Experimental/Electronic charts

Review: Burnski's Instinct alias has given rise to two full-length albums and a swathe of EPs in just the past two years alone, and now he's heralding spring with the launch of a new label, Abyla, and his most delicate, ambient record to date. Happening is a far cry from what you might know of Burnski or indeed the Instinct project overall, focusing as it does on orchestral ambience with a preference for plaintive piano lines at the front of the mix and ample drone matter backing it up. These short vignettes glide between moods, hovering in moments of tender minimalism or bursting with effervescence depending on the situation.

Review: On their third LP, British-Singaporean singer-songwriter Nat Cmiel is moving in a new direction - not only with a move from Bayonet Records to Ninja Tune, but also favouring a guitar-led indie rock sound, a departure from the critically acclaimed 'Serotonin II' and Danny L Harle produced 'Glitch Princess'. Lead single 'sulky baby' is a bright affair, distorted guitars circling Yeule's brand of gloomy lyrics sang with a smile. 'dazies' gets off the mark with a killer electric guitar lead, giving way to a plucked ambience with a computerised Nat ringing off a word association of a person kicked to the curb. When Kin Leonn isn't working their production magic, Yeule's self-production breaks the space. 'fish in the pool' is an ambient piano interlude with light-as-a-feather vocal adlibs, something that wouldn't be out of place in a Studio Ghibli production.

Review: In line with the timely reappraisal of all things R&S related, the resurgent Apollo have seen the opportunity to bring one of their most celebrated records back for another round. Aphex Twin's ambient recordings mature magnificently with age, sounding ever richer and more emotive as the rest of electronic music continues to play catch up all around. From the gentle breakbeats of "Xtal" to the aquatic techno lure of "Tha", the airy rave of "Pulsewidth" to the heartwrenching composition of "Ageispolis", every track is a perennial example of how far ambient techno could reach even back then. It's just that no-one quite had the arm-span of Richard D. James.

Review: Emotional Response has described soFa's fourth compilation for the label as "internationalism for the adventurous DJ", full of club music for the open-minded. It's basically an eclectic, esoteric musical travelogue that serves of intriguing, entertaining and admirable electronic music for those of a leftfield persuasion. There's much to enjoy, from the undulating melodies, off-kilter beats and mind-soothing chords of Infuso Giallo's 'Torus', and the moody techno-not-techno wave minimalism of Puma & The Dolphin ('Grass Drum'), to the analogue-heavy cold-wave dystopia of Houschyar ('Intercontinental'), the dark ambient techno of Lamusa II ('Artificial') and the tribal tinged electronic psychedelia of Bolva ('Rite II').

Review: Widely regarded as Boards of Canada's finest hour, Music Has The Right To Children finds itself the subject of a well-deserved 2LP gatefold reissue from Warp Records. One of the most defining records of what was known for better or worse as IDM still sounds as timeless as it did in 1998, as the library tones of "Wildlife Analysis", thick downtempo rhythms of "Roygbiv" and out of focus melodies of "Olson" prove. Essential!

Review: Twinkle3 are a trio made up of accomplished flautist Clive Bell and electronic experimenters David Ross and Richard Scott. Their latest project welcomes the legendary David Sylvian into the mix alongside Kazuko Hohki, who was in 80s synth pop oddity Frank Chickens amongst other projects. Their collective venture for Cortizona treads predictably unpredictable territory, where minimalism, sound design and free improvisation merge into a meditative, distinctive whole. The woodwind and electronics intertwine in sublime fashion, resulting in a compelling trip for anyone who appreciates delicacy and risk in their leftfield electronica.

