Back in stock: Balearic/Downtempo

Review: Stockholm-based multi-instrumentalist and composer Art Longo impresses here with Echowah Island, a new album sure to wind its way into your affections. It was crafted over years in his home studio and is "psychotropical pop" drawing deep inspiration from late 80s music and dub. The album's lush soundscape evokes orange sunsets and ocean breezes and is layered with spring reverb, space echo and wah-wah effects that smooth out the edges as the steady pulse of vintage drum machines moves things on down low. A standout feature is Claudio Jonas, whose ethereal vocals recall classic French femme fatale singers of the 60s. Her poetic, kaleidoscopic lyrics add to a nostalgic dream world that gently bends reality and makes his both escapist and thought-provoking.

Review: Treading an eclectic path through a twenty year career that's taken in everything from Detroit techno to vintage French ye-ye, from breakbeat-driven floor-fillers to krautrock epiphanies, David Holmes has made his name predominantly as an exemplary crate-digger and aesthete, whether soundtracking Steven Soderbergh movies or dishing our albums of his own. Thus, it comes as no surprise that this compilation - marking something of a personal journey for Holmes - is reflective of his status as an exemplary man of taste. Whether dispensing classics by the likes of David Crosby or Buddy Holly, unreleased original solo material or killer obscurities from everyone from modular synthesis cultist Keith Fullerton Whitman to Hollywood legend Jeff Bridges, this stylish nocturnal travelogue puts the listener resolutely in safe hands.

Review: Sudden Records debut Les Hommes' latest LP Si Cosi, describing the record as a set of "pulsar-driven groovetronics, folky modalisms in waltz time; dreamvitations to the cine-lounge." The three piece combo known as The Men have been an active force on the easygoing London underground, having first made their debut in a tiny club in Soho in 1994. They've since occupied the proscenium of lounge and club, relaxedly dropping three LPs and four EPs since then. This fourth LP brings the latest face of lounge music to the fore, with a set of eleven more careful but languorous compositions. Deploying instrumentation from Lowrey organ to bass clarinet to electric piano, the sensibility throughout is one of disbarred ease, best felt on the most muted among the cuts, such as the cricket-chirping modal jazzer 'Veronique'.

Review: **Repress** The Music From Memory label was launched by Redlight Records founders Tako Reyenga, Abel Nagenast and Jamie Tiller earlier this year, sporting a proud mantra of "giving overlooked and unreleased music that we love a second chance". The focus of attention for Music Of Memory's second release falls on the works of celebrated ambient composer Gigi Masin. Born in Venice, Masin's work has been sampled by the likes of Bjork and To Rococco Rot and his albums attract feverish acclaim, with Wind, Masin's privately pressed debut LP a desired rarity for the only the most well-heeled of second hand collectors. It's from this album and a selection of Masin's other released works that Music From Memory draw from for this stunningly meditative double LP retrospective Talk To The Sea, which also includes a healthy amount of unreleased material.

Review: Joe Mount of lovable scuzz pop outfit Metronomy mans the latest volume in the long running Late Night Tales, a series who always seem to get the best results out of an unexpected cast of participants (Belle & Sebastien, MGMT, Trentemoeller and Midlake being recent inductees). It's hard not to get sucked in from the sugar sweet opening of Outkast's "Prototype", which is the first of several tracks that demonstrates Mount has a penchant for slow bumping R&B and outsider hip-hop with Tweet, Sa Ra and a Dr Octagon classic also appearing. A typically far reaching approach to genres applies here with the cosmic jazz of Chic Corea happily mingling with Autechre and Two Lone Swordsmen, and American synth oddities Geneva Jacuzzi and Appaloosa mingling for attention with The Alan Parsons Project and Herman Dune. The de-rigueur cover version arrives with a Metronomy rendition of Jean-Michel Jarre's "Hypnose" while Paul Morley ends the selection with a spoken word piece. This vinyl edition has 18 of the tracks spread separately across two plates as well as the mixed CD and a booklet!

Review: The late great Muslimgauze is a cult figure when it comes to experimental electronic music. He made several revered records that have been reissued since his death and helped to reassert his status. Maroon is a work that like much of his output brings space, colour, depth, and illusion to sound. It is densely layered and textured and finds Bryn Jones, the Mancunian behind Muslimgauze, assaulting all the senses. From the rusty sounds and smeared voices of 'Thimble Cups Of Urdu' to the dense collage of drones, tin pot hits and obscured mutterings of 'Harem Of Dogs' this is a brilliantly idiosyncratic work.

Review: The latest missive in the evocative and open-minded Late Night Tales series comes from Agnes Obel, a Danish singer/songwriter whose fragile, pastoral songs seemingly join the dots between traditional folk music, neo-classical and early music. Fittingly, Obel's selections, while more diverse than many may have expected - see the soulful reggae throb of Nora Dean, the creepy jazz of Yello's "Great Mission" and the whispered synth-pop shuffle of Lena Platanos - are every bit as atmospheric and ethereal as her own work. It helps that she's included several of her own compositions, alongside inspired cuts that touch on Berlin School ambient, hazy easy listening, neo-classical, psychedelia, lo-fi art rock and, of course, folk.

Review: British producer Joe Thornalley aka Vegyn made his name working with the likes of Frank Ocean and Travis Scott. This project is something quite different - a rework of the iconic French duo Air's seminal downtempo album Moon Safari. He collides its blessed out and beauty Balearic nostalgia with new studio techniques and a deft atmospheric and experimental touch so that tracks like 'Sexy Boy' and 'La Femme d'Argent' retain their lush, ambient roots but evolve with newly textured beats and modern flair. This remix LP isn't about revisiting the past; it's about reshaping it, and Vegyn's vision works as both a tribute and a bold reinterpretation for a new generation.