Back catalogue: All genres

Review: Bedford-based trio Zenana never made much of an impact when they were first active in the 1980s but have become the toast of the world's media following the rediscovery of their excellent, Italo and Hi-NRG-influenced 1986 synth-pop single, 'Witches', by crate diggers a couple of years back. Here that fine track, originally produced in terraced house in Cornwall by the brother of bandmember Anita Tedder, gets the reissue treatment on Rush Hour's RSS series - thanks, in no small part, to a new (but authentically 80s sounding) extended remix from long-established Bristol DJ/production duo Bedmo Disco. Their flipside 'Spell of Love' version strips back and stretches out the track, taking cues from NYC proto-house, Martin Rushent dubs and mid-80s Shep Pettibone remixes. It's the 12" dance mix the song never had first time round.

Review:  Zy The Way hail from Taiwan and are recognised as pioneers of the jazz scene in Asia. Their signature style is to infuse their work with ancient Chinese poetry and their first outing 'A Different Destiny,' reimagined 3,000-year-old poems curated by Confucius and earned them plenty of plaudits. Now, they unveil two EPs as a prelude to their upcoming album. Collaborating with renowned remixers who operate at the jazz-electronic crossroads, they present 'Ten Acres' with a remarkable remix by Mark de Clive Lowe. Maintaining jazz's essence while igniting the dancefloor, this EP bridges East and West, past and present and shows Zy The Way as a transformative musical force who are pushing boundaries.

Review: This limited gatefold edition compilation, curated by Leri Ahel & Zeljko Luketic, brings together 18 rare disco tracks from Yugoslavian artists, pressed on 2 x vinyl. Featuring the likes of KIM Band, Gabi Novak, Arian, Ljupka Dimitrovska, and more, the collection is sourced from original master tapes, ensuring pristine audio quality. Disco, a Trojan horse in Yugoslavia's pop music scene, thrived for an unexpectedly long time. Influenced by American and European disco acts like Boney M and Amanda Lear, Yugoslav producers and record companies like Jugoton and PGP RTB embraced the genre's vibrant energy. The scene fostered a unique blend of genre hybrids, electronic experimentation, and bold themes, with artists creating memorable and innovative disco music. This compilation captures the spirit of that era, shows both chart-toppers like Zdravko Colic and experimental gems. It highlights the creativity and freedom that disco provided, allowing musicians to push boundaries and deliver unforgettable tunes.

Review: Label affiliates Mytron and Zongamin make a combined return to the ever-on-point Canadian stable Multi Kulti, delivering an extended selection of typically off-kilter, genre-bending sonic mastery. In what appears to be a match made in the leftfield heavens, the duo join forces to explore dance-ish music's outer reaches, blending tribal motifs with 8-bit sampling and all manner of wonkiness. From the blissful bells of Conjunction With Reality to the bass-heavy throb of GHX, there is unsurprisingly plenty to savour here. Opening cut '08932168' blends enchanting lead melodies with rolling polyrhythms and dubbed-out effects before the equatorial percussion of 'Calliope Omniglot' makes way for the wiggy atmospherics of the collection's title track. Highly recommended.

Review: zake has written a new album to get 2025 underway in his usual prolific fashion, and it comes as both a triple CD set with the same tracks in different versions, but also as this special vinyl release with five different pieces from his Caelum series, limited to just 200 copies. As you would expect from this most masterful ambient leader, this is another immersive work that blends shifting synthscapes with melancholic chord work, beautiful keys with more lingering feelings of sadness. Another triumph if you ask us.

Review: Ambient innovator make seems to drop something new almost every week. But you won't hear us complain because few have a breadth and depth of sound that matches his lo-fi and absorbing output on his home US label Past Inside the Present. He dropped the first volume of his Orchestral Tape Studies way back in 2019, and finally follows it up now with a second volume. Once again this is a selection of richly layered movements of fragmented orchestral loops that all pay homage to minimalist symphonic composers and orchestras and makes use of field recordings as well as gentle drones to soothe your soul.

