Back catalogue: All genres

Review: Santa Cruz based hardcore upstarts Scowl follow up their blistering 2021 debut full-length How Flowers Grow with the genre-bending EP Psychic Dance Routine. Channelling riot grrl spirit and embracing influences from the likes of X-Ray Spex, The Breeders and L7, these five new cuts showcase the true range of frontwoman Kat Moss who trades in her feral bark for a sultry cadence, with results landing somewhere between Hole or The Distillers if they were at a dingy basement show. Following on from an appearance at Coachella (the first instance of the festival ever offering their expansive platform to hardcore acts), it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to see Scowl branching out and diversifying their sound in such brazen fashion. What is surprising is just how naturally they've managed to bridge the gap between hardcore and hook-laden anthems, resulting in a tight snappy display of where their artistic intentions lay for the promising future ahead.

Review: 'Does Spring Hide Its Joy' is an immersive audio experience by American composer Kali Malone featuring the likes of Stephen O'Malley and Lucy Railton. Created and recorded in the empty Berlin Funkhaus & Monom during the lockdown of spring 2020, the music is a study in long-form, non-linear durational composition, with dramatic ringing synth patches that reverberate through both the mind and the tower Malone recorded in. With a 10-minute film accompaniment, the iconic nineteenth-century Grade II listed building was the stage for Malone's composition, which breathes and bellows through porous brick walls, reverberating toward the surface.

Review: Featuring material recorded 30 years ago, the 12th volume in the late Klaus Schulze's La Vie Electronique series features two full pieces (one split into three movements over two CDs) that first surfaced on the long-serving electronic experimentalist's 10-disc Silver Edition box set in 1993. 'Picasso Geht Spaziren' ("Picasso Goes For a Walk") holds the title of Schulze's longest released composition - a sublimely spacey, two-and-a-half hour synthesizer exploration that was initially intended to be used as the soundtrack to a German movie. The second piece is 'The Music Box', a warmer and more colourful journey through synthesizer-driven ambient which was named in honour of a Laurel and Hardy movie and was later used by one institution as part of music therapy sessions with serious alcoholics.

Review: Way back in 2000, dub heavyweight Scientist got his mitts on the parts to Culture's 199 album 'Payday'. The resultant radical dub revisions were, somewhat predictably, brilliant - as this belated CD reissue of the classic set emphatically proves. As critics pointed out at the time, it's arguably far more of a Scientist album than a Culture one, with the latter's delay and reverb-laden vocals (plus some snippets of his backing band's instrumentation) seemingly bobbing and weaving around weighty basslines and echo-laden dub drums. The plentiful highlights include the brilliantly spaced-out 'Beam Me Up Dubby', the deep, driving and horn-heavy 'Intergalactic Excursion' and the thrillingly heavy and abstract 'E Equals MC Squared'.

Review: While originating in Virginia before they would become staples of the Washington D.C. scene, Scream are another classic Dischord Records alumni, who after reforming in 2009 for a run of shows, dropped their 2011 Complete Control Sessions EP, featuring a live performance recorded at the iconic Studio 606 of Nirvana/Foo Fighters hero Dave Grohl. Highly reinvigorated, the band would then embark on an EU tour, but the lack of new a new full-length in the three long decades since the release of Fumble, had rumour and anticipation rife amongst the avid fanbase. With recording sessions taking place at Inner Ear Studio by Don Zientara and Ian Mackaye (Minor Threat, Fugazi) before it shut down in 2021, D.C Special delivers the long-awaited sixth full-length from one of the definitive OG hardcore acts and should offer both lifelong fans and newcomers to the scene either a nostalgic return to form, or a hardcore homework lesson of vital importance.

Review: Lithuanian label Greyscale's full-length catalogue is back with another doozy and this one comes from Japanese dub techno don Silentwave. Dub Melancolia lays out a dynamic vision across 11 slick tracks that all add up to a superb cinematic experience. Each of the deeply hypnotic cuts are detailed with exquisite additions like moody strings, celestial melodies and wintery pads. Label owner grad_u also appears with a remix of his own and further highlights com from the emotional 'Indigenous Dance' and 'Eden', a stylish sunning mid-tempo melody peaker. This one goes way beyond the dancefloor.

Review: Festival favourites and working-class heroes Sleaford Mods hail from the East Midlands and have become the voice of the oppressed and the pissed off. Their gritty, lo-fi, raw and stripped-back music is powered by punky electronic beats and overlaid with bars spat out with real anger and ire. They have churned out plenty of it by now, subtle tweaking the template each time but never losing the visceral appeal. This new album UK Grim - a play on UK Grime? - is more dancefloor focussed than before it with the angst and pitfalls of modern life all addressed. It's another winner, no doubt.

Review: Even by the standards of nerd-friendly underground deep house, Germany's Smallpeople work slowly. This debut album has been three years in the making, during which time they've released just a handful of 12" singles. Like much of their previous output, Salty Days is very deep; in fact, some of the tracks are so understated they'd be greeted by whispers on the dancefloor. There are more uptempo moments, of course - see the fluid snappiness of "Down With Your Vision" or mildly sweaty "Beauclair" - but the overall mood is intoxicatingly deep and atmospheric. In truth, it's all the better for it. You see, at times Salty Days is mesmerizing.

