CD Album Recommendations March 2011

Review: Brighton-based scalpel fiends Soft Rocks have never been your average re-edit mercenaries. As this excellent album proves, they're far more interested in breathing new life into dusty flamenco weird-outs, forgotten dub cuts and obscure progressive disco than tinkering with the tried and tested. It's a refreshing approach that pays dividends time after time. Over the course of 13 delightfully leftfield selections, we're treated to a kaleidoscopic selection of druggy power pop, deep-fried disco-funk, lo-slung cosmic rock, oddball afro-disco and, most delightfully, a stupidly Balearic disco-reggae cover of "In A Gadda Da Vida". It's utterly bonkers, but also very, very good.

Review: Through a variety of celebrated releases on Wolf + Lamb and Clown & Sunset, Nicolas Jaar has developed a sound and style that's unlike anything we've heard before. Fittingly, this debut album brilliantly showcases his distinct musical voice, offering up a scratchy, bluesy audio tapestry that's nothing less than sublime. As with the "Ines" compilation he recently curated, Space Is Only Noise offers a delicate audio tapestry in his distinct style - a heady mix of found sound, off-kilter vocal samples, hypnotic beats, twinkling pianos and fuzzy vinyl crackle. The resultant audio soup is utterly mesmerizing - a kind of dimly-lit journey into the heart of the American deep soul with little more than a flickering transistor radio for company.

Review: Panoramabar resident and Klakson co-founder Steffi unveils her debut album, and as you'd expect from an Ostgut Ton release, it's an enjoyable collection of high-grade house. The Dutch DJ/producer is known for her love of quality analogue tackle (as anyone who has bought Klakson releases will confirm), and it's this jack-era ethos that's at the heart of Yours & Mine. "Arms", "Manic Moods" and "Mine" all throb to a Chi-town beat, with the latter's strings and percussion coming on like a lost TRAX flipside. Steffi also tries her hand at Motor City style machine soul, densely layered deepness and anthemic piano house - all with impressive results. It's notoriously hard to make a good quality house album that hangs together well, but with Yours Or Mine, Steffi has succeeded.

Review: Where others have looked towards the dub techno sound of Berlin for inspiration, Swedish-Iranian producer Aril Brikha has always been a Motor City man through and through - as this timely reissue of his 2000 debut album, Deeparture In Time, neatly proves. The Derrick May-championed set has aged surprisingly well - "Groove La Chord" and "On & On" in particular - and still offers a take on techno that's true to the melodic, futurist ethos of the scene's founding fathers. Here, it's backed by a second disc of unreleased Brikha material recorded between 1995 and '99. Packed with deep, melodic and forward-thinking techno moments, it offers a superb accompaniment to one of techno's finest albums.

Review: James Blake's debut album is undoubtedly one of 2011's most keenly awaited releases, and its arrival ensures their is no lull in momentum for a producer who enjoyed a watershed 2010 with releases on Hessle Audio and R&S. The results here differ wildly from his previous sonic excursions - gone are the shimmering R&B soaked melodies of "CMYK" and the sheer experimentalism of the Klavierwerke EP, which saw the young Londoner depart from the confines of the dancefloor and enter a realm where there is only a passing reference to rhythm-based music. Instead we are treated to Blake's own yearning, raw voice, delicate pianos and an underlying sense of melancholy. Ubiquitous single "Limit To Your love" and the crackly sonic terrain evoked on "The Wilhelm Scream" are among the most immediately pleasing moments, but there is much to explore here. It's a fascinating opus and surely the catalyst to a long and fruitful career at the top.

Review: This excellent collection offers a round-up of previously vinyl-only re-edit outings from Pete Herbert and Baby G's LSB outfit. While there are some obvious floorfillers included (dubby reworks of the Bangles, Queen, Debbie Harry and Chic), the overall mood is distinctly Balearic. The best edits here are those that breathe new life into obscure Balearic disco hits (Espo), sparkling Italo weird-outs ("It's Heavy", "Happy Children"), scratchy acid house ("Shout"), early piano house jams ("Baila Balero"), stomping Euro-grooves ("Remember") and quirky new wave B-sides ("Get Up Action"). It hangs together surprisingly well as an album, and there's more than enough tried-and-tested material to keep leftfield disco DJs happy.

Review: The much-lauded Jamie XX rework of Gil Scott-Heron's 2010 album I'm New Here finally arrives, and it's pretty darn good. In truth there's little quite as gorgeously ambitious as the strangely anthemic teaser single "NY Is Killing Me" (included here), but that doesn't stop it being an excellent listen. Not so much a set of remixes as a total reproduction, We're New Here places the veteran beat poet's distinctive vocals at the heart of a heady, other-worldly soup of eclectic beats (think dubstep, hip-hop and wonky house), booming basslines, sparkling house riffs, blissful melodies and paranoid late night atmospherics. A near perfect 33 minutes, all told.

