Back catalogue: All genres

Review: Coyu's Barcelona-based Suara label continues to push the thresholds of hard techno, with this new one by legend Cisco Ferreira under his reknowned The Advent moniker. Brace yourself for The Movement EP, featuring heavy duty sonic artillery that must be handled with extreme caution. From the brutalist dystopian slammer "Witches Spell" to the unrelenting peak time fury of "Live 98 Tour" which is reminiscent of timeless classics like "Bad Boy", to the Detroit style breakneck electro funk of "Same 4" which is a collaboration with his son Zein. Ferreira proves yet again that even after 30 years in the game, he is still miles ahead of the rest - respect!

Review: This is a special sampler 12" taken from the Various Artists compilation Defend Your Planet that Avoidant Records put out. It features a heavyweight crew of electro mainstays, first of which are The Advent & Zein Ferreira. Their 'Defend Your Plane' is a turbo powered cosmic assault with skewed synths and high speed drums. Assembler Code's 'Line Of Sight' doesn't let up, powering on through sheet metal snares and juddering drum programming and then man like Carl Finlow layers in prickly melodies, dark sci-fi energy and booming bass. Analogue master Versalife shits things down with the shadowy 'SH09.'

Review: EPM20 Ep2 goes off on an electro tangent here. On this one, we have veteran producer Cisco Ferreira aka The Advent teaming up with his son Zein on the ferocious electro dystopia of "Strangeform" and as if that was not enough, another legend, the one and only Carl Finlow appears next with the abstract, cybernetic beats of "Optogenetic". Over on the flip, we have someone by the name of Detroit's Filthiest (quite an accolade!) who is in fact Motor City stalwart Julian Shamou (Motor City Electro Company) known for his work as 313 Bass Mechanics or Digitek, and longstanding hero of the Midwest Freddie Fresh should need no introduction; his contribution here under the Modulator alias is the deep mind IDM journey "Promars".

Review: Those with a deep knowledge of electro and techno will be salivating at the prospect of More Than A Machine: Part 1, an EP that boasts cuts from such legends of the scene as Sterac Electronics, The Advent and Christian Smith. All deliver the goods, of course, as does rising star Client 03, whose EP-opening 'Regression Container' brilliantly flips between shimmering, deep space ambient and warming, tactile electro dreaminess. Those looking for more rugged and robust club fare should check Sterac Electronics 'Reinstated', with its' out-there lead lines and machine-gun bass, and the sleazy, up-tempo futurism of the Adveny and Zein Ferreira's 'Seven'. Christian Smith's deep, Kraftwerk-influenced 'Pressure Drop' rounds off a predictably strong EP.

Review: The Newcastle based Signals collective have been delightfully unpredictable in their short existence to date, with releases from artists as varied as Legowelt, John Heckle and Oppenheimer Analysis also demonstrating an ear for quality that ensures the casual observer should always check in on their latest release. That honour falls on two local North East acts in the shape of sometime Claremont 56 artist Four Hands and iconic industrial figures Zoviet France. This clear twelve inch is the most creatively ambitious record from Signals yet, with the original material from Four Hands in essence a remix he did of "Mammoth Mountain", a track from the Manchester based artist Caro Snatch. Reimagined as a luscious ambient music with real attention paid to musicality, "Sea Of Love (Mammoth Mountain mix)" is a beautiful slice of music that can't fail to captivate across the almost eight minutes of its duration. Accompanying this, Zoviet France submitted two remixes, with the first - "November 2011, North Northumberland (Zoviet France dub)" - actually a recording of themselves playing the Four Hands version on a mobile phone while one of them chops wood. Complementing this slightly odd version is a sublime thirteen minute ambient piece that truly refigures the magic of Four Hands' original piece in Zoviet France's own inimitable style.

Review: The Tropical Disco crew continue to show an utter disregard for the season by serving up more of their seamy and summer grooves. The super strong Various Artists collection kicks off with the funky bass riffs of 'In Motion' from Phazed Groove, who ride the riffs and fluttering flute lines to the cosmos and back again. Ziggy Phunk gets more raw and punchy with a freewheeling disco house cut that will shake your booty loose and on the backside are two more timeless tracks: 'Funky Tranky' has lush trumpets reaching for the skies and 'Calabao' brings a real Latin vibe and flailing percussive energy.

Review: Some six years after the label's last outing, Moody Grass returns via a rock-solid outing from lesser-known producer Valentin Zad and - on the two A-side tracks at least -collaborator Klatt. EP opener '42' is wonderfully hard to pin down, with fuzzy coldwave synth sounds and glacial electronic melodies riding a beat that sits somewhere between relaxed electro and IDM, while 'Answer' adds icy synths and heady electronic string sounds to a locked-in tech-house beat. Elsewhere, 'What Have I Said' is another coldwave-influenced, post-electro nugget - this time with beefier sub-bass - and 'Artefacts' is a tough and ghostly chunk of electro/tech-house fusion.

Review: As one of the instigators of the UK 2-Step sound that paved the way for the seminal movements in Dubstep and Grime, Zed Bias, aka Maddslinky, is a true pioneer and stands as one the Godfathers of the UK Bass scene. With a prolific career spanning more than two decades, we're honoured to welcome him into the Unchained family with his debut release on the label.

His powerful 4-track EP echoes both cutting edge modern electronic as well as the nostalgia of UK dance history. All tracks wander into upper BPM territory and sonically span very wide ground; whether this be "Beijing", a track sure to carve itself a place in classic anthem history; or "DoenCa Tropical", a tune which draws new broken-beat boundaries around the 160bpm ethos.

Two tracks feature collaborations with Strategy and Bugz In the Attic's G Force - both music defining legends in their own right.

Spanning both the Drum'N'Bass universe and thought-provoking left-field bass, we hope this fresh release has you covered from club to couch.

Review: Three of techno's biggest names under different alias appear on this second release Stroboscopic Artefacts have put out to celebrate their five year tenure of abstract techno. "Totemism" may well be an off-cut from Zeitgeber's debut and self-titled album, a collaboration between Speedy J and SA label boss Lucy. It's reminiscent of the early, rhythmically dubby productions of the label's earlier releases, while L.B. Dub Corp (aka Luke Slater) provides a reduction of his thunderous Ostgut Ton mega-storm "Take It Down In Dub". With more five year celebrations on the way, this adds to the unexplainable tone of a label that's now firmly fixed in Berlin club culture.

Review: Zoo Brazil follows up the digital release of 'Stand Alone' with a fresh new wax edition on Housewax. Bringing together spitting snares, illiquid FM basses and shimmyingly panned plucks, 'Faceless' moves like a cyclical upward ascent to heaven, yet the movement is still towards a set of pearly gates that we can never quite reach. Then comes the spiritually dragged disco-drive of 'It's You', which assures us of our importance as we gaze into a future soothsaying font, the track's asynchronous voice calling out to us from without. Finally, 'The Night' brings an ultra-clip-distorted experiment to our ears, in true curveball fashion, an unusual bucking of the trends of the minimal techno world.