Back catalogue: Leftfield

Review: The artist himself admits that The Glory Days EP marks a new era for Alan Johnson after a decade of sporadic releases. Building on last year's Stillness EP, this release features entirely new music which has been made over the past two years as the creative process has been refined and moved towards a simpler storytelling approach. Assembled for the YUKU label, the EP showcases a shift in sound that blends past influences with new experimentation and danceable, glossy playfulness. Divided into two distinct moods, it reflects both a nod to a chaotic past and a glimpse into the future with earthed low ends and kinetic rhythms run through with fizzy electronics and menacing moods.

Review: Few artists in electronic music have the serious musical chops of Mathew Jonson. The man has formally studied jazz and always brought famous invention to his synth-heavy sounds under whatever guise he has been working with. Here he is back under his own name on Deset and opens up with some delightful and mellifluous synth ripples on 'Dawn' and then soundtracks a cosmic voyage on scattered percussive sounds and alien effects on 'Artificial Intelligence'. 'SOS' is a broken beat jazz work out and with The Mole he crafts a deep, seductive groove marbled with more great melody on 'Feels So Good.' 'Got Bass' is playful cosmic electro to close.

Review: JS is an alias of James Zeiter and is also the name of his own label. This seventh transmission once again showcases his signature take on minimal, dub and techno. 'JS-07' rolls out with deep, pillow drums and well buried sub bass that slowly sweeps you up and locks you into a state of hypnosis. 'JS-07R' on the flip side is run through with slightly more warmth and light, like beams of sun piercing the surface of an ocean and catching microscopic organisms floating on the sea bed. It's a heady sound full of soul.

Review: Taylor Deupree's next project is an ambitious one that finds the artist re-imagining his own well-regarded album from 2002, Stil., in an elaborate acoustic fashion. Sti.ll comes after a long-running collaboration between Deupree and Greyfade's Joseph Branciforte, an arranger and producer who has translated Deupree's focus on meticulously loop designs and hypnotic reputation into the world of chamber music. In place of the original digital sounds are clarinet, vibraphone, cello, double bass, flute, and percussion. The overall rhythm and tone of the original are maintained having been meticulously transcribed and then performed by an ensemble of New York musicians. It is a fascinating work that straddles two worlds to perfection.

Review: A mythical collaborative live album - documenting an appearance shared between Brian Eno, Can's Holger Czukay and J. Peter Schwalm in 1998 - Sushi! Roti! Reibekuchen! is a three-hour ambient kraut improvisation, which first coincided with Eno's then hot-topic multimedia light installation at the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany, known as the Future Light-Lounge Proposal. Schwalm prepared ideas for the session and guests ate the three foods from the event and album's title; this provided sufficient, but slow-burning energy to fuel the intense whorls, feedback freakouts, snake-charmer melodies and metrically challenging rhythms that make up its sound.

Review: Now here's a rarity for you. Not even many of the most committed megafans know that Brian Eno, Holger Czukay and J.Peter Schwalm, accompanied by Raoul Walton and Jern Atai, performed a secret live music show, outside the esteemed Kunst-und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany, situated in the city of Bonn, in August 1998. Forming a part of the opening party of Eno's Future Light-Lounge Proposal multimedia installation, this furtively-recorded album hears an exclusive slice of incidental "high-altitude food music", of course made during Brian Eno's airborne ambient era. Now reissued via Gronland, this five-piece cut of sophisti-ambi-krauttronica makes for a welcome surprise.

Review: The 2023 film Wonka has delighted audiences with its fantastic original soundtrack featuring performances by lead actor Timothee Chalamet and an exceptional ensemble cast including Hugh Grant, Calah Lane, and Keegan-Michael Key. Composed by Joby Talbot and penned by songwriter Neil Hannon, the score captures the essence of the golden age of Hollywood musicals while paying homage to the beloved classics of the past. Director Paul King's vision of a prequel to the iconic 1971 film comes to life with enchanting melodies and vibrant arrangements, inviting listeners on a whimsical journey through the fantastical world of Willy Wonka.

Review: Originally released in 1998, Mixmaster Morris & Jonah Sharp's Quiet Logic surprisingly flew under the radar when it came out.- perhaps because of the huge amount of electronic music being released at the time. The pair have some of the most important albums and tracks in their respected genres and are arguably two of the most important figures in the electronic music chill out scene from the 90s, and when you add the input of Haruomi Hosono from Yellow Magic Orchestra on two tracks, it becomes an even more essential listen. Chill out heads unite!

Review: Back in the 1990s, the combination of Mixmaster Morris, Jonah Sharp (he of Spacetime Continuum fame) and Haruomi Hosono was the closest thing you got to an ambient supergroup (the Orb's collaboration with Robert Fripp and Thomas Fehlmann as FFWD not withstanding). The trio only recorded one album together, the sublime Quiet Logic, but it's an absolute doozy - as this timely reissue proves. For one reason or another, it was only ever released in Japan at the time, meaning this is the first time it has been available worldwide. As you'd expect with such masters of the art form at the helm, it is genuinely superb - a slowly evolving opus that moves between unfurling, dub-fired ambient techno ('Waraitake') to ambient jazz eccentricity ('Dr Gauss/Yakan Hiko (Night Flight)'), via deep ambient d&b ('Uchu Yuei (Night Swimming)') and deep space ambient.

