Experimental/Electronic charts

Review: Something of ground-breaking album on its initial release in December 1994, ISDN is one of Future Sound of London's most name-checked sets. It's effectively a re-edited and rearranged collection of live recordings - jammed out tracks that were initially broadcast to the world via ISDN links to clubs and radio stations, which FSOL brilliantly moulded into a mind-mangling journey through IDM, trip-hop, proto-big beat, dub, ambient, found sounds, field recordings and wayward electronica. To celebrate the album's 30th birthday, it returns as a two-disc set, freshly 'amalgamated and re-sequenced' by FSOL to include material from both previous editions of the album. It is, then, a kind of 'definitive version' of the LP, and one that still sounds as joyously weird, trippy and psychedelic as it did first time around.

Review: In recent interviews, Justice explained that fourth album Hyperdrama - the wildly successful French duo's first for seven years - was born out of the idea of getting elements of disco, funk and electronic music to "fight with each other" (rather than smoother co-existence). Given the forthright and sometimes abrasive nature of their work, it's an idea in keeping with their career to date. Musically, what we get is a mixture of their usual electroclash and rave-inspired riffs and motifs, and basslines, strings and other instrumentation rooted in black dance music of the 1970s and '80s. When the fusion lands - as it does much of the time - it's a unique and thrilling fusion. For proof, check Tama Impala hook-up 'One Night/All Night', the Italo disco/jazz-funk/electro-house fusion of 'Incognito', and the wonderful slow-boogie mutation 'Saturine'.

Review: Analogue synth spooks rejoice, Pye Corner Audio is back with further explorations of the sweet spot between nostalgic fuzz and circuit-borne futurism. Ghost Box is a spiritual home for Martin Jenkins' flagship project, and he continues to edge out the scope of the Pye Corner sound without derailing the fundamental atmosphere. On The Endless Echo, warm, pulsing melodics set to eerie keys abound, and there's a fine balance between gorgeous ambient atmospheric pieces and sinewy, danceable rhythms, but Jenkins manages to sound fresh and inspired even while reliably holding true to the overall project aesthetic.

Review: Klamm is the new label dedicated to the artistic output of Saele Valese. After "Ivic", a collection of old and new materials published on Alva Noto's label (NOTON) at the beginning of the year, Saele Valese releases now his first real album "A White, White Day". Written and recorded between 2018 and 2021 the material of this work was sliced, glued and recreated several times, just like a filmmaker in the editing process, before finding its final form. Inspired indeed by the most poetic cinema, 'A White, White Day' represents, in the form of a non-linear and enigmatic narrative, a personal and psychological reflection on time, memory and dreams. Mastered by Rashad Becker.

Review: The third full-length studio album from Singaporean singer-songwriter-producer Nat Cmiel (aka yeule) released to rave reviews earlier this September, following an ethereal rollout with singles 'dazies', 'ghosts' and 'inferno' showcasing exactly what yeule excels at: worldbuilding. 'softscars' is now the 3rd instalment in one of the most exciting album runs in modern alt-pop, shifting away from the glitchy, electronic ambience of predecessor 'Glitch Princess', moving in a more rock-centric, brighter direction. This isn't to say the album doesn't have its soul-crushing moments, opening track 'x w x' closes with a defiant scream of frustration, whilst the drums, guitar and synths fight each other for dominance - bottoming out into a gentle outro sequence. The calm after the storm. We could go on about this album for hours, as a yeule fan it feels so fresh but so perfect with it's oscillating directness in delivery. Whereas 'Glitch Princess' felt like travelling through a clastrophobia-inducing tunnel at time, 'softscars' is that moment you burst out of the tunnel and are hit with a huge green vista. It's my album of the year but, hey, what do I know?

Review: The 1990s was arguably the first 'golden age' of ambient - a time when the inherently atmospheric and laidback style not only exploded in popularity, but also became the post-club soundtrack of choice for a whole generation. This personal survey of the 90s ambient scene from journalist and author Jon Savage does a good job in gathering together a representative selection of genuine gems and overlooked classics, drifting between the bubbly, deep space brilliance of Richard H Kirk's Sandoz project ('Limbo'), bleeping ambient house ('Calm' by 2 Cabbages on a Drip), early progressive house (React 2 Rhythm), electronic psychedelia (the tabla rhythms and swirly noises of Rapoon), ambient blues (Underworld), IDM (U-ziq), and glacial, slow-motion bliss (Biosphere).

