Back catalogue: Leftfield

Review: Rafet's You Are In The Embrace Of The History is a thought-provoking debut released on Research Records, where Daniel Rafet Grima delves into ambient and drone music with a sense of reverence for ancestral memory. Side-1 begins with the title track, a piece that carries an air of longing and introspection. The atmosphere is rich with layers of ambient sound and chamber music depths. The next song featuring DGrima, adds another dimension with its haunting, immersive quality. On Side-2, Iti's remix introduces a delicate piano melody and a subtle beat, infusing the original with a fresh, creative energy. In contrast, Kuniyuki Takahashi's remix takes a more abstract approach, deconstructing the track into an intriguing exploration of sound and texture. You Are In The Embrace Of The History is a meditative and deeply reflective work that resonates with both beauty and depth.

Review: Verdant's tenth release is another meandering and mystic trip through ambient electronic sounds that leaves you a million miles away from wherever you started. All four artists here excel with electro producer Reedale Ris kicking off in languid, far-sighted fashion with their mournful synths and distant cosmic designs. Out.Lier's 'Track 2' is another one cast adrift on deepest space with smeared pads and floating aural details suspending you in mid air. Jo Johnson's cascading synth motifs are pure and innocent and cathartic and Romanticise The World's 'Track 4' is mellifluous and hopeful.

Review: Lukid and Tapes are on a proper roll with Rezzett at the moment, following up on a knockout 2023 on The Trilogy Tapes with this self-released clutch of weirdo techno-not-techno nuggets from the outer reaches. There's distortion in abundance, and a laissez faire approach to soundsystem impact in favour of textural, atmospheric sculpting. It's dripping with intention even as it stumbles inquisitively from one lo-fi tweak to the next, sounding utterly inspired and delightfully unhinged in equal measure. What's most important is the melodic warmth which peeks through the noise, edging this above the usual murk associated with noise-doused electronics.

Review: Max Richter's latest work Sleep: Tranquillity Base first arrived on Deutsche Grammophon for World Sleep Day. Ot is a thirty minute work split across two parts and are inspired by the moon landings. It is music that "functions as a vessel that disconnects and travels through the body of work, allowing art to provide something which resembles peace within ourselves." It also comes with a couple of belting remixes from much loved contemporary innovators Alva Noto and Kelly Lee Owens. There is a reason Max Richter is so well revered and his music has had over three billion streams and this EP is one of them.

Review: Roy Of The Ravers takes a break from his mischievious outings on Acid Waxa et al to lay down some of his braindance tackle on Emotional Response. White Line Sunrise II.I (Le Roy Soleil) can rightly be considered a follow-up to White Line Sunrise II and indeed it represents a similar kind of spectrum of electronica. Roy's sound is edging further into the kind of 'artist' territory where slower, softer tracks, odd vocal diversions and some pop sensibilities merge with the acid, electro, breakbeat and other well-established tropes of his sound. It's the kind of record which could easily broach this quirky fringe operator of UK electronics to a broader fan base, and there's no doubt he's got the melodic, emotional heft on tracks like 'Versace 101624' to get everyone on board.

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: Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto dropped this one first back in 2006. It was the third collaborative album between the ambient maestros and the third installment of V.I.R.U.S.'s five albums series. It was remastered last year and now gets served up as a reissue alongside three all-new pieces, namely 'City Radieuse', 'Veru 1', and 'Veru 2'. The first of those was written for a short cinematic essay in 2012. The album centres around the pano with padded bass and electronic frequencies adding extra depth and texture. It is another classic in their oeuvre.

Review: Ambient legends Abul Mogard and Rafael Anton Irisarri team up for new album Impossibly Distant, Impossibly Close. Unfolding naturally after being booked to play at the same show in Madrid in 2023, the two ambient artists' dazzlingly warm, slow-progressing approaches to ambience fuse neatly together here. Just two long pieces, 'Piece Of Forever' and 'Waking Up Dizzy On A Bastion', titularly grasp at the theme of eternity, determinism, historical peaks and troughs: the supporting atmosphere is equally as impressively arresting, seeming to urge the listener to 'give over' and move with the flow of time, less than the flow of will. Such a paradigm shift can indeed serve to make distance and closeness seem irrelevant.