Review: Originally released digitally in 2013, Pink collated a series of 12" releases from Kieran Hebden issued over an 18 month period on his Text label. Hebden and record club and subscription service Vinyl Me, Please have teamed up to give Pink a double vinyl release for any Four Tet fans that weren't quick enough to nab those 12"s at the time. There is plenty of classic Four Tet to be had here too. "Jupiters" experiments with swung garage beats in an unmistakably UK Bass style, while "128 Harps" is a whipcrack MPC workout given his light melodic touch and "Peace On Earth" is a beatless 11 minutes of analogue kosmische. But it's the centrepiece of Hebden's Fabriclive mix, the brilliantly moody "Pyramid", and the loose limbed jazz-house of "Pinnacles" that really set this album apart from his other long-playing efforts, two examples of timeless dance music which demonstrate why after nearly 15 years in the game Hebden is only improving with age.

Review: Emotional Response bring you some truly healing sounds from Polish producer Bartosz Kruczynski, who first teamed up with the label as The Phantom for the first round of the Schleissen series back in 2015. He's since delivered a debut album to Growing Bin and released as Earth Trax on Rhythm Section and others. The mood across this collection of pieces produced for Polish studio TVP Culture opens up a rich seam of inspiration around the ambient end of Kruczynski's work through short pieces rich in sonorous delights. From fluttering fourth world-isms to hazy dub soundscapes, this is pure listening pleasure from start to finish.

Review: Canadian composer Mort Garson enjoyed an eclectic career, though in electronic music circles he's most celebrated for a string of experimental electronic albums he produced using early Moog synthesizers. "Mother Earth's Plantasia" is a bizarre but brilliant beast: a 1976 set that was designed to be played to plants to help them grow (really) and was given away free at a Los Angeles garden store. As this first ever reissue proves it remains a dizzyingly far-sighted set. Sometimes symphonic, occasionally spacey and always intoxicating, much of the material is far quirkier than contemporaneous synthesizer-fired sets. Highlights include the pulsing ambient spaciousness of "Ode To An African Violet", the twinkling, cascading beauty of "Rhapsody In Green" and the jaunty cheeriness of "You Don't Have To Walk a Begonia".

Review: French outfit Chateau Flight have spent two years in the studio making music, playing around and experimenting and now the fruits of that work are presented on this new album La Folie Studio. It is full of the sound of analogue machines conversing and the artists themselves speaking through their darkened basslines or eerie pads. Occult worlds are crafted, ambient soundscapes are cooked up and leftfield cosmic explorations occur throughout a journeying album full of a wide range of emotions. This lovely record features guests on the odd track such as Johnny Nash on guitar, Cosmic Neman mumbling on 'Mange', John Cravache playing 'his special organ" and Bony Bikaye singing on 'Esika Molimo Ezali'. It's an occult world of left of centre sound that will keep you coming back for more.

Review: Finally, the debut Bochum Welt album Module 2 has been reissued after an initial run on Rephlex. Bochum Welt (Gianluigi Di Costanzo) has just recently celebrated 30 years of releasing music. His brand of IDM, electro and techno has been often copied but never equaled. His futuristic music seems to always be forward thinking and ultimately, timeless sounding. This edition is on matching green vinyl and includes all the classic material of the first release. Fans of AFX, Squarepusher and Cylob are sure to be aware of Bochum Welt. But for those who aren't....

