Back catalogue: All genres

Review: Senking and DYL reunite after their notable collaboration back on 2020's EP Uniformity Of Nature, this time going long on their first full-length, Diving Saucer Attack. This new work spans a total of six tracks, two of which have been produced individually and so highlight their shared passion for dub-heavy and adventurous electronic music while also bringing out the subtle differences in their styles. The album opens with 'Six Doors Down', a track featuring throbbing bass and haunting synths while subsequent cuts like 'A7r380R' explore intricate soundscapes before culminating in the sombre closing piece, 'Not Just Numbers.'

Review: Developed as off-the-cuff cassette overdubs, work taking place in Manchester and Massachusetts, combined with syncopated vocals, Human Engineering very much lives up to its name. Narrated by Rick Myers, with long-time collaborators Andy Votel and Sean Canty in charge of the noises, it's a strange place to spend some time but it's also oddly beautiful. At first ear, the aesthetic feels rough and mechanical, definitely anything but human. But as things draw us further in to whatever this plain is, the organic at the root of everything rises to the surface. Suddenly, the obtuse noises no longer sound alien, and instead have taken on their true form - products of people, perhaps artefacts from a time we're about to forget. One in which machines were ours, not their own.

Review: Schlammpeitziger gets some loving remix treatment here by a superb array of artists, many of whom will all be familiar to lovers of the famous Kompakt sound. Ada is first with a remix of 'Loch Ohne Licht' that is high in exotic melody and tropical bliss. Elsewhere a Wolfgang Voigt Megamix is dreamy and zoned out for the moments when you want to get lost in your own thoughts, and Andreas Dorau and Zwanie Jonson team up for a remix of 'Parzipan' that brings indie sleaze and underlapping groves to some skyward synth invention.

Review: The visionary electronic explorer that is Steve Spacek returns with a limited edition 7" release on his new label, SPA. It gets the full treatment with a full picture sleeve and he says there are no plans for a repress so this is your one and only chance to own SPA001. Opener 'Could It Be Your Luv' offers a gentle, soothing half-time rhythm that evokes a love bruk vibe that he says was inspired by the ethereal nights at the legendary Plastic People. The B-side cut 'Dancing In The Light' features a unique clippety-clop, horse-step rhythm that blends a futuristic lovers' rock style with bright synths and bold bass topped with a heartfelt vocal. It's designed for dancefloors that appreciate a one-foot skank.

Review: Transporting us to a waking dream of Los Angeles, two enigmatic music makers from the City of (Fallen) Angels present a truly stunning journey into hazy half-memories, afternoon fantasies, borrowed recollections and thoughts of things yet to happen. In many ways, Salt & Sugar Look The Same feels incomplete; tracks, half-tracks, movements, bits and pieces feel like our minds often work. Was that what we think it was? Did this happen? According to the official release burb, these 18 brief but beautiful compositions combine finger-plucked guitar work, the lens flare of electronica, and warped samples to create a take on the American primitivism music movement. The result is something that transcends boundaries of sound, time and place, and exists in a world of its own creation.

Review: Constellation Tatsu welcomes US artist Brendan Principato aka Saapato for what is a hugely conceptual new album based around decomposition. It was sparked when Saapato saw a dead fox lying by the side of the road on his way home from a job in a local warehouse. He used that as a jumping-off point to interrogate "transformation, interconnectedness, and renewal" and the five stages of decomposition, namely fresh, bloat, active decay, advanced decay and dry/remains. Several collaborators help him on his way as he sketches out various instrumental textures which variously have occasional shards of light, lingering melancholy and a subtle sense of hope.

Review: You had us at Sakamoto. Or rather you had us at "excerpts from Ryuichi Sakamoto's time working under Nippon Colombia's label, Better Days. First released in 1992, this 12-track compilation runs from tracks that appeared on the Japanese synth legend's debut album, Thousand Knives, first released in 1978, through to songs written with the iconic session group KYLYN, featuring celebrated guitar great Kazumi Watanabe. Ever the auteur, even if you didn't know this was Sakamoto in proper landmark mode, there's no chance the sounds here could really be confused for anyone or anything else. It's mature and intelligent, yet strangely - and typically - fun, childlike and a little cartoonish, sharing as much in common with experimental electronica that was emerging during the 1970s and 1980s as video game scores from the 1990s.

Review: Sasha's latest album was initially created to soundtrack Da Vinci Genius, a unique, immersive, multi-media exhibition celebrating the life and work of the inventor, artist and all-round Renaissance man Leonardo Da Vinci. Crafted in cahoots with a string of contributors to his popular Scene Delete set, the score (and subsequently this album) cannily combines neo-classical music (inspired by both vintage and more contemporary composers), the sweeping grandiosity of movie soundtracks, bubbly electronica, colourful ambient soundscapes, occasional nods to 15th century choral music and Sasha's usual emotive musical motifs. As the set progresses, it eases closer to the dancefloor sound the veteran DJ/producer is most famous for - which will delight his legion of fans - without ever fully committing. This is, after all, an immersive, eyes-closed listening experience first and foremost.

Review: Are there more consonants in this EP title than any other you will see this year? Probably. Does that make it even more essential? Definitely, because musically it is packed with goodness as Schlammpeitziger explores a world of loose but engaging rhythms. These subversive sounds play with exotic vocals, dubby hi-hats, new-age flutes, motorik grooves and spoken word samples. It's experimental but never forgets the magic of melody and rhythm to hypnotise, all with a twist of pop fun.