Review: Bristol trio Jabu returns with A Soft And Gatherable Star, their latest album on the Always + Forever label. Known for blending dub and Bristol's sound system culture, Jabu expands their sonic landscape while bringing songwriting to the forefront. Echoes of the city's landmarks and personal memories, like lost parents and youth, inform the album's narrative. Tracks like 'Oceanside Spider House' veer away from trip-hop, instead evoking the ethereal shimmer of The Cure and Cocteau Twins. 'Gently Fade' channels shadowy jazz ballads, while 'Seamills' flows with a slow, aquatic rhythm, enhanced by fuzzy saxophone notes from Lorenzo Prati. Rakhi Singh and Sebastian Gainsborough's fragile strings on 'All Night' create a dreamlike ambiance, and 'If I Asked You, You'd Tell Me' features Josh Horsley's cello, cloaked in texture and restraint. With influences ranging from ambient soundscapes to the delicate beauty of Mica Levi's work, A Soft And Gatherable Star feels organic, allowing songs to evolve naturally. Recorded between Bristol and Childs' mother's home, the album reflects on lost teenage memories and the eerie transformation of familiar spaces. It's a meditative journey, rooted in emotion and subtle, cinematic sound design.

Review: Allegedly one of the first ever records to make use of sampling, Jean-Michel Jarre's seventh album Zoolook brought with it a unique vibe, one well worth looking back on in light of its latest Sony reissue. In terms of notoriety, Zoolook pales in comparison to the electronic music crackerjack's 1976-8 heyday, which saw to both Oxygene and Equinoxe; but this is understandable, as Zoolook came much later, and sacrificed the grandiose mood of otherworldly space-awe for an eerier menage of playful factory hits and cacophonous dance hubbubery. Perhaps this sound - a jankier one that grew in popularity in the mid 80s - was driven by Jarre's use of the Fairlight CMI workstation and sampler, an example of a piece of gear that had the power to define an entire sound. We'd venture to say that the titular "Zoolook" is a kind of gaze that, by virtue of us living in a machine society, makes animals of us all.

Review: In 2005, Jan Jelinek "pitched" his electronica/kosmische vision to the potent collective fan by way of ten ecosystemically-informed, prepared ambient numbers. Spanning Bibio-esque reversy guitar and sloshing exotica, this one existed for an inordinate period as a digital download, in which much time elapsed until now, its 20th anniversary - at which point we hear it available again, arriving for the first time on vinyl. Modelled on the sonic prototypes of his German rock forbears, this early electronica work from Jelinek amounts to a fearsomely intricate revue, expanding on krautrock's organic textures and unremittingly restless feel.

Review: A fresh and exciting new concept record from ambient master Jan Jelinek; the new LP Social Engineering is made of nothing more than the text-to-speech renderings of the content of phishing emails received in the musician's inbox over an undisclosed period. Over the course of 13 tracks, Jelinek reworks, timestretches, juggles and expands these robotic narrations into speech-synthetic soundscapes, making for a weird and well-paced foray into a certain greyscale sonic unheimlich. Beginning with a Microsoft impersonator and ending on a 'polite threat', Jelinek's latest record presents an ironic conundrum; indeed, Social Engineering presents the only kind of decision under pressure - whether or not to buy ingenious new experimental ambient music - that we can't refuse.

Review: Ilian Tape have tapped up Jichael Mackson here for a double album of expressive and forward thinking electronic sounds. The atmosphere generally futuristic and intriguing, with tracks like 'Shangri La' riding on gentle breakbeats amongst air pads, 'Banana Jazz (Quartett)' is a high speed and live sounding jazz-breakbeat workout, 'A Jichalicious Something' is dubby and IDM inflected lushness and 'Good Morning Sunshine' is an interplanetary trip with distant cosmic pads and organic piano chords soothing mind, body and soul.

Review: Building on a career's worth of 90s freeform punk, 00s underground techno and every minimalistic and healing sonic contour in between since then, Jo Johnson returns to the fore with her latest record Red, White & Yellow. "Waves" and "tidal forces" are the first verbal associations that spring to mind, as we're dunked into many a sequent swell and ruminant ripple of sound. In the hat-trick of tracks that is 'It Just Is The Love It Feels', 'Inside Eyes Sparks Fire Under Ice' and 'Unfolding & Folding', we hear a holy trinity of sorts, eschewing isolable tempi or affects for a deeply warming kind of minimalism.

Review: French dystopi-dance duo Justice gear up for their fourth full-length album, Hyperdrama. Owing to their towering status as producers and artists, it marks their first album in seven years since 2016's Woman. Unlike the neater fusions of disco and funk that the band have achieved in the past, Auge and Rosnay describe their latest as an embittered battle between the two stereotypes, elaborating that the album 'oscillates between pure electronic and pure disco but you never really get the two at the same time'."

Review: Obliques unveils Poeme symphonique here on limited clear vinyl. Composer Jonathan Fitoussi reimagines Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 1 "Titan" in a groundbreaking creation commissioned by Radio France. Recorded live at La Maison de la Radio's grand auditorium on November 18, 2023, in Paris, this concert epitomizes a fusion of classical and electronic music. Fitoussi's interpretation breathes new life into Mahler's masterpiece, enriching it with contemporary sensibilities while preserving its timeless essence. With this release, Obliques invites listeners on a transcendent journey through sound, celebrating the convergence of past and present in the realm of symphonic expression.