Review: Of all the artists past and present who claim to let their music do their talking for them, Burial is one of the elite band of whom this truly is the case. In fact, so reluctant is he to engage with the cult-of-personality hoopla that surrounds almost every modern producer and musician of merit, that he remains a genuine recluse; he has never appeared live, only one obliquely-angled publicity photograph is known to exist, and the number of interviews he has given can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Yet despite this, his music speaks loud and wide, and the world has been listening ever since his 'South London Boroughs' EP debut on Hyperdub in March 2005. His eponymous album, which began life as a low-key release in May 2006, is now widely regarded as the benchmark release of the ever-widening dubstep genre, picking up unanimous critical acclaim along the way, and ending the year heavily featured in many 'best of' polls. Now Burial returns with 'Untrue', a new record of weird soul music, which lovingly processes spectral female voices into vaporised R&B and smudged 2step garage. Vocal lines are blurred, smeared, pitched up pitched down and pitch bent until their content is cast adrift from their original context and they whisper their saccharin sweet nothings into the void. The album continues with the debut's crackle-drenched yearning and bustling syncopations, haunted by the ghosts of rave, but also reveals some new Burial treats with a more glowing, upbeat energy. Kicking off with the skittering 2step syncopations and vocal science of 'Archangel', 'Near Dark' and 'Ghost Hardware', before long it descends into a space of radiant divas and ambience. Where 'Burial' first was humid, suffocating and unrelentingly sad, 'Untrue' is less sunless. Many of the tracks are so sweet, they become toxic, underscored by the almost geological rumbles of growling basslines. Unlike the overpoweringly melancholic prevailing mood of before, Burial's sound is now better defined as a downcast euphoria typified by the epic, muted optimism of the album's last track 'Raver'. Forget central heating the radioactivity of this album is all that you'll need to keep you warm this winter. 'Untrue' is available as full 13 track digipack CD, including recent underground hit 'Ghost Hardware', and 9 track DJ friendly double vinyl set, from which some of the beatless pieces have been edited.

Review: The legendary Future Sound Of London have finally started dropping their Environments series on vinyl format, which will no doubt please the countless numbers of FSOL junkies out there! These sessions, the present title being the penultimate in a series of five, have been long sought after and they have been pivotal in shaping the sound of today's electronic dance music. Fifteen tracks in total here and the interesting thing about this album is the fact that it can be heard either as single tracks or as one developing and morphing wall of sound. All but one of these tracks, "Murmurations", are from way back and haven't seen the light of day, so get listening and indulge yourself in some pioneering sounds!

Review: Thankfully, Richard D. James has decided to finally release at least some of the output that he's been banging on about since mid-2000s. In a number of interviews, the might Aphex Twin hinted that he has vast artilleries of tracks stacked up and unreleased, probably more on purpose than out of laziness...or maybe not. What we do know is that AFX is reborn after the string of acid 12"s released about 10 years ago on Rephlex, that saw the alias become one of the most popular of James' alter egos. Orphaned Deejay Selek is a collection of tunes that contain all of the Twin's magic and unpredictably, but that also cut straight to the point and head to the middle of the dance floor. This is banging brain dynamite coated in the man's iconic style and flair. Welcome back AFX, and many hats off to Warp for making it happen.

Review: When it comes to a reissue such as this it can't be understated just how arresting the work of Boards of Canada can be in the right situation. This EP, that came to light in between Music Has The Right To Children and Geogaddi, represents the enigmatic duo at their most powerful, channeling their energy into four long-form tracks that draw on all of their combined strengths. "Kid For Today" is haunting and dark but utterly heartbreaking, whilst "Amo Bishop Roden" heads into more mysterious territory. "In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country" is eerie in its titular invitation to join a cult, and "Zoetrope" tips its hat to Terry Riley et al in its looping phrases, but really there's no describing the magnificence of these gems, pleasingly reissued on vinyl to beat the Discogs chancers.

Review: Uganda keeps on giving, with the country currently at the forefront of sub-Saharan Africa's electronic underground: a fertile corner of the world in terms of emerging and established talent. Enter Hibotep, a Kampala-based rising star who was born and raised in Ethiopia but grew up in Somalia. Joining her on this EP, another one to know from the Ugandan capital, Hibo Elmi, a DJ, filmmaker, fashion designer, installation artist, rapper and studio head considered to be one of the most important female dance music makers on the continent right now. Running the gamut from 'Amber''s dark, hypnotising dub-hop moves, through 'Ebwino's sparse, weightless tones, which eventually give way to playful stepping rhythm beneath the relentless microphone skills of MC Will'stone, and 'Saffron' with its slow mo, exotic shuffle, if those responsible for this EP themselves reflect the incredible diversity of the city's scene, the sounds do the same.