Review: While Ben Frost's work has long been marked out by deft-touch dark ambient, experimental instincts and clandestine aural textures, he's always thrown in surprise excursions and drawn on musical inspirations that other like-minded producers would fear to embrace. This latter characteristic comes to the fore on Scope Neglect, his first solo set for six years. Remarkably, it utilises the moodiness, weight and ten-ton guitar licks of metal - played by Car Bombs guitarist Greg Kubacki and bass-slinger Liam Andrews of My Disco fame - as a starting point. Frost naturally puts these through the sonic wringer, combining them with his own skittish, IDM-influenced beats, dark ambient soundscapes and razor-sharp electronics. The results are unusual, impressive and emphatically enjoyable, sitting somewhere between timeless electronica, Nine Inch Nails and experimental metal.

Review: Of all the artists past and present who claim to let their music do their talking for them, Burial is one of the elite band of whom this truly is the case. In fact, so reluctant is he to engage with the cult-of-personality hoopla that surrounds almost every modern producer and musician of merit, that he remains a genuine recluse; he has never appeared live, only one obliquely-angled publicity photograph is known to exist, and the number of interviews he has given can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Yet despite this, his music speaks loud and wide, and the world has been listening ever since his 'South London Boroughs' EP debut on Hyperdub in March 2005. His eponymous album, which began life as a low-key release in May 2006, is now widely regarded as the benchmark release of the ever-widening dubstep genre, picking up unanimous critical acclaim along the way, and ending the year heavily featured in many 'best of' polls. Now Burial returns with 'Untrue', a new record of weird soul music, which lovingly processes spectral female voices into vaporised R&B and smudged 2step garage. Vocal lines are blurred, smeared, pitched up pitched down and pitch bent until their content is cast adrift from their original context and they whisper their saccharin sweet nothings into the void. The album continues with the debut's crackle-drenched yearning and bustling syncopations, haunted by the ghosts of rave, but also reveals some new Burial treats with a more glowing, upbeat energy. Kicking off with the skittering 2step syncopations and vocal science of 'Archangel', 'Near Dark' and 'Ghost Hardware', before long it descends into a space of radiant divas and ambience. Where 'Burial' first was humid, suffocating and unrelentingly sad, 'Untrue' is less sunless. Many of the tracks are so sweet, they become toxic, underscored by the almost geological rumbles of growling basslines. Unlike the overpoweringly melancholic prevailing mood of before, Burial's sound is now better defined as a downcast euphoria typified by the epic, muted optimism of the album's last track 'Raver'. Forget central heating the radioactivity of this album is all that you'll need to keep you warm this winter. 'Untrue' is available as full 13 track digipack CD, including recent underground hit 'Ghost Hardware', and 9 track DJ friendly double vinyl set, from which some of the beatless pieces have been edited.

Review: Some four years after the death of Jhonn Balance in 2009, This Immortal Coil's album The Dark Age Of Love arrived as something of a tribute to the work of British band Coil over two previous decades. The album brought together a ragtag team of musicians and was well-received by critics, as well as by Peter Christopherson who himself died in 2010. That promoted another crew of musicians to assemble to record a new album which was eventually titled The World Ended A Long Time Ago. Featured on it are the likes of Shannon Wright, David Chalmin, Matt Elliott aka Third Eye Foundation, Christine Ott, Aho Ssan, Gaspar Claus, Aidan Baker and more.

Review: Few bands have sidestepped expectations as cannily as Mount Kimbie. Initially a duo but now expanded into a quartet, the British band has previously excelled in mixing, matching and fusing a wide range of experimental and left of centre electronic music influences. On The Sunset Violet, their first full-length as a quartet, they've shifted sonically once more, leaning into their indie-rock influences on a set recorded in California. The latter aspect - and the impact of being surrounded by sunshine and desert - is reflected in the warmth and haziness of the sound, which draws on the layered vocals and guitars of vintage shoegaze while also reaching for more familiar aspects of the band's previous experimental electronic sounds (for proof, check the ghostly musical vision that is King Krule collaboration 'Boxing').

Review: After what seems like an eternity, Warp has finally decided to give Broadcast's Microtonics series a full release. Initially made available only to fans at gigs, the two-volume series saw the band experimenting not with their krautrock-influenced brand of trippy electronic pop, but rather the kind of music concrete and synthesizer experiments that were once the preserve of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Peter Zinovieff and the various modular synthesis fetishists that came in their wake. For that reason, it's not Broadcast at their most accessible, but if you're into vintage synth sounds and admirable experimental electronica, Microtonics makes for hugely enjoyable listening.

Review: It's nice to get a new edition of Muslimgauze's 'Emia Bakia', a long out-of-print and hard to find album from 1994, because the album remains one of the most unique in the late, great producer's vast catalogue. The set's uniqueness lies in the surprising shape and focus of the rhythms that Muslimgauze utilised on the album; while as percussion-rich as ever, and often cloaked in his usual dark ambient sounds, dub-influenced basslines and Eastern exoticism, the beats are regularly far more dancefloor-focused than you'd expect. This isn't otherworldly ambient dub, but rather some mind-altering mutation of psychedelic house music that still sounds like nothing else around.