Back in stock: Electro

Review: The present face of IDM is here heard occupied by dream duo D'Arcangelo and Karsten Plum, whose latest joint effort for Acid Avengers bowls us over with its acid tweezings, pangs, twingings, twangs, thrums and flits-past. The pH scale skyrockets to the point of insanity on Pflum's side, with 'Hornfish Acid' and 'Aroe Acid' jointly corroding the full length of the Earth's core with their snippy but incisive sizzles and 'ows, until we reach a forbidden underworld uncannily reminiscent of Oz - except the faces of the protagonists are horribly twisted into a yellow, illegal-raved rictuses. D'Arcangelo's 'Gawain' does equally as much with its eerie sprung-verbed chroma-chords and muted but moving melodies; so too does 'Walker Two' raise the tempo to silly speeds, coming as a veritable velociraptor of Druqks-y breaks and drill bits, all let loose from the barrel at a surely illegal rate of fire.

Review: It's been a while since we've heard from Moroccan breakbeat favourite and Convergence Records founder Kosh, but he's back with a bang on none other than everybody's favourite Atlantean, underwater-breathing, acid trance house everything kru - Kalahari Oyster Cult. 'The Chopper' EP spans everything from Drexciyan kitsch-lectro to to floaty tech house trance to sillily verbatim breakbeat, ending on a hilarious high note with the timestretching, disc-scratching, stadium-ready rave rampage 'Come On'.

Review: Poetic Hovering Synth Tinkerer.

Review: It's rather hard to nail the Halloween dance vibe and yet also keep things light and jumpy, but the latest 'Out Of The Crypt' V/A compilation by the sweet folks over at Spooky Wooky have done just that. In fact, they're an entire label dedicated to the cartoon vampire-batty, kitsch smiling pumpkinned, brains-starved nuts-and-bolts-Frankenstein'ed theme: the propulsive monster-mashes therein are just as wicked and weird, with opener 'Je Suis Dans La Nuit' deploying reflective eskimo synths and crepuscular bass progressions; Phase O'Matic's 'Diskotech' making use of raw, flitty bleep leads and dead-of-night screams; and Lazer Man's 'Ozonar 12' opting for hollowed-out dub techno stabs and slinky minimal movements down below.