Review: 
After his surprise drop with music writer and producer Blackdown on the Keysound label last month, the enigmatic Burial is now back with a fresh new EP all of his own. It comes on his longtime home of Hyperdub and features two more of his deft designed, ghostly deep dubstep post-nightbus joints. 'Chemz' is a strict raver filled with rushed up sounds, plenty of dance floor love and big hooks that is many different tracks, moods and vibes all rolled into one. As always, these Burial sounds look back to go forwards and do so in thrilling fashion.

Review: Following on from last year's impressive Redlight debut, Scott Hess is back on his Adeen label with another selection of warm and inventive house cuts splashed with colour and analogue wobbles precision-engineered to catch your ear. Lead track 'Sirius City' leans on a harmonically rich lead line and plenty of off-kilter wriggles to appeal to those who want some cheekiness in their tunes. 'UFO' sports a tasteful acid tweak running in between plush pads and snappy drums, while 'Call Me, Acid' plays around with telephone tropes to make a bleepy jam that will have the ID requests flying in. 'Stars' offers something sweeter to complete the set, spacing out the beats to leave the synths plenty of room to cavort around a celestial name-checking session for deep house dreamers.

Review: RECOMMENDED
The re-discovery and re-appraisal of Beverly Glenn-Copeland's work is one of the more surprising outcomes of the pandemic's great pause, which for some people at least meant having more time to dive into the archives of cultural history, from music to literature to movies. Not that the spotlight isn't wholly deserving. As this 1986 album shows, the artist was well ahead of their time, with this strange, heady brew of electronic exoticism, experimental ambient and percussive poetry easy to mistake for a contemporary record.

Glenn-Copeland's own story is also a pretty interesting one. Now 76 years old, the maestro spent years identifying as a lesbian woman, before investigations in gender discourse led to the revelation that a transgender man was a more comfortable identity for the music maker, who also lays claim to a catalogue of kids' TV scores, including Sesame Street and Shiny Time Station.

Review: If you were judging Kieran Hebden's 11th Four Tet studio album merely on the way it's presented, you'd immediately think he'd spent the last two years immersed in early '90s ambient house albums. While it's unlikely he's done that, it's fair to say that New Energy does owe a debt to classic electronica sets from that period. For all the exotic instrumentation and subtle nods to post-dubstep "aquacrunk" experimentalism and chiming, head-in-the-clouds sunrise house, the album feels like a relic of a lost era. That's not meant as a criticism - New Energy is superb - but it is true that his choice of neo-classical strings, gentle new age melodies, sweeping synthesizer chords and disconnected vocal samples would not sound out of place on a Global Communication album.

Review: Secret Circuit's Eddie Ruscha and Rub N Tug's Thomas Bullock joined forces as Laughing Light Of Plenty for an EP back in 2008, and followed it up with an album on Whatever We Want Records in 2010 which largely got lost in a warehouse stock malfunction. Now Emotional Response are doing the right thing and giving the record a second airing under the duo's alternative alias The Naturals, and it's not hard to see why they wanted to do the reissue. Loose and funky, but also deliriously psychedelic and indebted to the 1970s golden era of songwriting, this is a quintessential Emotional record if ever we heard one.

Review: Here's something to stir the hearts of all fans of Mika Vainio and Ilpo Vaisanen's Panasonic/Pansonic project: a trio of long-lost remixes that were created, but for some reason never released, way back in 1996. Side A boasts an epic revision from long-serving Newcastle experimentalists Zoviet France, who turn an untitled Panasonic production into a ghostly trip through hypnotic, minimalist techno territory - all unearthly aural textures, drifting synth sounds and hazy, locked-in drums. Over on side B there's a pair of rare remix outings from the sadly departed Bryn Jones AKA Muslimgauze. He first wraps vocal sounds and twisted electronics around a raw analogue techno groove, before offering up one of his impeccable experimental ambient dub workouts. Of the two, this is undoubtedly the most mesmerising.