Review: Here comes yet another vital album of enthralling ambient from the super prolific Past Inside The Present label head zake aka Zach Frizzell. This is a numbered audiophile vinyl version (including a download code limited to 150 copies) of Veta, which is a world of smoky half-tones that mix up modern ambient classical with analogue production. The artist himself describes the work as "exercise in knowing when to draw back the mix" which speaks to its perfectly reduced sound - a blend of the organic and the synthetic that is masterfully layered and laden with heavy emotions.

Review: Stay With Me is an album by Past Inside The Present label head zake and T.R. Jordan from back in 2022. Now it has been revisited for a series of remixes by Dotlight and extra synth and field recording additions by zake that have all been pressed up to 180 gram purple vinyl. It is a work of immersive ambient beauty, with slowly shifting soundscapes defined by the most subtle of synth wisps, but each conveys a great feeling. Dutch guitarist Dotlights brings gentle beats to the likes of 'Infinite Sound' that add downtempo depths and late night romance to the already soothing original sounds.

Review: Isle Of Jura's latest on-point release is a new edition of Zann's sought-after 1990 set "Strange Ways/Inside Jungle", a self-released album of experimental, left-of-centre musical fusions produced in the band's basement studio in Dortmund. The record's genius lies in the band's mixture of Eno/Byrne style ambient motifs, delay-laden electronic beats, densely layered African and South American percussion sounds and chiming instruments from South East Asia. There are some suitably trippy tricks employed here and there - backwards vocals, layered field recordings and so on - but also snaking sax lines and cheery synthesizer melodies. In other words, it's an inspired, hard-to-pigeonhole album that just gets better with each successive listen.

Review: In the annals of electro funk and boogie, you can't overlook the imposing presence of Zapp. It's telling they were picked up by George Clinton and sent to Detroit to record their debut with Bootsy Collins, and just look at the results. On this most seminal of debut albums, the opening gambit of 'More Bounce To The Ounce' tells you everything you need to know - one of the nastiest b-lines ever committed to wax, with one of the most iconic talkbox performances flown in over the top. Overall though, Zapp 1 is a rounded affair with the more classically styled 'Be Alright' and tightly wound funker 'Freedom', capturing the band when they were all-rounders before going deeper into the synth side of things as the 80s wore on.

Review: The Zawose Queens' debut album Maisha is a captivating blend of traditional Gogo music from Tanzania with modern electronic elements, showcasing the rich cultural heritage of the Zawose family while pushing boundaries. Produced by Oli Barton-Wood and Tom Excell, the album features 11 original tracks that seamlessly fuse ancestral rhythms with contemporary production techniques. Drawing on their deep roots in Gogo music, Leah and Pendo Zawose deliver powerful vocals and masterful instrumentation, accompanied by the percussive rhythms of the muheme drums and the resonant sounds of the illimba thumb piano. Songs like 'Lule Lule' and 'Kusekala Kwa Nyungu' capture the essence of go go tradition, while tracks like 'Fahari Yetu' and 'Sauti Ya Mama' celebrate themes of heritage and maternal love. Maisha is not just an album; it's a statement of empowerment for women artists in East Africa and beyond. The Zawose Queens have boldly stepped into the spotlight, reclaiming their place in the musical landscape and inspiring others to follow suit.

Review: The rise of Ilian Tape has been piloted by Dario and Marco Zenker with a steady assurance, so it makes perfect sense for the brothers to helm the first long player project from the Munich label. Immersion is a vibrant, atmospheric stroll through their various influences and inspirations with plenty to admire amongst the ten tracks. There is the bustling, leftfield breakbeat techno of "TSV WB" and pounding "High Club" (a no-nonsense dancefloor assault blessed with occasional eyes-closed chords), as well as sublime tech-jazz of "Cornel 21" and pitched-down junglisms of "Innef Runs". Interestingly, there are also a number of crusty, distorted ambient interludes, with "Erbquake" sounding particularly potent.