Review: In a first-time collaboration, psychedelic trance godhead Simon Posford (best known as Hallucinogen and a founding member of Shpongle) teams up with fellow hippie and flutist Raja Ram (Ronald Rothfield) on a welling improvisatory record, Improvisations For Piano And Flute. Though both are highly esteemed artists in their respective micro-corners of the electronic music scene, Posford and Rothfield both depart significantly from their usually danceable ends for a living-room recorded set of ambiences. With a synth placed atop an antique Bluthner piano, Raj and Simon would join in after the other first begun playing, delivering a 44-minute effluence for the spontaneous soul.

Review: Samuel Reinhard's latest release, Movement, feels like a deep dive into the possibilities of space, texture, and repetition. Known for his intricate chamber compositions, Reinhard steps into electroacoustic territory, crafting a piece that's as much about what isn't there as what is. The title track 'No. 1', at a staggering 20 minutes, unfolds at a near-glacial pace. Piano notes decay as they meet fragments of cello, bass flute, double bass, baritone sax, and harp - all contributing to a sonic landscape where time feels stretched. The minimalist arrangement isn't about creating immersive soundscapes but rather letting each note breathe, decay, and be accompanied by the physical actions that produced them. It's a stark reminder that silence, or near-silence, can be just as powerful as sound. In keeping with his usual method, Reinhard uses a predetermined system to arrange these instrumental recordings. It's not the grand layering of instruments into a single cohesive whole, but rather the augmentation of subtle textures, crafting a free-floating counterpoint. There's no rush to move from one point to the next, leaving listeners to focus on the resonance of each note, the breath that fills an instrument, or the bow held in mid-air. As with previous releases on Hallow Ground and Prasens Editionen, including names like Lawrence English and Kali Malone, Movement is an exploration of perception, duration, and attention. Reinhard has produced a suite that manages to evoke both stillness and motion - a paradox that's central to his compositional style.

Review: Finish dub techno powerhouse Joachim Spieth welcomes UK artist Rhubiqs to his well-regarded Affin label for a debut appearance that sinks you into a widescreen world of ambient lushness. His Aegis of Silence album takes cues from divergent sounds like post-rock and soft ambient as well as drone and even modern classical. It's an ever-shifting soundscape with smeared pads and nostalgia dreams, half-remembered thoughts and a sense of mood that ranges from escapist and blissed out to more ominous and paranoid.

Review: Marlene Ribeiro's cult status has already guaranteed copies of this will be flying out faster than you can say "first album under own name after years as Negra Branca, a member of GNOD, and collaborations with luminaries from Valentina Magaletti to Thurston Moore". And her first offering as herself, as it were, rockets straight to the pinnacle of career highs to date, a record that's so full of ideas yet consistent and complete.

Produced between Ireland, Portugal, Madeira and Salford, partly inspired by Ribeiro's grandmother, Emilia, introducing her to the concept of "recording things, here and there". The result is this incredible combination of hallucinatory dream pop, found notes and captured moments, resulting in a vivid tapestry of hook-laden songs that are meditative yet catchy, late-night but bright and breezy.

Review: Originally released way back in 1969, Terry Riley's "A Rainbow In Curved Air" album remains one of the minimal maestro's most significant works. Crafted using overdubbing techniques, the three-movement title track features Riley playing layer upon layer of electric organ and electric Harpsichord motifs to create a hypnotic, Indian style raga. It was hugely influential at the time - inside and outside of the emerging minimalism scene - and later influenced the ambient and ambient house movements. Here it gets the audiophile reissue treatment, with the title track once again being joined by original flipside "Poppy Nogood & The Phantom Band" - a trippy wig-out in which Riley pays tribute to soprano saxophonist John Coltrane over more hypnotic, fast-past organ refrains.

Review: Rings Around Saturn (Rory McPike) returns for his latest full-length album after 2018's self-titled brokntoys debut, moving on from self-definition to explore a new concept, that of 'All Things Shining'. The LP touches on ambient, electroacoustic studies and filmic/VGM composition, but outside of these references, it stands as a beautiful suite of songs, effortlessly evoking a palette that seems to burst and ooze with a mood of jubilance and hope. Fans of hedonic calculators like Barker will similarly pleased at its use of trance dispositifs, but which are yet lent a glossier, rainmaking vibe ('Sphereology'), while later cuts go on to evoke idyllic Hellenic hallways and walled paradisiacal gardens, with a vocal-angelic edge.

