Back catalogue: All genres

Review: Berlin-based producer and DJ Barker has long been an underground innovator associated with plenty of vital labels but he hasn't dropped a new solo EP for a couple of years now. Thankfully he rights that wrong and and steps up to the 30 year strong Smalltown Supersound out of Oslo with a new four track offering that "sees him inverting the musical equation and exploring both the variability and sonic possibilities of a kick-drum." Opener 'Birmingham Screwdriver' will rewire your brain with its fizzing frequencies and skewed bass, 'Wick and Wax' is bright and hyperactive techno-pop and the flipside gets much more raw and dark. A fine return.

Review: Royal Wavetable Mellodies & Old TDKs by Mexico baed artist Brainwaltzera is a perfect coming totters of the symphonic, the synthetic, the organic and the electronic. It's a record that could be a lost 70s classic as much as a new school homage to minimalism, experimental ambient and vintage synths. In fact, this is a selection of archive recordings in the artist's characteristically idiosyncratic style that we cannot get enough of. The collection of tracks are gorgeously native and innocent, with wispy melodies and retro keys all smeared and smudged into moving pieces of ambient that are beatless but dynamic.

Review: Music For Dreams label head Kenneth Badger was so inspired by the Tangerine Dream soundtrack to the classic Michael Mann film The Thief that he and Tolga Bo0.95yu0.95k from the Turkish band islandman decided to write their own soundtrack to an imaginary movie. They managed to write 10 tracks within 24 hours while imagining a film that told a story about two people stuck on the arctic ice cap where one tries to fool the other. Influences from Vangelis, John Carpenter, and Tangerine Dream all feature in what is a superb and escapist listen.

Review: Rune Bagge's inviting new mini-album, Grab a Star, is a second outing on the Northern Electronics label. It is one steeped in beautiful melancholy with narrative themes and a beautiful back-lit cosmic glow that makes it seem all the more otherworldly. The delicate synth craft defines the entire selection of tracks and brings thoughtfulness and tenderness to a range of rhythms and tempos. Some work for the club, some are more for lost-in-the-moment home listening, and all are essential. This is machine music but with a real heart and soul of its own.

Review: Italian composer and modular synth wizard Caterina Barbieri makes a debut on the Light-Years label here with a profound work of ambient beauty. Known for her musical vortexes, she warps space and time with her compositions and has done ever since breaking through with 2017's double-album Patterns Of Consciousness. Spirit Exit again finds her start up her modal rug and get to work in her home studio amidst Milan's two-month pandemic lockdown in 2020. It's a personal work that "takes inspiration from female philosophers, mystics and poets spread across time." The transportational sounds are as complex as they are emotive from front to back.

Review: Portland-based Kevin Palmer tucks himself away in a shed to make his music, so the myth goes. Wherever he makes it, he has always cooked up something special in the in-between electronic worlds. Now he lands on Blundar with a brand new album on numbered and heavyweight translucent green vinyl that offers up 12 tracks of ambient, dub and downtempo experiments which are at times intriguing and cosmic and others laid back and beautifully lazy. Each one is deftly detailed with myriad synth sounds, and atmospheric motifs and they all add up to a perfectly deep, dreamy and immersive listen.

Review: Two years after Marc Richter released his most widely available album Back To Comm album, Alphabet 1968, on the ever amazing Tape imprint, he delivered another landmark with Earth. Originally, the music was conceived to accompany two screenings of the video Earth by Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen. First commissioned for the Sydney Festival 2011, the visual work was scored by Melbourne's Oren Ambarchi for the grand unveiling, but then toured the planet, with different musicians invited to reimagine the soundtrack for different locations. Germany's Black To Comm was enlisted for Berlin and Krakow, and as the smart money was always on, he offered up a strange, beguiling, abstract but highly visceral score. Almost impossible to describe, at once witty but incredibly sad, troubling and intriguing, traumatised but honest, it might be the perfect accompaniment to a film in which several frames are dedicated to landscapes piled high with human corpses. Following the two live performances, the producer opted to make these 'tunes' his next record, which is now finally getting a reissue.

