Back catalogue: Leftfield

Review: This 7" from Yao Bobby & Simon Grab is as esoteric as it gets. If you don't like noise, you won't like this, it's that simple. The two tracks are taken from their recent album 'Wum' on LAVALAVA. It is some of their most abrasive and confrontational music to date. 'Nyagblodi' is an attack on corrupt African politicians with a loud, guttural voice and frazzled synth over heavily distorted drums. On the flip, 'Church' has a broken beat rhythm, hardcore industrial texture and more powerful vocal chants. These are two hard-as-nails tunes with a powerful message.

Review: Sean Bowie is back with another ode to the tortured, damned, and damned good. The Florida-born enfant terrible of US alt-rock can barely put a foot wrong in our eyes, whether that's the post-chillwave of Teams, the moniker he was recording under in the early-2010s, or the Tumor releases. This is the place where Death In Vegas fans come to be reassured it's not quite over yet.

The Asymptotical World, not to be confused with The Asymptomatic World, is a case in point. This is punk, if punk decided to dive into bed with electroclash and they had a baby that wasn't really what anyone expected. It's sludgy, scummy, guitar-driven chaotic noise that occasionally dissipates into white mayhem, all the while maintaining not just its sense of self, but an underlying feeling you're two seconds from a rave while in the moshpit.

Review: Those interested in Japanese cartoons should know Space Adventure Cobra. First broadcast in 1982, it is now considered one of the country's finest animated TV series. This triple-vinyl box set celebrates Kentano Haneda and Yuji Ono's music from the series, combining compositions featured on the show with unheard extended versions and tracks that never made the cut first time round. Musically, it's a mix of Japanese disco, sax-sporting lounge jazz, jazz-funk, neo-classical movements and eccentric interludes, all doused in layers of cosmic dust and stargazing colour. The release also comes packaged with a 12-page booklet telling the story of the series and the making of the appealing, endlessly entertaining soundtrack.

Review: Downwards' latest release shines a light on Melbourne's famed experimental music scene by bringing together tracks from two of the city's most interesting artists. On side A there's a chance to savour all four tracks from Bonnie Mercer's previously cassette-only release Old Moon, New Moon, with the experienced artist combining elements of desert rock (fractured, discombobulated, fuzz-toned guitar textures) with droning tones, reverb-laden samples and gentle washes of ambient colour. Over on the flip YLP - the duo of Joshua Wells and Harry Schwind- take over, delivering a suite of suitably cosmic tracks heavily influenced by Spacemen 3, Suicide and Sun City Girls.

Review: RECOMMENDED
This is the first album Ai Yamamoto has released for US imprint Past Inside The Present, and it almost feels like an artist finally coming home - albeit a home they never lived in before. A perfect meeting of minds a long time in the making, fittingly the work included here has also taken a while to materialise, with the arrangements presented written and recorded over a two year period, between 2018 and 2020.

Japan-born, Melbourne, Australia-bred, Yamamoto's extensive experience working with pianos, strings, wind instruments and keen attention to detail in terms of textures and timbre is clear to hear within moments of hitting play. Having been making music for the best part of two decades, she's long-since honed her craft and fine-tuned those skills, ensuring Love Me Tender is a hushed ambient beauty you won't easily forget.

Review: Born in Algeria, when it was still among France's colonies, to French parents who themselves claimed Italian heritage, it makes perfect sense that Edouard Joseph Scotto Di Suoccio would wind up making music that seemed born out of a very different place to the one you're looking at. No matter what, or where, you're gazing upon. Strange tunes that take some describing, let's start at the beginning. Following his series of chanson singles released in the late-1960s under the pseudonym Ted Scotto, by the middle of the next decade he'd adopted the Tregger alias and was dipping toes into tones along the lines of what Space Oddities is packed with. First laidback jazz funk, things became more and more exploratory, sci-fi, disco, and kosmische influenced as the years went by. That legacy is remembered and honoured today on some of the world's finest groove-soaked dancefloors and the DJs that dominate them, with this collection giving an insight into the more experimental end of that oeuvre.

Review: Music On Vinyl are our new best friends. With a wide range of music being reissued as of late, Yello's 1987 One Second is just spoiling us. Never being fully acclaimed when it was originally released, this is one album which really spans the full circle in terms of artistic ideas sonic experimentations. While being tagged primarily as a pop work, it's really more of a lesson in synth manipulations and nutty beat-making. "The Rhythm Divine" has to be out top track but do check the whole thing, it's magnificent...