Review: Soil & Pimp Sessions is a Japanese jazz band with an explosive sound. Made up of five musicians Shacho, Tabu Zombie, Josei on piano, Akita Goldman on bass and Midorin on drums, they are primarily an expressive live outfit who serve up rough and ready sounds that fire your every single synapse. They have been playing for 20 years now but their breakout album Pimp Master came in 2006 and saw them go on to play at Glastonbury the year after. This latest record is another exceptional one that goes from intense and complex highs to beautiful tender and vulnerable moments of calm.

Review: First released way back in 1974 on the King Universal label, Spirale's sole LP has long been a cult classic. It has long deserved a CD reissue, largely because the album's heady mixture of spiritual and progressive jazz is one of the finest examples of musical fusion around. That much is evident from opener 'Rising', a drowsy and fittingly titled chunk of sun-speckled spirituality, and the chiming, new age influenced bliss of 'Cabral, Anno 1', where bells, intricate percussion instruments and twittering bird sounds ushers in a stretched-out jazz groove. Elsewhere, 'Una Ballata Par Yanaz' is a deep, fluid, slow-motion number, while epic closing cut 'Peperoncino (Cose Vecchi, Cose Nuove)' is progressive jazz at its finest.

Review: Lithuania's Greyscale label has knocked it out of the park with its first nine releases and now this 10th follows that same high-class pattern. It finds the revered Submersion - of labels like Silent Season and Milieu Music - serving up more of his textbook deep ambient dives, with elongated synth craft and heady atmospheres all sinking you into a mindful state. The rainy day feel of the tracks and their misty pads is offset by constant subtle hints of hope and optimism in the ever-shifting melodies. It makes for an uplifting and deeply moving listen that you will keep on coming back to for more.

Review: Subset makes a welcome return to Greyscale with his second full-length album after the success that was This Quiet Earth. The follow-up, Ambient Particles, is another widescreen work of great cinematic details that again showcase Sunset's studio skills. The track titles give an insight into his thinking behind the music with the likes of 'Sandstorm on Mars' swirl of textured pads over baron landscapes of undulating bass and 'Cocooned Under the Stars' feels adrift in the endless darkness of space with only distant twinkling pads for company. Elsewhere 'Chains In The Wind' is a spacious and dubby ambient techno trip and 'Ambient Particles' brings a little more movement with its rolling drums. A sophisticated and soothing album once more from Subset.

Review: A quarter of a century after it first arrived in record stores, Suede's third studio album, Coming Up, still sounds remarkably fresh. One of the undisputed artistic peaks of the Britpop movement, it was famously recorded after internal struggles led to the departure of one of the band's driving forces, guitarist Bernard Butler. Yet listening to the album, you'd never know. Brett Anderson's vocal performances are impeccable, while the music - swooping, impactful and infectious - is amongst the best the band ever recorded. This anniversary edition expands the album via a second disc of B-sides from the period, while the deluxe, hardback book style packaging also includes a rather nice booklet full of band photos and full lyrics.

Review: Recorded before he fully defined spiritual jazz and dived head-first into cosmic, avant-garde experimentation, 1959's Jazz In Silhouette remains one of Sun Ra's most significant works - a more traditional (comparatively speaking) set that still boasts a serious amount of Afro-futurist intent amongst nods to jazz fashions of the period. This double-disc edition boasts remastered versions of the original mono and later stereo mixes, alongside a wealth of bonus tracks recorded at the time. These sonic treats include the gently bossa-flecked 'Great Balls of Fire', the cosmic-minded (but jolly and jaunty 'Blues From Saturn'), and an incomplete, in-progress take on album favourite 'Horroscope' that's one of the most "big band jazz" recordings in the great man's epic catalogue.

Review: After a run which has seen her re-recording her early albums in defiance of a restrictive record deal, Taylor Swift dropped a bomb at the MTV VMAs this year by announcing her tenth studio album. Since then, the information has been trickling out with the steady precision we expect from one of pop's biggest stars, and finally we can clutch Midnights. An album steeped in concept and supposedly drawing from 13 different sleepless nights from throughout Swift's life, it's a reflection on those strange places we go in ourselves when we choose to burn the midnight oil, crafted alongside her steadfast producer Jack Antonoff. There are a variety of editions of this highly anticipated album, all with different covers, and this deluxe Lavender CD edition is sure to be one of the most coveted.

Review: Cult guitarist Gabor Szabo's Live in Cleveland 1976 album is 50 minutes of some of his finest work. This one was originally captured for radio broadcast and is a real joy. It is the sound of an artist really embracing playing live - and sounding quite different from how he does on record. In 1976 his quartet comprised George Cables (or Joanne Grauer) on piano, Tony Dumas on bass and Sherman Ferguson on drums, so had real clout. This concert was part of a series of 13-hour concerts broadcast on more than 40 FM radio stations.