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Review: San Francisco-based DJ/producer Nick Monaco has long been part of the Soul Clap family, releasing his first 12" on the label back in 2012. Mating Call, a double 12" set running at album length, is easily his most expansive release yet. It's typically eccentric, delivering a range of songs - featuring his own distinctive vocals - that blend numerous styles whilst retaining a loose, funky and altogether rather kaleidoscopic feel. It's rooted in Balearic pop, but also touches on dub, deep house, boogie, dub disco and a strangely deep and contemporary take on the triple-beat rhythms of glam rock. It's hard to accurately describe, but is really rather good; certainly, it's one of Soul Clap's strongest releases of recent times.

Review: Cynic return after a years heitus with a couple tracks from label boss Felix Dickinson. Meat and potatoes by Mr.Dickinson and additional noodles from Robin Lee. Acidic dance music for your feet.

Review: London's Idjut Boys (Dan Tyler & Conrad McConnell) and Rune Lindbaek of Oslo are Meanderthals. As longtime friends and fans of each other's music they have discussed the idea of working together in a musical context for years and in 2008, they finally began to make those ideas a reality. Throughout the year they traveled back and forth between Oslo and London to create their debut album, 'Desire Lines'. A meanderthal is a theory by Matthew Tiessen about a human that is always in the way of others. Whether it be the person on the wrong side of the escalator, the person walking slowly, the person bicycling on the pavement, it is essentially the person that stops the flow of urban daily life. On the contrary, Lindbaek, Tyler and McConnell's definition does not see this person as a threat, but as a person that is completely in his own world; a slacker, musically on his own. This could also be a good description of Lindbaek and the two Idjut Boys. The title, 'Desire Lines', is also based on a theory. This theory is used by architects as they observe where people choose to walk before making a path. The chosen path is a desire line. Meanderthals 'Desire Lines' is their chosen path of beautiful and mellow balearic disco. A warm and dreamy blend of dub, folk, prog, kraut, psychedelia and 70s west-coast combined to invent an organic, slanted, and proggy feel. Recorded live, the album features contributions from good friends, including Pete Z (DJ Harvey) on keyboards, Des Morgan (YamWho?) on drums and percussion, Malcolm Jospeh (Grace Jones) on bass, Per Martinsen (aka Mental Overdrive) on percussion and Raj Gupta (Laj & Quakerman) as sound engineer.

Review: Gritty Northerners, Smoove & Turrell release their 'credit crunch' stepper and third single, 'Beggarman'; lifted from their acclaimed debut album, 'Antique Soul'. With some incredibly funky and feelgood mixes from Crazy P, Basement Freaks and Smoove himself, Beggarman's uplifting call to party has never been more relevant. Already notching up plays with Radio 6's Craig Charles, and starting to pick up plays for the band's first video; Beggarman, Smoove & Turrell's retro right-now energy is infectious. Beggarman's original story-telling, 60s soul-talking vibe kicks back with some great horns and yeah yeah refrains. Crazy P turn up the wah wah power with a shimmering 70s influenced ride that strips back the vocals and creates a stone-cold groove workout, complete with 80s disco keys, perucssion and dubby fx. Smoove's remix goes back to early sampling days with its funky melange of breaks, beats and a big chorus that lifts into a really swinging set. Rounding things off the Basement Freaks keep the phat funk flowing with their rippling jam. Out now on Jalapeno.

Review: Dating from tape recordings made between 1996 - 2012, Cosmic Vibrations follows the Tropical Psychedelics (ERS003) album for the label, this time digging deeper in to the mind of Secret Circuit than the more dance flor inspired sounds heard on last years album Tactile Galactics album for Beats In Space. Again we glimpse a melting pot of pyschedelia, techno, balearic and ambient to create an electronic gem, but all done with a wry smile and jesters wink rather than today's penchant of moody seriousness. Life on the US West Coast shines from the album, from opener Out West to She Got Love, sunshine music that couldn't be made anywhere else. It's not all hippy-happy vibes though with Minimal Vibrations and the dub of Straightline taking things in to deeper and instropective territory. However, all things resonate in Eddie's analogue meets kitchen sink synthesis. Layer after layer flats across the album to create a smile-inducing whole. Journeying from the folk guitar of Somnambulation to the minimilism of Glass Skeletons, before bidding a fond farewell in the apt, Bells. This second and fial collection of early cassette works is not an end, but a blessing.

Review: Brothers Simon and Robin Lee have long excelled at the album format, delivering occasional sets that ripple with impressive musicality, sinewy strings, cozy downtempo moods and upbeat dancefloor moments. Body of One, their fourth full length (their first dropped on Nuphonic back in 1997), continues this trend, offering a compelling trip through the pair's myriad influences. After opening with a sweaty post-punk thumper ("Prisoner of Your Love"), we're variously treated to Italo-influenced vintage house ("Magic Touch"), rubbery disco-funk ("Freak For Your Love"), Arthur Russell-influenced tropical downtempo pop ("Caruso's Monkey House"), dreamy Balearica ("Floating World") and string-laden gorgeousness. As for the title track, it sounds like So-era Peter Gabriel.