Review: Back in 2018 Leaving Records first released this low key gem from Sam Gendel and Sam Wilkes, which blended the natural lull of live saxophone and bass guitar with considered FX processing to create some spellbinding grooves somewhere on the outer periphery of soul jazz. It's totally fresh, totally chill, and bursting with soul thanks to the impeccable playing from Gendel and Wilkes. It's gone through a number of iterations including previous tape issues and a white label private press run of 50, and now it's finally getting a repress so the latecomers can cop a wax edition and shirk the scalpers. Music this warm and fuzzy deserves to be heard on wax.

Review: Back in 2016, legendary Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen approached techno pioneer Jeff Mills with the idea of working together. A series of live gigs and off-the-radar studio sessions followed, with the first fruits of their joint efforts finally appearing on this must-have 10". As you'd expect, the duo's collaborative work combines Allen's traditional Nigerian polyrhythms, traditional Afrobeat instrumentation, and the far-sighted, sci-fi inspired electronic futurism that has always marked out Mills' work. The result is a quartet of cuts that could arguably be described as retro-futurist Afro-tech - all delay-laden beats, basslines and organs subtly sparring with gentle acid lines, Motor City electronics, beguiling deep space textures and shimmering, 31st century motifs. It's arguably Allen's stylistic contributions that dominate, but that's no bad thing.

Review: This one has been a very long time coming indeed. Work on Hapticality began, whether Phataphysical really knew it or not, back in 2013, with tracks crafted between then and 2021. Not that you'd necessarily guess this was an eight year writing process, such is the coherency between the pieces, and the overall sense of being one complete work.

A deep dive to say the least, perhaps what's most astounding is the tangible atmosphere that each track creates individually, all of which contributes to a wider feeling. Hardly easy to achieve, die-hard fans of the ambient outfit, who claim so much more than mere reverence in the scene, will likely contest that point, and argue that they would expect nothing less from these masters of dream-like electronic adventures.

Review: Finnish studio wonder Sasu Ripatti returns under his Vladislav Delay moniker, arguably both his most recognised and obscure, universally adored and specialist. Opening on the logically titled and wholly immersive 'Track 1', these tunes are as rich as they are steely, combining white noise, distortion, and the clanging of surface on surface with tangibly eerie, atmospheric melodies.

Wherever you join things, the immediate impact is going to be significant. 'Track 4', for example, takes the elements that made its preceding numbers so spin-tingling, and finally builds those into something that packs inescapable rhythm while refusing to drop a beat, the culmination of that which has come before, marking this as a kind of set, leaving us with just that hint of the reassuring warm up, rather than purely an ambient album.

Review: Berlin's Cocktail d'Amore and Tokyo's Ene Records have come together once again to present the music of Solidair. The duo of Cocktail alumni Luigi Di Venere and Jules Etienne present three tracks aimed to induce a dance floor hypnosis. Orgonite (Riding the Waves) does just that, a slow build awash in the ebb and flow of acid tinges, just enough to wet your whistle on a Saturday night. The original mix keeps the skeletal support but throws in a life preserver of 8 bit gaming synthesis. Frisky arps call and respond to each other before making way for sinewy pads to lift off. Tiger's Eye sets itself onto cruising speed incorporating elements of late 90's acid techno with the sleek and smooth clubbing aesthetics of modern day Berlin.

Review: These days, we're all familiar with Jan Jelinek's trademark brand of dusty, dubbed-out, jazz-sampling downtempo explorations. That wasn't the case when Loop Finding Jazz Records, his acclaimed debut album, first appeared back in 2001. It has since become an in-demand item, making this reissue more than handy. It remains a fine album; a blazed shuffle through a sonic world where dub techno, ambient, minimal house, jazz and downtempo grooves and seductive vinyl crackle merge into one intoxicating hybrid sound. It's not showy and over-the-top, but rather becalmed and subtly seductive. In other words, it's still a brilliant album and if you don't own already own a copy, you should add this to your cart sharpish.