Review: On this third album for positive D&B heavyweights Hospital, Cambridge-based Dan Gresham continues his journey into the shimmering world of soulful drum and bass. As with previous sets, you pretty much know what to expect high quality pop-tinged vocal D&B dripping with soaring strings, rich basslines and luscious synths. This time round, there are also a number of excursions into hip-hop tempo jams most notably Stac collaboration "Pieces Of You" and the brilliantly uplifting "The Love Has Gone" and an emphasis on stronger songwriting. Certainly, "Words And Pictures" is a strong set, and should appeal to both progressive D&B heads and general listeners alike.

Review: Following a series of much-played slo-mo house productions under the Duff Disco guise, Londoner Jeremy Duffy dons his Duffstep alter ego for a trip through downtempo pastures. Getting To Sirius is his debut full-length, and as first albums go, it's a bit of a doozy. Musically, it concentrates far more on mood and texture than genre, uniting disparate rhythms and beat patterns under a warm and cozy sound that's best described as warm, deep and horizontally appealing. So, we get delay-laden dubstep outings with deep house chords and samples such as "Free" and synth disco and hip-hop fusions like "Love The Freak" interspersed with Balearic dub outings ("Tired"), downtempo loveliness ("Love") and erection section smoochers (the sax-heavy "Close Your Eyes") - all of which ooze cozy afterhours charm.

Review: With his poodle perm, glam rock dress and cheap synthesizer fixation, Wolfram Eckert certainly looks a bit of a character. Before putting together this debut album, he'd released very few records though he was the knob-twiddling synth genius behind Sally Shapiro's shimmering Euro pop excursions. Shapiro herself appears here, alongside a stellar list of collaborators - Hercules & Love Affair, Legowelt, Haddaway (yes that Haddaway!), Sebastian, Patrick Pulsinger and Paul Parker all of whom seem keen to revel in Eckert's distinctive, pan European disco sound. It makes for a decent if overtly camp set a fun but stylized nu-disco era fusion of wobbly Italo disco, Cowley-esque Hi-NRG, Moroder-ish stomp and cheery European pop.

Review: Although the elaborate back story claims this mix is a "long lost" 80s mixtape from an original Italian disco pioneer, it is in fact the work of Matt "Radio Slave" Edwards. It makes sense. Like one-time Radio Slave partner Serge Santiago, Edwards has always been a devout fan of the early 80s Italo sound, with a record collection to match. Here, it shows. For anyone remotely interested in Italo, it's an excellent mix, bobbing and weaving between obscure, synth-heavy gems, camp dancefloor bangers, discordant late-night wonk-outs, space age electro bleepery and quirky vocal outings all with the distinct pop and crackle of vintage vinyl.

Review: Marco Carola's fifth album, and his first for Hawtin's Minus imprint, demonstrates his recent progression as a producer. Whereas previous sets were largely filled with hard, eyeball-popping workouts, Play It Loud showcases a deeper, groovier techno sound. It makes for a far more satisfying and entertaining listen, something enhanced by Carola's canny decision to present it as a seamless mix. There's a superb ebb and flow throughout, as bumpin' basslines and sparse riffs nestle side by side with loopy grooves and intricate percussion fills. Rather than the cold and aloof beats of old, Play It Loud is warm, groovy and intensely satisfying.

Review: Before popping up on Tirk with the decidedly fuzzy Set Phazers To Stun LP, Grid man Richard Norris was making a name for himself with a series of ultra-limited, vinyl-only albums of psychedelic rock re-edits. Like the early Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve reworks (which, of course, Norris was also involved in) after a few days on 60s-strength acid, those Time & Space Machine LPs were quite rightly much sought-after. "Turns You On" gathers together the best material from those vinyl releases, offering up a flash-fried fusion of heavy rock riffage, delay-laden percussion, backwards tape loops, strange spoken word samples, uneasy listening grooves and string-laden folk-rock oddness.

Review: For his debut album, Croatian producer Ilija Rudman has decided to further explore his love of early 80s synth disco, vintage electro, Balearica and electro-funk. When he's tried this before, his efforts have been hampered by the digital sheen of noughties nu-disco. Thankfully, The Reveal has no such issues. This time round, he's utilized all manner of vintage synthesizers and drum machines to produce a set that just bristles with original 80s flavour - it's a huge step forward. While he's previously promised much without consistently hitting the mark, The Reveal really delivers, flitting positively between slo-mo P-Funk jams, mid 80s piano grooves, "Nightdubbing" style instrumentals and dubbed-out electro workouts.

Review: This debut album from electro house trio Feed Me is an aggressive beast. Surging with testosterone, it bristles with latent anger and shouty, in-your face attitude. Critically, though, it's also packed with the sort of punishing dancefloor gear that will have teenagers in souped-up Vauxhalls frothing at the mouth. While rooted primarily in the pumping end of big room electro house (see electro-rock wig-out "Muscle Rollers"), there are a number of musical diversions U not least wobbly dubstep ("Blood Red"), cheeky pop-step ("Cloudburn") and 80s-influenced fidget ("Grand Theft Ecstasy", which sounds like Daft Punk in a blender).