Leftfield Recommendations September 2012

Review: Whitehouse's William Bennett returns with his "afro-noise" project Cut Hands on this vinyl-only release on Blackest Ever Black heralding the arrival of a new full length later this year. Those unfamiliar with the music should make their way to "Black Mamba" post-haste, a confrontational fury of overdriven African drumming with the ferocity of Regis's early techno and Shackleton's polyrhythmic delicacy and dread. On the flip, "Krokodilo Theme" offers a less rhythmically oppressive but no less dark descent into Bennett's mind, a piece of ambient digital drift with Eastern undertones which conjures up images of the bloody aftermath to its counterpart's frenzied attack.

Review: Those who were beguiled by Mark Fell's recent collaboration with DJ Sprinkles and his deep house leaning Sensate Focus releases will be similarly enamoured with Sentielle Objectif Actualite. Purportedly containing seven remixes of the first three 12" singles released on his Sensate Focus imprint, the music contained within strikes an intriguing middle ground between the Kerri Chandler and Chez Damier inspired house of those singles and his hyper-processed earlier albums on Raster Noton and Editions Mego, with clinical rhythmic elements playing off against hyperdigitised but warm melodics. If anything this might be the perfect Fell album - highly recommended.

Review: Kwesi Darko returns with his first original Blue Daisy material since his weirdly underrated debut album The Sunday Gift from last year, teaming up with the unexplained entity Unknown Shapes for the six-track EP Bedtime Stories. One listen through and it's clear Darko has been taking his time perfecting a set of tracks with a breathtaking attention to detail and texture, and it takes a few more listens for all its subtle intricacies to truly show. It would be easy to cite everyone from James Blake to Burial to the majority of the Tri Angle roster to provide some context for tracks such as "Insomniac Love" or "Wet Dreams" but such comparisons don't really do justice to the cavernous soundscapes that Blue Daisy and the Unknown Shapes have cast on Bedtime Stories. The moments in the title track where ripples of purple funk break free alone are worth investigating.

Review: For fans of incessant punning, Synth Sense is a superb moniker. It's actually the production pseudonym of D&B, electronica and ambient experimentalists Daniel Kiley and Raymond Lewis, a production duo from Ashford in Kent. After releasing a couple of low-key EPs, they've signed up with ASC's Auxillary label. It's a perfect fit for their dark and foreboding sound, a mix of glitchy, otherworldly ambience, leftfield D&B and creepy electronica. There's a consistency to the sound and production that should be admired, and more than enough paranoid, darkroom meanderings to impress anyone who likes their electronic music to be thoughtful and sophisticated.

Review: It's refreshing to hear some proper electronica once in a while, and Andrea Parker's Aperture looks set to make a welcome return if this package of remixes of the shadowy Oberman Knocks is anything to go by. Plaid are on excellent, darkside form with their version of "Degonnt Type Runners", sounding moodier than they have done in a long time. Uexkull (formerly of Bitstream) brings the multi-layered electro pressure with aplomb, while Quinoline Yellow carries on his innately Skam-sounding vibes. Adapta rounds tings off with a decidedly Drexciyan version that puts most electro pretenders to shame.

Review: The minimal techno of Wishmountain was one of Matthew Herbert's first musical endeavours, and some fifteen years after Wishmountain Is Dead, the one album he recorded under the name, the producer has elected to return to the project with a new album that explores similarly uniquely conceptual ideas. As the title suggests Tesco was loosely inspired by a trip to his local supermarket, with the elements of each track made exclusively from the sounds of the ubiquitous high street supermarket chain's most popular items (according to a 2010 survey in The Grocer magazine) The results are as glitchy and leftfield as you'd expect from a contrary producer such as Herbert and the set of oddly driving tunes that pop, rumble and shuffle with spliced-up intent make for infinitely more palatable listening than his previous Pig based work.

Review: Better known to most as Ekoplekz, Nick Edwards has been ridiculously prolific over the past year, with excellent releases on Punch Drunk, Public Information and Mordant Music to his name, and now he can add Editions Mego to that list, with the first record under his own name since a self-released cassette in 1994. Musically, there's little difference from his Ekoplekz material - this is still the same dense mix of raw analogue matter, dub techniques and radiophonic tendencies as before, but allowed to stretch out over four 15 minute tracks, his sound is more immersive than it's ever been.

Review: Mark Fell's Sensate Focus reaches its third release, and goes even further than before to break house music down into its constituent parts. If you've heard Fell's recent album Sentielle Objectif Actualite you'll know what to expect - hyper-processed digital synths combining with rapid-fire rhythms; "X" is the more explicitly undancable of the two, combining threadbare Aphex Twin style rhythmic cut-ups across thin, vaguely familiar chords, while "Y" is the more conventional of the two, employing a looping yet soulful vocal, but still maintaining the experimental edge that makes this project so compelling.

Review: Editions Mego have linked up with the fabled French sound research institution GRM to present this choice offering of Musique Concrete from one of Europe's leading sonic scientists, Bernard Parmegiani. L'Oeil Ecoute is a formidable piece of work that shows exactly where modern artists such as Ekoplekz are taking their lead from. Originally released in the 70s as an accompaniment to an experimental video, the forbidding sound world Parmegiani creates is certainly not a comforting place, but there is an allure within the bleak alien textures that continues to draw people in far beyond the time the music was composed.

Review: The Amazonian Estonian songstress makes her triumphant return to Not Not Fun with her third album in 18 months. It's easily the best collection of tracks she's produced in her short but productive career; sharpening up her sound but still remaining resolutely lo-fi. The chopped up eastern strings of opener "The Sound" showcases a new sample based direction, albeit one which melds with her foggy synths, while "I Don't Wanna Be Discovered" sees her advance the house sounds of her 100% Silk output with a genuine alternate reality 90s club hit, and "Sweet Synergy" indulges her hip-hop tendencies with an R&B jam to way only Minerva could do it. Like the equally prolific masters of decayed synths and weirdo lounge-pop Hype Williams, Minerva is only getting better with each release - brilliant stuff.

Review: As Editions Mego continue to ladle the fertile broth of Musique Concrete for forgotten gems, this selection provides an interesting spread of artists, with the approaches of five different experimentalists in the field of sonic research winding up mutually beneficial. Juxtaposing the forlorn and otherworldly collages of sound helps give these pieces a little context, with the differences between them providing a great entry point for undeniably obtuse listening. Edgardo Canton's "I Palpiti" is an especially enticing romp through the inner workings of a sixties science fiction laboratory, while Mireille Chamass Kyrou's "Etude 1" features pops and clicks so close in the mix that it'll send shivers down your spine.