Review: There is a great selection of reissues of Future Sound of London's back catalogue going on right now. It goes all the way back to 1988 when they first started chaining the game with their forward facing electronics and mix of rave, breaks, hardcore and ambient into something utterly fresh. It still resonates today, hence these reissues, and this one is a 25th Anniversary edition of Accelerator. This one was, at the time, seen as the group's most "commercially-minded" album but that takes nothing way from its visionary sonics and immersive sonic landscapes.

Review: Two key pushers of New York tactile ambient-techno, Anthony Naples and DJ Python, here present a fittingly named compilation (and the third in the series) curating only the best found in that style and scene: 'Air Texture VIII'. Spurred on by a cost of living crisis in Manhattan, areas further afield in neighbouring Brooklyn have become much more central to artists such as Beta Librae, Downstairs J and 5AM, spurring their rise and that of producers like them. Don't miss this important chronicling of the scene, which still unfolds in real time.

Review: Phoebe Guillemot's world-building as RAMZi has yielded us a plethora of exquisite albums since she first emerged in the tape-oriented scene around 2013. She's gone on to helm different projects, tour the world and generally blossom as a singular and gifted artist. After a string of self-released LPs, she's popped up on Music From Memory with one of her most refined works to date. Hyphea unmistakably belongs in the RAMZi-verse, full of the same mystical, softly shaped flora and fauna which makes her music so inviting, but there's also a sense of structure and purpose here which suggests she was honing her expressions - a natural progression for an artist who can make electronic music sound so very natural indeed.

Review: Is there any artist in electronic music that releases as little music yet remains as highly revered as Burial? We can't think of any. As it happens, this new Streetlands EP is actually the hallowed UK producer's second outing of 2022 after the ambient offering Antidawn back in January. As always it finds him back on Kode9's Hyperdub label. 'Hospital Chapel' is eerie atmosphere and lo-fi samples, 'Streelands' is another sparse ambient cut that is full of melancholy and 'Exokind' is the soundtrack of a faraway planet with distant solar winds and only the smallest of microbial activities for you to tune into before a signature angelic vocal brings the beauty.

Review: Music For Dreams label head Kenneth Badger was so inspired by the Tangerine Dream soundtrack to the classic Michael Mann film The Thief that he and Tolga Bo0.95yu0.95k from the Turkish band islandman decided to write their own soundtrack to an imaginary movie. They managed to write 10 tracks within 24 hours while imagining a film that told a story about two people stuck on the arctic ice cap where one tries to fool the other. Influences from Vangelis, John Carpenter, and Tangerine Dream all feature in what is a superb and escapist listen.

Review: Ace Records continue their series of compilations from Saint Etienne's Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs, tapping into unique niches of British music culture under titles like English Weather and The Tears Of Technology to arrive at this latest joint, Fell From The Sun. This is a specific trip into the downtempo, after hours sounds prevalent in 1990-1991, as the acid house wave broke and Balearic selector ethics seeped into studio practice. The selections are absolutely on point, from The Orb's majestic remix of Primal Scream's 'Higher Than The Sun' to Saint Etienne's own moody roller, 'Speedwell'. It's bouncy and boundlessly optimistic as well as being supremely chill, absolutely of its time but still ringing with an eternal charm that feels ready for a revival. Let this compilation be your guide.

Review: Platform 23's latest release sees them offer up a partial reissue of 'Music For Hippies', an impossible-to-find 1988 cassette from Dutch experimentalists De Febriek. What's an offer is a mix of original tracks and fresh remixes. In the former category you'll find 'Lullabye', a spacey, dubbed-out chunk of new wave/post-punk/cosmic funk fusion full of intergalactic synth sounds, rubbery bass, bluesy guitar solos and trippy vocals, and an edited version of the epic 'Come Down', a more atmospheric, but no less dubbed-out affair that combines layered ambient noise, rocket-launch sonics and a hushed, hypnotic groove. Bahnstag 23 contributor Dunkeltier provides two takes on 'Lullabye', a throbbing, druggy new wave mix and a total re-make. Completing the package is a fiendishly low-slung, dark and mind-altering '5am Mix' of 'Come Down' courtesy of Khidja.