Review: Throughout is a new and exciting label out of Kyoto that impresses once more here with a brilliantly cool new collaboration between Jungle Brothers' Sensational and the producer Unbuilt. The former has laid down endless amounts of interesting sounds over the years and Poiesis now joins those hallowed ranks. It is aptly described as "a paranoid party-starter cast against a menacing greyscale backdrop of impressive dystopian grandeur." The production from Sensational is on point and a mix of basted and dubbed out while the bars remind of early underground rap greats - like Def Jux rewired through a more contemporary sound.

Review: We guarantee you won't have heard percussion like Serpente for some time. Offering three tracks of disorientating, complex beats, from 'Perda Outra' to 'Dobra De Ra', the triptych is rhythmically challenging but absolutely captivating, and certainly the kind of thing that's going to prove demanding for anyone obsessed with smooth, clean transitions in a mix. Flip this wild six pack and CZN's trio of tunes are similarly beguiling. Space age desert folk drums, suppressed ritualistic thrumming, and top-heavy pulsating arrangements that seem poised to generate high energy while never managing to release the tension. Quality bits we don't really know what else to say about - genre obsessives need not apply, this is no place for you or your structures and rules. But trust us, letting go of such ideals and diving in here will be one of the best things you do this week.

Review: Ben Shirken's first self-titled release as Ex Wiish is a haunting work of digital archaeology. Created with close collaborators including Pavel Milyakov, MIZU and Dorothy Carlos, H.D. Reliquary blends trumpet, violin and modular synths into a fragmented, post-human soundscape that will send shivers down your spine. Inspired by the idea of a hard drive as a sacred archive, Shirken filters live recordings through neural networks and cooks up ghostly echoes of imagined sessions. The result is raw, contemplative ambient with a host of guests all adding to the evocative, filmic nature of these otherworldly soundscapes.

Review: Vocalist, composer, lecturer, performance artist. And we can throw visionary into the mix, too. Katya Shirshkova wears a number of different hats, each as innovative and creative as the next. However, few sound as good as when she's matched with celebrated musical architect David Maranha for a two-track single that's nigh-on impossible to describe. Let alone find much information about. We'll do our best to articulate, though. Le Heron and A Reuniono are polar opposites attracted by their overall impact. On the first, we have vocalisation taking on many forms and sounds, each as strange and beguiling as the next, and really showing the range human voices are capable of. Sometimes soothing, sometimes shrill. The second replaces this with an electric guitar, running through tune-ups, tune-downs, distorted crescendos, muffled breakdowns, and other out-of-this-world effects.

Review: Sleepdial's debut for West Mineral is a mesmerising dive into ambient dub that blurs the lines between vaporous texture and low-end weight. Across nine tracks, the producer crafts smudged soundscapes rich with submerged rhythms and fractal echoes while evoking the spirit of early Pole or Vladislav Delay. Tracks like 'Icarus Rising' and 'Blue August' balance sensual warmth with dubwise grit and maintain a steady pulse through dreamy abstraction. This vinyl-first release feels both aquatic and etheric, with dub used as a method of spatial exploration. It is seriously hypnotic and emotionally nuanced, so is a strong statement from a promising new voice in ambient electronics.

Review: Soundwalk Collective's their latest project is released by Ubi Ku, a new imprint focused on Buddhism, spirituality and contemporary creation. This immersive album draws inspiration from Tibetan deities and the Himalayan Plateau and is marbled with field recordings made in Upper Mustang, Nepal, in 2016. The collection blends natural sounds, bells, drones and vocals into spine-tingling sermons that also include a Patti Smith contribution to 'Chasing the Demon.' It makes for an expansive, emotive sonic tale that draws on deep research and fieldwork to make for a sublime intersection of sound, environment and spirituality that is utterly profound.

Review: Andy Stott excels at exploring the spaces between electronic genres and has gone for many years now, He is known for crafting a unique, ever-evolving sound and after experimenting with minimal techno and dub early on, he defined his style in 2011's Passed Me By, a world of grey tones, static and experimental rhythms. In 2012's Luxury Problems, Alison Skidmore's haunting vocals added a human touch to his artificial landscapes then with the now ten-year-old Faith in Strangers, Stott fused his signature sound with influences like trap and minimalism. Over 54 minutes, the album builds in intensity and is still unmatched in its originality and impact.

Review: Daniel Miller and Gareth Jones head back into the studio and fire up the Eurorack modular synth for a third adventure into the great unknown of sounds and noises seemingly once heard in another dimension before being brought back to planet Earth with the hope of recreating whatever the rumbling or bleeping was. Electronic Music Improvisations Vol.3 is exactly that, building on the self-imposed musical parameters that guided the preceding two parts. Deep, otherworldly, vast, and unique, the beauty of Miller and Jones' Sunroof project is how it's also the opposite of all those words. Sparse, pared back, familiar, very much born of manmade machines, since these endeavours began we've crossed through the looking glass into a world that often feels like it's spinning out of human control, not least with the advent of music entirely made by AI. Here's proof people can still take complete charge of their creative process.

Review: For their new album Lust 1, Voice Actor's Noa Kurzweil joins Welsh producer Squu for a woozy, intimate exploration of ambient sensuality. Following the sprawling Sent From My Telephone, this 45-minute work feels more focused but just as dreamlike with Kurzweil's hushed, often unintelligible vocals hovering over Squu's glowing pads and dubby pulses. With additional glitchy textures, soft hits and melancholic drones, the work forms a world that teeters between erotic hypnosis and emotional exhaustion. Highlights like 'You' and 'Nekk' blend vague ambience with jolting detail while pushing the sung-spoke-whispered words to the brink of abstraction. This is an album rich in fleeting emotions, tactile textures and forgotten memories.