Back catalogue: All genres

Review: Newly signed to Ninja Tune, Ebbb debuts with a five-track EP that shows great intent. Emerging from the same London avant-garde live scene that birthed black midi and Black Country New Road, the band has quickly developed a unique sound in just a year. Their music blends pulsing rhythms, immersive electronic production, sparkling melodies, layered vocal harmonies, and beats that range from ambient to industrial. Described by the band themself as "Brian Wilson meets Death Grips," the EP is experimental and unpredictable yet deeply considered and precise with an idiosyncratic hybrid of sounds that showcases Ebbb's innovative and tightly crafted music.

Review: Swiss imprint Phantom Island specialises in the kind of atmospheric, slow-motion Balearica that looks far and wide for inspiration. Their latest EP, a collaboration between live electronic performer Tillman Ostendarp and singer/songwriter Gina Ete, naturally takes a similar approach. Title track 'Le Bouqet', for example, features subtle nods towards the more atmospheric material on Peter Gabriel's 1980s album 'So' with drowsy chords, ethereal electronics, clicking beats and the sweetest of vocals, while 'Tetra' is creepy, dark and atmospheric in the extreme, with live percussion catching the ear. Elsewhere, 'Nonchalant' is like trip-hop after a hit of opiates, 'Customer Care' is a wonky number with distorted vocals, ambient textures and West African percussion, and Fuga Ronto's remix of 'Le Bouquet' is a retro-futurist leftfield synth-pop gem with added dub delay.

Review: An experimental techno hexagram in LP form from Stockholm artist Evigt Morker. Without so much as a hint of context, the techno dark-shooter here drops his third LP for resident label Northern Electronics as a surprise, and the result is rather stunning. A bleary set of impressions, some tunes on this record clip the top edge of the mix, chinking our emotive armour. The effect is gastric, dehiscent, exuding bile: 'Hemilga Eldar' leaves us dumbstruck by its ambient eventidal winds and strangely sprawled drum shapes, while 'Sokaren Hittade' combines nyctophile cantos with electric twangs. The closer 'Det Blaser En Vind...' is a headland of humility, letting in much longer gusts of tuned air.

Review: Appearing on labels as varied as Phonica, Shall Not Fade and Growing Bin, Bartosz Kruczynski has certainly carved his own path as Earth Trax. Now he arrives on Lapsus, the Spanish label which tends towards more introspective electronica and ambient. From the tender folk of 'Closer Now' to the straining neo pop of 'Understand' it's clear we're in for an experience very different to the upfront club bangers we might have enjoyed in the past. Proving himself to be a bold and fearless creator capable of many different sounds, with Closer Now Kruczynski is taking Earth Trax well and truly interstellar.

Review: Bristolian Nick Edwards had an excellent run of things during the 2010s, releasing cuts on Planet Mu, Mordant Music, Punch Drunk, Perc Trax and WNCL, among others. He also established himself as a highlight on the European live electronic circuit. Then things quietened off, making the personal choice to avoid getting caught up in the circus of dance music and club culture at arguably the most perilous point in its history - ethically speaking. After five years in the wilderness, Edwards is back as Eoplekz with an eight-track mini-album for Selvamancer. Straddling acid warbles, dub tech, dirty squelching weirds, subtle hints of reggae and a resolute commitment to futurism, we're not sure exactly how to label Dirtbokz, but that's exactly the point. Lo-fi analogue adventures through the wormhole, and back again.

Review: A true enigma, an artist that represents all that was fascinating and romantic and alluring and intriguing about 20th Century sounds, Brian Eno was always going to need a feature length documentary, when the time was right. Premiering at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, Eno, Gary Hustwit's ode to the man, myth and legend, wowed critics and blew audiences away. Not least because it uses a computer programme which selects footage and edits the movie so a different version is shown at every screening. Innovation befitting Eno, removing the visuals and focusing on the sounds readjusts our vision to bring Eno into greater focus. The breadth of what's on this soundtrack is remarkable, from upfront indie on 'Stiff' and the weird folk-pop of 'Spinning Away', a John Cale collaboration, the ghostly post-rave of 'Cmon' with Fred Again, spectacular pianos of 'Motion In The Field', ethereal ambient vocals on 'There Were Bells', the angular punk dominating 'Third Uncle' - we could go on, and on, and on.

Review: Now here's a rarity for you. Not even many of the most committed megafans know that Brian Eno, Holger Czukay and J.Peter Schwalm, accompanied by Raoul Walton and Jern Atai, performed a secret live music show, outside the esteemed Kunst-und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany, situated in the city of Bonn, in August 1998. Forming a part of the opening party of Eno's Future Light-Lounge Proposal multimedia installation, this furtively-recorded album hears an exclusive slice of incidental "high-altitude food music", of course made during Brian Eno's airborne ambient era. Now reissued via Gronland, this five-piece cut of sophisti-ambi-krauttronica makes for a welcome surprise.

Review: Hauntologic '80s nostalgia-propagandizers Ghost Box return once again with a new one from Eric Zann, 'Ouroborindra'. Ghostly vocals mesh with a wide range of acoustic and electronic instrumentation here to produce an inspired album that draws on early 20th century cosmic horror fiction, resulting in some dastardly thematic combination of Lovecraft, BBC Christmas Horror stories, and Scarfolk. Radio-static noise and cavernous intakes of breath on tracks like 'Threshold' and 'Dols' blend with long ambient progressions and string sequences, recalling mock-'80s film influences such as the latest haunter 'Enys Men'. As ever with Ghost Box, a patented corecore sound is captured.

Review: The Exaltics is always a dab hand at crafting cinematic sci-fi scenes out of his dystopian electro, but even he took it to another level with Das Heise Experiment. Conceived in 2013 as a soundtrack to a graphic novel, it was the perfect outlet for Robert Witschakowski's music beyond the function of a club 12". The atmospheres and moods he elicits from the Exaltics sound bank are brilliantly rendered across the whole release, which gets the ten year treatment on this reissue with striking, all-new full colour artwork which brings the visuals to life alongside the music like never before.

Review: Exit North is a four-piece made up of Ulf Jansson, Charles Storm, Steve Jansen and Thomas Feiner, exploring classically-charged post-rock and taut songwriting wrapped around brooding soundscapes. After their debut back in 2018 the band are finally back for a follow-up. Recorded in Gothenburg and featuring an expansive cast of contributors, Anyway Still is a rich, engrossing listening experience full of poise and patience to match the grandiose musicality. In their considered approach, the pauses and rests are as vital as the notes played, all led by Feiner's cracked, compelling singing.

Review: Troekurovo Recordings is a production team made up of Toki Fuko, Vadim Basov and Evgeny Vorontsov and they have been hidden away deep in some enchanted Russian forests recording music. Now they are putting out the results on this superb double pack. This project started back in 2016 as a live experimental jam and is now an annual tradition made on loads of analogue gear on the banks of a canyon that was formed many years ago by a melting glacier. The locale provides inspiration - from the fresh country air to the meteor showers often visible overhead - for the music making which is strictly "no preparation, no pre-programming - hardware, friends and live improvisation only."