Review: The second studio album from Yello was added to the pantheons of weirdo electronic pop some time ago. In fact, some 31 years ago to be exact. While not by any stretch the outfit's most famous effort, that belongs to fourth album, Stella, and in particular the 1980s movie anthem 'Oh Yeah', in many ways that track doesn't encapsulate the spirit of the band anything like the tunes here.

At times low slung ('Ballet Mecanique') and occupying a space somewhere between roots and fairground, in other moments tragically epic and approaching New Romanticism ('Quad El Habib'), while the music itself is wildly varied and unarguably original, the overall magic is still found in how much fun it sounds like they were having, and how much fun we have hearing it.

Review: Madrid label Glossy Mistakes proudly present the first ever dual release of Susumu Yokota's 1997-8 albums 'Fruits Of The Room' and 'Greenpeace', made under his Stevia alias. The two albums were Yokota's dedication to the early days of Japanese club culture, which back then was informed upon by the psych'ed-out dancey rock of the 1960s and the fallout of US breaks / rave. The first of these two reissues, 'Greenpeace', is jazzy and roomy, and is sonically contemporaneous to the big beat stylings of Coldcut or Herbalizer, but thrown brazenly into an ambient, psychedelic rave context.

Review: As Radiohead tour the world and then regroup to record their new album, Thom Yorke releases his own record, 'The Eraser' on XL Recordings. A collection of nine new songs, the record was written and played by Thom and was produced by Nigel Godrich. Variously hailed as "The Best Band In The World" (Q Magazine), "Rock's Best Live Band" (Rolling Stone) and the band were placed at number 1 of Spin Magazine's 40 most influential artists, Radiohead has arguably become the most acclaimed and adventurous force in modern music. Over six studio albums the group have proved that it is possible to make massive creative leaps whilst continuing to grow in worldwide stature. Their records set new benchmarks for others to aim towards, whilst their live shows reach levels of intensity and exploration that few can match.

Review: Club culture can be curiously misled at times. While the focus is so often on breakdowns, in reality it's the hypnosis of looped drums and hi hats that often captures our imagination. And while belters frequently steal the limelight, in doing so we're at risk of forgetting the unifying, open-armed foundations that are found in everything from techno to hardcore to jungle and beyond. Brutal Flowers certainly makes a strong case for rethinking priorities. "A no-airs and graces piece of cool future-proof ambience" the label puts it. We'd agree. YS's stunning record seems to speak to our inner dreams of what rave has been and could still be, it hits nail-on-head in turning the emotions of surreal walks home post-club with friends into beautiful, understated yet grand synth overtures. It never forgets that heads down and ethereality are not opposites, but instead two halves of the same passion, and thoughtfulness is really the only secret ingredient in the dance music spectrum.

Review: Is it rock? Is it metal? Is it synth pop? How about art noise? Someone, somewhere, is trying to pen a thesis on how you define the mighty and mysterious Yves Tumor. Best leave it to them, then. Wonder aside, the Knoxville, Tennessee outsider has finally delivered the follow up to Heaven To A Tortured Mind and it's every bit another masterpiece that grabs listeners by the jugular and challenges them, while delivering exactly what they didn't realise they wanted to hear.
While it's difficult to find much genuinely surprising in music today, the sheer breadth of Praise A Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume (Or Simply Hot Between Worlds) is in itself a shock. Over the course of 12 tracks, we hit grinding electroclash ('God Is A Circle'), seductive operatic pop ('Lovely Sewer'), main stage heavy rock ('Parody'), distorted and pained metal ('Meteora Blues'), and high-paced, rousing indie ('In Spite of War'), among other styles, all realised via a unique musical identity some would kill to possess.

Review: Sean Bowie's fifth full-length as Yves Tumor arrives with an epic title (the academically minded will be debating its meaning for years to come), a grandiose electro-rock/post-punk goes-electroclash sound, and a bagful of valedictory reviews. It's basically an extension of Bowie's previous work with a few twists, but that's no bad thing; after all, the artist's distinctive sound and strong songs have always been an impressive calling card. Highlights are plentiful, from the fizzing, 21st century punk-funk of 'Lovely Sewer', and the Prince-does-Nine Inch Nails-flex of 'Parody', to the alternately jangling and sleazy 'Operator', and the post-ESG dancefloor heaviness of 'Fear Evil Like Fire'.