Review: Rivet's newest album for Editions Mego blends optimism and negation, emerging sanguinely from a period of personal tragedy and disillusionment undergone by the artist. Mika Hallback, a key figure in the Swedish underground, first gained attention with industrial techno as Grovskopa before shifting to experimental work, including On Feather and Wire (2020). After the loss of fellow musician Peter Rehberg and his dog Lilo, Hallback created the somber L+P-2 (2023), and now Peck Glamour marks his return, coming reinfused with hope and exploration. Drawing on punk, industrial, techno, and trauma, the album combines synthetic and organic elements, with 'Orbiting Empty Cocoon', with its tugging, metal ballistic sound-rooms sounding like an Au-technic, cybernetic ritual, a dance anthem 'Patitur Butcher' and 'We Left Before We Came' concluding on comparatively layered zoonotic notes; posthuman synthesis backed by birdsong.

Review: Robert Rental is back on the mighty Dark Entries as the cult label reissues his Mental Detentions album as an expanded double pack. Rental is a Scottish pioneer of DIY electronic music who played a key role in shaping the UK's countercultural sound alongside collaborators like Thomas Leer and Daniel Miller. Though he released little solo music, his 1979 cassette Mental Detentions was a standout of the era that featured raw demos made with budget equipment like a Roland drum machine and Stylophone keyboard. Tracks like 'Stuck' offer a distorted take on the classic motorik sound, while 'Vox' delivers an 18-minute ambient journey in which it is easy to get lost. Rental's work captures the spirit of experimentation and innovation in the face of limited resources.

Review: A quadruple box set spanning recordings made between 1968 and 1980 on two-track Revox tape, these previously unreleased works showcase the hypnotic cycles and textural explorations that define kosmische musik. Using his signature Farfisa organ and Echolette tape delay, the pieces evoke the spirit of Roedelius' Selbstportrait series and collaborations with Dieter Moebius and Michael Rother. Rather than a strict retrospective, 90 feels like a timeless sound journey, blending cascading minimalist loops with the organic warmth that has inspired generations. Tracks are unnamed and unmoored from chronology, allowing the listener to experience them as fluid expressions of Roedelius's artistry. The music recalls the meditative brilliance of contemporaries like Terry Riley, while firmly rooted in the experimental ethos of early German electronic music. Released to celebrate Roedelius's 90th birthday, this collection is both a celebration and a rediscovery, offering a vivid portrait of a visionary artist. 90 is a masterclass in innovation and introspection, essential for fans of kosmische and beyond.

Review: Samuel Rohrer's stylish new solo album is a fine advert for his expertise as a multi-instrumentalist as it blends percussion, modular synths and keys into lovely downtempo grooves. The title may suggest romantic simplicity, but the music delivers nuanced emotional and tonal complexity and is dedicated to "brave lovers" seeking truth. Tracks like 'The Parish Bell' reveal Rohrer's focused, unhurried style with ephemeral sounds emerging and fading gracefully and guest contributions like Nils Petter Molvaer's muted horn on 'The Gift' add layers of warmth at a record which rewards attentive listening.

Review: Multidisciplinary artist Seth Horvitz aka Rrose returns to their own EAUX label here with a new album, Please Touch, which comes after their Lotus Eater collaboration with Lucy and a number of influential EPs on the likes of Sandwell District and Stroboscopic Artefacts over the years. These potent, stripped back and synth-laden techno cuts explore new vistas while building on what has come before. Rose has studied with West Coast avant-garde trailblazers at Mills College and feeds their sounds through "elaborate webs of interrelated audio processing" which means a change in every element of the music has a knock-on effect on all the others. It means this is music in constant mutation.

Review: Mysterious techno artist Rrose presents their first ever CD release, and their second full-length project to date. Following 2019's Hymn to Moisture, Please Touch features 11 slippery slinkers, flaunting Rrose's penchant for hypnotics and minimalisms; the likes of 'Spores' and 'Spines' refuse to indulge too many novel sounds, preferring to allow their more immersive textures to rattle and ricochet over each mix, producing a delugey wash. Thematically, the LP deals with themes of touch, intimacy and embodiment, doing some of the work to bridge the schizophonic gap that's remained open since the dawn of recorded music.