Review: There's an undeniably far-out feel to the Zenker Brothers' second album, Cosmic Transmission, which adds further layers of trippy textures, hallucinatory sounds and smoky intensity to the aural blueprint first explored on their 2015 debut full-length Immersion. There's much to admire throughout, from the mind-bending ambient weirdness of opener 'When Nothing is Safe', and the slipped dub haze of 'Whose In Control', to the drug-addled IDM of 'Natural Connection', and the polyrhythmic techno trip of 'Divided Society'. Most striking of all is the trio of tracks that close the album, all of which are powered forwards not by heavy techno beats (or even their usual crunchy, off-kilter breakbeats) but rather a series of ear-catching, fuzz-soaked synthesizer arpeggio lines.

Review: Music From Dreams is a label that never fails to live up to its name. Next to soundtrack your gentle passage from awake to whatever comes next is The Zenmenn and John Moods. The Zenmenn debuted on this label back in April 2021 with Entry The Zenmenn which showed off their beat-making credentials. Not much else is known about them and the same can be said of John Moods. What we do know is that they make superbly horizontal music together as is demonstrated here. These are lush instrumental tracks that lean on folk, soft and yacht rock to help you empty your mind of all woes.

Review: 17 years old and still sounding refreshing, light, breezy, soulful and smoky; the essence and vibe of Zero 7's debut album can never be repeated, but it can be repressed. Its first reissue since 2015, across two 12"s you can enjoy some of the best downtempo and poppy Balearica made by the duo Binns & Hardaker and a young Sia on vocals. Highlights, as always, include the dreamy lounge lapping jazz of "Red Dust", the fizzy Motown on mushrooms horns of "Give It Away" and the heartmelting yearns of "Distractions". Timeless downtempo gold, if this isn't in your collection now is most definitely the time.

Review: The generous run of Zero 7 reissues continues with the welcome return of their 2006 LP "The Garden". While it received something of a frosty reception on release, this album has refined with age to become a fan favourite and an all-round wonderfully accomplished work that highlights all the best qualities of Henry Binns and Sam Hardaker. From lush, starry-eyed and '60s tinged psychedelia to bittersweet pop and plenty of lounge-ready moods, it's incredibly easy to sink into like all the Zero 7 material, but shot through with depth to keep you listening attentively. Sia also makes some standout appearances, not least "Throw It All Away" and "Waiting To Die", while Jose Gonzalez is on stunning form too. Fans have been waiting a long time for this, and no doubt there will be plenty more converts to the Zero 7 sound too.

Review: Synth-pop duo Marina Zispin aka Bianca Scout and Martyn Reid lead you on a trip into nocturnal spaces with this new album Now You See Me (Now You Don't). It is a place where time and memory come together into shadowy worlds of mechanical groves, airy melodies and retro-future imagery. N 'Piece Of Mind' the ghost of bands like Jy Division lurk in the stark drums and melancholic guitar lines, while 'Penthouse Samba' taps into dark disco chug and 'Venus Opulence' is a more minimal, sky and experimental concoction that will freak you out if you listen to it one with the lights out.

Review: Freaky, playful synthwork from Sao Paolo's Zopelar on the ever-reliable Tartelet imprint. Over eight immensely juiced, irreverent meditations on synth funk, boogie, deep house, Italo disco and acid, Zope showcases a mastery of foregrounding unconventional musical forces, cheeky and envelope-pushing analogue synth programming and genre-mangling at its very best. Highlights include the heart-in-mouth sway of 'Distraction', which at times sounds like a lovechild of Marcellus Pittman and Genesis-era Larry Heard, the eerie, questing squelch of seductive B-side opener 'Safe In The Dark' and the queasy, euphoric alarmism of lost freestyle hit 'Free Your Spirit (Ritmo II). Very addictive.