nods to Balkan and Turkish musical culture hidden amongst the waves of enveloping sound. It's an ambient masterpiece all told, and one that should be in every horizontal music lover's collection.

Review: Ambient and neo-classical pioneer Nils Frahm's Music For Animals is, amazingly for someone as prolific as he, his first fresh studio material since 2018's All Melody and 2019's associated All Encores. It is also his first work on the new label he has co-founded with his manager and it plays out over three immersive hours that are quite different to his previous work. It doesn't make use of his famous piano skills but is a mediative and spacious record that allows room to think. Despite the length of it, this is a record worth giving your full attention.

Review: Initially out as a cassette back in 2016, the Bblisss' label opening release - Bblisss - flew out of our charts the minute it landed and has since then been a golden chalice for many contemporary ambient lovers. Its previously unknown crew of artists have nailed a formula, it seems; one that successfully blends the very best and most relevant sounds from ambient, new age and...the tropical end of the percussive domain. The air is hazy and mood is dreamy, with tunes from the likes of Pendant, DJ Paradise and Enamel all providing us with an ethereal atmosphere that goes way beyond one-note drones. This is deeply rich electronic music with a heart and soul. Just the way we like it. Be quick as these will NOT hang around for long...

Review: The Midnight's latest Heroes is a stark display of the musical evolution of the New York duo. A band that started as a synth heavy proposition, extensive touring across the globe (including a headline at London's Brixton Academy) and the desire not to repeat themselves in creative terms has led to the bigger vision and wider appeal of what their label calls "fully-realised, arena-worthy songs".
Heroes is the final part in a trilogy of albums that started with 2018's Kids, followed in 2020 by Monsters. "For me, Kids is self-knowledge, Monsters is self-love, and then Heroes is empathy," said singer Tyler Lyle. "I got into depth psychology and this idea of aetiology, the way a human forms. The world doesn't get better but we do. We grow into ourselves. We grow into our voice."
Still, Heroes remains definitely more a case of evolution than revolution - there's still more than a hint of the gorgeous synth sounds in evidence, but with a lyrical maturity and smartness that gives even its most pop moments an unexpected twist.

Review: Spanish label Italo Moderni is committed to keeping the culture of italo disco alive with help from sympathetic contemporary artists. As well as solo releases from the likes of Antoni Maiovvi and Dim Garden, the label's Modernation compilations are a great primer on who's doing cool things with the iconic club style. From Timothy J Fairplay to Alessandro Adriani, the style is quite varied on Modernation Vol 4, and in fact there are moments where it veers towards EBM and industrial as much as italo, but that's fine by us. Listen to Chino ripping it up on 'Shoplifters' or the seething pressure of Chupacabras' 'Planning Stages' and try telling us this isn't harder than your average Italo joint.