New releases last eight weeks: Bass

Review: London's seasoned producer ADMNTi with four tracks that distil years of immersion in tech-house, jungle and grime into sharp, percussive club tools with distinct UK flair. 'Second Hand Sushi' drives the point home with its snapping drums, snarling basslines and wiry synth stabsibig-room energy and definitely no excess fat. 'Lost Fruits' stays steppy, leaning into sub pressure and pirate radio textures, soundbites crackling like a tape pack rewind. On the flip, 'Diptych' shifts tone without dropping paceichopped strings and warped vocals glide over crunchy drum work, locking into a more introspective groove. Closer 'Shrublands' dips further into dubwise atmospherics, pairing wobbly low-end with hazy flute lines and ghosted sax, while snippets of graffiti lore from both London and New York float through the mist. Early support from Ben UFO, Enzo Siragusa and Tristan da Cunha points to the range and functionality of these cutsiwhether heads-down or heads-up, they pull threads from the capital's soundsystem heritage into something that works across times and tempos. A strong first outing for Forms World and a clear step forward from ADMNTi.

Review: Bruce is back for the second release from Poorly Knit and it's an experimental three-track for more out there dancefloors. 'Belly (Two Mississippi)' has hurried drum loops that flap and underlap beneath tortured pads, shrieking elephant trumpets and ghoulish vocals that really are unsettling. 'Burned Alive (More Gauze)' as you may guess from the title, is another freaky bit of rhythm and sound with distant alarms, mangled vocal fragments and a dub underbelly. 'Hot One (Chapped Lips version)' is a wispy and minimal soundscape full of paranoia and intrigue. Play loud, but only if you dare.

Review: This is a four-track sampler taken from parts one and two of the One Hundred and Fifty Steps VEP series which is all about exploring the rise of 150 bpm dubstep, a sound that characterised by fast basslines, broken rhythms and heavy halftime pulses. From VEP pt. 1, L.A.'s Carre delivers pacey wobblers and then Berlin's Formella debuts with playful breaks and more wobbly bass on 'Dripstep'. VEP pt. 2 features Leipzig's Old Man Crane with their intricate, syncopated style shinning through on 'Grey' and Valencia's Andrae Durden then shows class with a Kryptic Minds-inspired low-end powerhouse.

Review: Fast Castle opens up its 2025 with a five-tracker from Gent1e $oul that expands his bass-heavy sound into new club terrain. From the swampy overdriven bass of opener '4TC Boom' to the jersey-infused 'Paladin', which is a fine collab with Rolex3k, each track hits with intent. '+390' brings grimy M1 flutes to UK techno rhythms, while 'Steppe Lancer' channels dark, twisted energy for late-night floors. Closer 'Parthian Tactics' dives into introspective dubstep that is heavy yet hypnotic. With rich Bronze Age-inspired artwork by Jonas, Stable Units is both a superb sonic weapon and furtherment of deep dubstep.

Review: Following 'Happy Lovers' just over six months ago, Leo Gibbon returns with another inspiring collection. While the last EP flung its arms wide open to embrace the worlds of house, garage and soulful categories in between, this time we find him zoning in on the 140 grime vibe as he links with Trim for two exceptional messages. 'Orbit Step' is a woozy spacious stepper that gives plenty of space for Trim to flow out some ridiculously smart 16s. 'Danny & Darren' carries much more of a harder edge as Trim gets guttural and unleashes his inner yardman wisdom. Complete with instrumentals and acapellas, Leo and Trim have delivered something really special and super versatile right here.

Review: PQ (Peter Jones) is known for his role behind the keys in Bugandan-techno ensemble Nihiloxica, but releases like these are where things get interesting. The term "key player" can of course apply to bass music bossmanship inasmuch as it can refer to actual chops on the plastic ivories. And oh boy does Jones know it, delivering a scattershot range of grime and minimal bounce-bass, skirting seemingly every tempo and shape. Not overthinking it, 'Ketty Stepper Anthem' - if we're to insist on using the word "unreal" - has to be the least real tune here, curling through arclit bass design and a mathy crossrhythm, evidencing his ability to keep up with shockingly fast percussive changes.

Review: The debut full-length from Bangladeshi-Canadian producer Raf Reza fuses UK soundsystem culture with his own deep-rooted Bangladeshi influences. Raised in Tokyo and musically shaped in Toronto and Glasgow, Reza blends dub, bleep, breaks and jungle with Baul music samples and vintage Bengali film soundtracks here and it results in a brilliantly original style. The album explores sonic futurism and asks how diasporic and Dhaka-based electronic cultures can intersect. With a unique mix of field recordings, semi-obscured monologues and dubwise textures, Reza's identity-driven narrative comes to life and cements him as a bold, genre-bending voice in cultural fusion and sound.