Review: When Black To Comm's staggeringly powerful Alphabet 1968 first landed, rather confusingly in 2010, it stood out on a burgeoning ambient and drone landscape for several reasons. Firstly, it was rather short. Certainly in comparison to similar sounding releases of the day - less than 45 minutes. Secondly, it managed to cram, or rather delicately introduce, myriad sub genres and styles within the relatively brief run time. Each track comes across as though it is autonomous, yet the collection really needs to be explored as a whole to get the full impact. So while 'Trapez' has this stunning, purposefully naive quality to it - like a music box fed through various levels of distortion, chimes straining through the muffled playback - preceding number 'Forst' is this grand, palatial overture of refrains and background marching drums, taking up a full quarter of the entire album on its own. Elsewhere, 'Traum Gmbh' brings fret and chaos to the equation, shrill notes invoking horror movie scenes, while 'Musik Fur Alle' invites us into an aural realm that owes much to candlelit folk tales.

Review: Brooklyn's Tyler Gilmore, aka BlankFor.ms, has released on Works for Tape and Piano, a full-length on Puremagnetik and has remixed The Cinematic Orchestra and Para One. Here he drops a new album on Mystery Circles that comes on hugely limited red vinyl. Once again it showcases his richly textured, emotive ambient music that is all made using his collection of analog synthesisers, an old spinet piano and degraded tapes. His experimental techniques result in some truly moving and impactful ambient that stays with you long after it has finished playing.

Review: Those of a certain vintage may remember Blue, an IDM and ambient techno duo who released a string of pleasingly otherworldly EPs and albums in the late '90s. The Path of Least Resistance Meets The Point of No Return marks the duo's return to action after 22 years, albeit via a set of tracks originally intended to be released as an ambient album back in 2001. These updated and reworked versions are apparently different to those in their archives, but that doesn't matter; what's on offer is becalmed, otherworldly, often unusual and uniformly emotive, with highlights including the squelchy bass and elongated organ chords of 'Spacepport', the Pete Namlook style ambience of 'Ava X', the deep space symphony that is 'She Found The Colours' and the becalmed brilliance of 'Crystalline Form'.

Review: When it comes to a reissue such as this it can't be understated just how arresting the work of Boards of Canada can be in the right situation. This EP, that came to light in between Music Has The Right To Children and Geogaddi, represents the enigmatic duo at their most powerful, channeling their energy into four long-form tracks that draw on all of their combined strengths. "Kid For Today" is haunting and dark but utterly heartbreaking, whilst "Amo Bishop Roden" heads into more mysterious territory. "In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country" is eerie in its titular invitation to join a cult, and "Zoetrope" tips its hat to Terry Riley et al in its looping phrases, but really there's no describing the magnificence of these gems, pleasingly reissued on vinyl to beat the Discogs chancers.

Review: Chase Smith aka the W.T. Records and Apartment associate and documentary filmmaker Christa Majoras are back as brainwave research center with their second full length, Mosaic. Once again the sonically inquisitive pair mix up analogue synths with electro-acoustic experiments, epic and adventurous soundscapes and plenty of raw texture, hooky pop melodies and innocent rhythms. Along the way the duo take influence from their heroes including Ennio Morricone, John Carpenter and Kraftwerk on a record that was laid down in the back of Smith's synthesizer repair shop. It's an absorbing listen once more from this increasingly vital pair.

Review: Erased Tapes, London's purveyors of the new garde in ambient music, take on one of the legends in revered Oregon folk experimentalist Peter Broderick. On the Partners LP, he starts out with the spoken word poetry of the title track, then the sombre piano piece "In A Landscape", complete with eerie tape hiss lurking in the background. Other highlights include the emotional and bittersweet "Carried" and the awe inspiring closing track "Sometimes" where Broderick's vocals come gloriously come into the fold, on a price which is truly captivating and special.