Back catalogue: All genres

Review: When you look back at the first PlayStation several landmark releases spring to mind - Resident Evil, Tekken 2, Crash Bandicoot - the list could go on much longer and should definitely include Wipeout and Wipeout 2097. Both were renowned for combining high pace, futuristic visuals with contemporary electronic club music from some of the biggest producers and acts at the time. Less remembered, in Europe at least, is the Ape Escape series, an intense party-platform title which arguably has the greatest dance music game score of all time. Comprising six tracks from that saga, this compilation of Soichi Terada's soundtracks emphasises that bold point. Opening on the crisp, punchy techno drive of 'Specters Factory', we find ourselves in suitably spooky jungle ('Haunted House'), rumbling dnb ('Spectors Castle') and roughneck hardcore bass ('Coasters'), among other made up genres. A collection which resembles Terada's amazing 1996 album, Sumo Jungle and makes a case for the Japanese enigma as one of dance music's most underrated geniuses.

Review: Club scene doyen, dance music veteran, and rave culture hero Johannes Auvinen opts to depart from the dance floor, at least for the time being, and deliver Arles - an ode to the other side of the electronic-acid scene, those sounds that make most sense after the chaos and carnage of a party have subsided and you're safely home on the couch with you and yours and all dearest.
And it works as well as it should, with the experience both of living in that world and making anthems for it clearly evident in the overall production quality and ideas. Arles is a warm blanket, that friendly therapist, an album that understands where you've been because it was there too. Remarkably, despite what that may suggest, this is not ambient or particularly leftfield stuff. Instead, it's rhythmic, pop-infused electronica goodness, for want of a more succinct, less awkward turn of phrase.

Review: It's been 40 years since Michal Turtle released his seminal, ground-breaking album Music From The Living Room into the world and promptly disappeared back into the aether. An extremely obscure cult classic known only to deep diggers and aficionados of the finest order, it wasn't until Music From Memory reissued some of the tracks from it via retrospective compilations of Turtle's unreleased music almost 30 years later that his name become more widely known and a new generation were able to discover the artist's unique and pioneering style of experimental electronic music production, the majority of it very much ahead of its time, and to this day still timeless. Invisible Inc. contacted Turtle in the summer of 2023 about releasing something else by him, and it was during this exchange of emails that ideas were expressed about releasing not simply a straightforward reissue of Music From The Living Room to mark its 40th anniversary (the album has never been reissued in full), but rather a re-imagined and re-constructed take on the album, bringing contemporary techniques, styles and newly recorded vocal and instrument parts into the mix and breathing new life into these wonderful compositions. Collaborators old and new were brought into the studio and the songs re-created from the ground up. Familiar songs like 'Are You Psychic?' and 'Village Voice' are overhauled and echo remnants of their original counterparts, but simultaneously sound like completely new tracks. The always mesmerising 'Phantoms Of Dreamland' is represented through a live recording at Cafe OTO, featuring original album vocalist Lucianne Lasalle and regular collaborator HOVE on electronics. The remaining tracks, however, will be completely new to the ears of most people, never having been reissued or heard in these new forms ever before.

Review: French label Macadam Mambo has always operated at the fringes of electronic music. Whether doing disco, world music or experimental sounds it has always had its own odd but alluring musical identity. For this one Tutu Ta goes deep the world of dub and electronics across 12 dark yet nuanced cuts on the Lonely Eyes album. It's a world of wonder with warped synths and ghostly vocal fragments, DIY rhythms and smeared pads that bend space and time. Lighter dubs like 'Talk Of Da Town' sit next to menacing shanks such as 'Krunk (Woody Flute mix)' while the percussive swagger of 'Kilburn Market Dub' is one to get you moving.

Review: Hailing from Brescia, Italy, brothers Michele and Simone Bornati are Twoonky, and in 2023 return to the fabulously varied and always on-point Macadam Mambo imprint for another immersive journey through electronica, alt-synthesised pop, chill out, downtempo and exotic, seductive sounds. Following on from 2019's Dezzo, which landed on the same label and achieved widespread acclaim, it's safe to say this second opus lives up to expectations. At once organic in feeling but high tech in production process, distorted vocals, analogue guitars, strange electronic effects, sax samples and more combine to create mutant rhythms and harmonies, avant-garde tones that pull us in further as things bore into the mind's ear, capturing the unique spirit of the production pair responsible, themselves highly influenced by the noises that have found a home at Spettro, a local club in their hometown known for exploratory bookings.