Review: The return of Sorrow, characteristically with a gracefully morose new six-tracker, 'Unrequited'. "How can I forgive?" goes the rheum-smeared vocal sample opening out the Bristolian artist's new opener 'Monologue', after which amnestic choral lines follow like heavenly flights, singing thee to thy rest. Many a temporal restretching of the 2-step grief-garage paradigm follow, as on the slo-mo dancehall of 'Fallen Angel', the pan-fluting, blossom treeing dubstep of 'Unrequited', and an unlikely future downtempo saudade, 'Hedron'. It's nice to hear Sorrow back in action; without his continued presence, we might otherwise drown our own in other, less musical liquids.

Review: Ehua treads into new territory with her debut full-length, Panta Rei, arriving via 3024 after an extended period of experimentation and self-reflection. Over 18 months, the London producer and DJ - originally from Italy - fused deep bass mutations with live percussion, acoustic textures, and, for the first time, her own voice. The result is a humanistic record, with glassy sonic abstractions, vocal reversions and rhythmic interruptions serving plenty space for intimacy and contrast. Ahead of a launch party scheduled in South London on April 24th, hosted by 3024 and Planet Wax, the likes of 'White', 'Bumju' and 'Albicocca' are propulsive, driving integrators of brain and body, perfect for imminent deployment in the divey New Cross establishment.

Review: Nazar, the nom-de-guerre of an anonymous Manchester-based producer, presents their sophomore album Demilitarize, following his acclaimed 2020 debut Guerrilla, released amid the pandemic. Nazar's first album securely firmed the artist's name within and beyond the Hyperdub diaspora, thanks to its unique melding of Angolan kuduro music with rough textures, field recordings, and media clips, retelling the story of his family's exile from the Angolan Civil War. Nazar is the son of Jonas Savimbi, a former general of the Angolan independence movement; after Angola's emancipation from Portuguese colonial rule, Nazar relocated to suburban Brussels. More recently, he fell seriously ill with tuberculosis contracted in Angola; battling mortality, the new album reflects a mix of introspection and blossoming love, which contrasts the warring rawness of his debut. Demilitarize is dreamier, with Nazar's submerged, mantra-like vocals at the forefront, evoking artists far-removed from the crumby, unedifyingly rough kuduro that characterised his first EP 'Enclave'. Nazar explains, "I wanted to create something almost metaphysical, inspired by the cyberpunk anime Ghost In The Shell." The sound is delicate, with relatively sculpted rhythms enveloping his own recorded voice throughout.

Review: After years of silence, Colombia's Insurgentes, which is run by DJ Lomalinda and Verraco, is back for one final transmission, and we're here for it: la ultima vez is a superb swan song that comes in the form of Fiera, a powerful long player from Argentine producer Seph that was written between 2022 and 2023. It's his most daring work yet and takes the form of eight restless, shape-shifting tracks that dodge predictability and blaze through techno, 90s IDM, dub and ambient with finesse. Limited to 300 vinyl copies, Fiera pays tribute to Insurgentes' decade-long legacy of sonic rebellion and though it's a bittersweet ending, without Insurgentes, there would be no TraTraTrax and no roots for the future we're now living.

Review: Vegyn flips Moon Safari inside out, running Air's 1998 debut through his distinct anoxia of gauzy electronics and fleet rhythm. After tide blurring work with Frank Ocean and Travis Scott, Joe Thornalley approaches the source material not as a sacred object, but as raw clay to reshape, stretching melodies, reframing grooves, twisting moods. It's a full-album rework, track by track, with the French duo's ambient-pop blueprint softened and warped into something ghostlier and unstabler. Visuals get a similar rethink: original Mike Mills artwork is reinterpreted by Vegyn with Noah Baker. This version lands as a limited blue vinyl for Record Store Day - not a nostalgia trip, but a sideways step into a parallel listening experience.

Review: British producer Joe Thornalley aka Vegyn brings forward-facing, abrupt and clippy stylishness to Air's 1998 debut album Moon Safari, in a daring reimagining crossing both audio and English Channels. Vegyn's desultory dynamics prove a toothy match for Air's comparatively amniotic French downtempo pop sound, though we *can* hear the ways in which Vegyn might've always somewhat taken after Air's production, his dream-rap sound lent well John Glacier's album released not long ago. Of course, 'Sexy Boy', 'All I Need', and 'La Femme d'Argent' are synonymous with the vibe of an era, and Vegyn's LP-remix (an increasingly popular format in 2015) honours Air's e-steamed essence, reconditioning their turn-of-the-digital vibe in jerkier retrospective tones.

Review: Adam Winchester and Laurie Osborne (probably still best known as Appleblim) are Wrecked Lightship and they have an inventive approach to dub, breaks and bass. Their work creates an immersive world full of rich, atmospheric textures and the latest example of that is Drained Strands, a new album for Peak Oil full of fragmented, genre-blurring sounds. The six-tracker is full of experimentation and new ideas from the off. 'Delinquent Spirits' for example is a jumble of jungle breaks and vast basslines with minimal percussion, 'Reeling Mist' is warm, blissed out dub and 'Somnium Sands' is an eerie and evocative world of synth designs and industrial decay.