Review: ***B-STOCK: Box damaged, product unused & in perfect condition***

- Creasing to outer case + damage to plastic CD tray

Brothers Simon and Robin Lee have long excelled at the album format, delivering occasional sets that ripple with impressive musicality, sinewy strings, cozy downtempo moods and upbeat dancefloor moments. Body of One, their fourth full length (their first dropped on Nuphonic back in 1997), continues this trend, offering a compelling trip through the pair's myriad influences. After opening with a sweaty post-punk thumper ("Prisoner of Your Love"), we're variously treated to Italo-influenced vintage house ("Magic Touch"), rubbery disco-funk ("Freak For Your Love"), Arthur Russell-influenced tropical downtempo pop ("Caruso's Monkey House"), dreamy Balearica ("Floating World") and string-laden gorgeousness. As for the title track, it sounds like So-era Peter Gabriel.

Review: Emotional Rescue make no attempt to hide their love of classic 80s cutters Razormaid's remixes, and on this occasion they're shining a light on the pumped up dancefloor versions of cult Canadian synthwave concern Psyche. The "US Club Mix" of "Eternal" is a perfect, swooning synth pop belter with weight in all the right places to work on the floor. "Prisoner To Desire (Alcatraz Mix)" is a snarling stomper that almost touches on acidic synth lines underneath the impassioned vocals, and then an exclusive re-edit of "Unveiling The Secret" ups the tempo while letting the catchy pop edge to Psyche's sound shine through. The record finishes with the fevered intensity of Joseph Watt's extended mix of "Ecstasy".

Review: US label Wonder Stories follow up strong turns from Macaulay, Joe Morris and Jac The Disco with this hemisphere-spanning collaboration between Aussie producer Dawn Again and UK stalwart Rothmans. The mood on the record is squarely aimed at psychedelic strains of house music for adventurous, smooth grooving souls, whether it's the originals or the remixes you came for. "Timeless Odyssey" matches fuzzy bass with swirling pads and peppy rhythms, which Timothy J Fairplay dutifully jacks up with a wavey sensibility and plenty of dancefloor heft. "Rainbow Perch" is a synth-rich party ballad loaded with heart to match its infectious grooves. Emile Strunz delivers a remix that builds on the original's yearning qualities with a journeying spirit that would make for some great outdoors listening / partying.

Review: Is that a snake in your boot or are you dancing like a crazy horse at this divine piece of honky tonking wild west funk? Created through a chance encounter in a shoe shop, Frankie Valentine and Thomas Sciurpa written something truly original here. Sitting somewhere between The Grid and Beyond The Wizards Sleeve, each version is a gallant trip through dusty plains with big instrumentation, a bareback sense of groove and more banjo pistol whips than your doctor would recommend. Let's hope more chance encounters happen in the future.

Review: ***B-STOCK: Record slightly warped with minor surface marks/smudges, but otherwise in perfect working order***


Madrid's Synth Alien returns with a fresh EP out on Cyber Dance Records entitled 'Stellar Walker' that shows off his spaced-out and italofied influences in just the manner we've now come to expect from that label - slow-motion chugging synth workouts that are rich in atmosphere, confident in pace and arrangement and most importantly jam-packed with heavy riffing and piercing melodies from start to finish. Side A of the EP opens with "Come With Me", a dreamy and spacey slow-but-hard rocker that warms the ears up nicely before the second track "Hotel Chameleon" seals the deal with epic feeling and soaring melodic lines that break into an all-out synthesised feast of a climax. Side B continues with a collaboration with Moscow's Dmitry Distant 'L'Amour Est Parti', a romantically-tinged odyssey of relentless octave basslines that reaches even higher into new realms of future funk courtesy of a guest vocal from AKA INK before the EP closes with a monster of upfront determined electronic rocking called 'Smoke Comet', ending the record with a fitting cosmic crunch.

Review: ***B-STOCK: Record has light surface marks/scratches, but otherwise in perfect working condition***


Cyber Dance Records are back on the attack with a fresh release from the legendary Perseus Traxx aka Nigel Rogers, a 4-track EP entitled after recent scientific developments 'An Apparent Horizon'. It's a firmly machine-based and totally jam-packed affair reflecting diverse sounds from the UK's own rich history of electronic dance music, with elements from the classic Warp "deep space sound" prominent as much as the more usual 303-jacking acid house grooves in the vein of Baby Ford or Bam Bam. 'Lost Dreams' opens the record with a floaty dream-like hypnosis from the depths of space and sets the tone in magnificent style, followed up on Side A with the irresistible roll of 'Reverse The Trend' that takes the groove harder, further and deeperstraight off to the beyond. Dark strings reminiscent of old LFO, B-12 or Autechre vinyls from the early 90s propel us into Side B on 'Darkness Stalks', and then we're transported onto the concluding track on the EP, 'Distances'; an epic closer that opens with beautiful reverbed claps and acid squelches before diving into an inky black void of timeless space-travelling and slow-building tension that could surely echo hauntingly around any M25 rave in the depths of a late 1980s night.