Juno Recommends Experimental June 2020

Review: Established in the early 1980s by Toyama-based musician Tsuyoshi Kawabata, Pale Cocoon was Japan's short-lived answer to musical fusionists Woo, Penguin Cafe Orchestra and The Durutti Column. The outfit's sole album, 1984's cassette-only "Mayu", has long been considered a cult classic, hence this first ever vinyl edition. Musically, the album is magic, with Kawabata and his collaborators offering up unearthly, mind-massaging soundscapes and pastoral, slow-burn songs crafted from effects-laden guitar textures, haunting flutes, quietly colourful synthesiser motifs, drowsy vocal passages, field recordings, occasional drum machine rhythms and chiming, off-kilter percussion. Wisely they've stretched the 60-minute album across two slabs of wax, too, meaning that every oddball sonic detail and picturesque musical refrain comes through loud and clear. In a word: superb.

Review: Moby seems to be getting nostalgic in his old age. Having spent much of the last 30 years releasing a mixture of ambient and downtempo beats, "All Visible Objects" sees the veteran New York producer step back towards the dancefloor. It was of course with house and techno that he made his name, and there are tracks on this album that either recall the ethereal, energy-packed quality of his early rave-era hits ("Go", "Move", "I Feel It", "Hymn" etc.) or musical styles born in the 1990s (trance, progressive house and so on). It's pretty forthright at times, with Moby's inclusion of socio-political messages - the money raised from sales of the album will be donated to a range of charities - adding an extra layer of intensity.

Review: 12 months on from the release of his brilliant album "Flamagra", Flying Lotus has decided to offer up an instrumental version of the set. Given that the set included some of the Los Angeles-based producer's best work to date, this is no bad thing. Stripped of almost all vocal contributions (bar the odd snatch of backing vocals), FlyLo's breathtakingly brilliant musical vision rightly takes centre stage. And what a vision! He's always been great at crafting glitchy, off-kilter hip-hop instrumentals, but "Flamagra" is much more than that, with the Brainfeeder founder utilizing the work of a wide range of guest musicians and far more nods towards his jazz and fusion roots. The original album was superb, and this is just as good, so don't sleep!

Review: Stroom's latest must-check release is a mini-compilation featuring suitably obscure electronic tracks originally released between 1993 and '96. Check first Ron Boots' picturesque "Lachrymation", where chiming melodies, lilting lead lines and spacey chords rise above similarly spaced-out beats, before turning your attention to the meditative, early morning swell of Jo Bogaert's immersive - and aptly titled - "Ambient Kinsky". Turn to the flip for the hazy, tabla-driven dreaminess of Morten Sondergaard's bleeping "Sahara I Mine Maender", as well as Ron Boots epic "Far Boundaries". The latter is an incredible slice of slow-burn ambient bliss that sounds like it was recorded in one of Europe's grandest old cathedrals.

Review: It's taken a while, but finally the World has woken up to what a terrific DJ Josey Rebelle is. Having snagged her first magazine cover earlier in the year, she's now mixed her first CD for Tim Sweeney's Beats In Space label. It's an absolute doozy, as you'd expect, with this vinyl sampler showcasing four of her most potent selections. In keeping with her soul-fired eclecticism, we're treated to synth-laden electro goodness (Fotomachine's "Bboy"), some deliciously drowsy and deep slipped two-step swing (Shy One's "Route II Romeos"), a slab of lusciously fluid jazz-house (the endless electric piano solos of Access 58's "Jazz Drama") and the most stunningly stirring, string-laden drum and bass cut you'll hear this year (Nookie's remix of Rogue Unit's "Dance of the Sarooes").

Review: Xpq? founders D Tiffany and Special Guest DJ are keeping quiet about the identity of the "married outlaws" behind the previously unheard Low Budget Aliens project. This debut album arrives with little or no fanfare or fuss, or even the usual functional info sheet supplied to record stores and media outlets. So what's in store? In summary: peculiar, off-kilter excellence. Jumpy, skittish and imaginative, the majority of the eight tracks twist warped, mind-altering electronics and strange sounds around weighty basslines and unearthly rhythms that variously doff a cap to juke, jungle, grime, IDM and what would once have been called "brain-dance". It's an exciting and sometimes unsettling template, but one that consistently delivers on its eccentric, experimental promise.

Review: On this ear-catching album, Danish label Posh Isolation has brought together the two collaborative releases (to date) from Croatian Amor and Varg2TM. First up on side A is 2018's "Body Of Water", a wonderfully positive paddle in aquatic ambient waters in which the two producers combine lilting electronic melodies, sun-bright synthesizer motifs and opaque, watery chords in a number of tuneful, life-affirming ways. Turn to the flip for last year's follow-up, "Body Of Carbon", an altogether bolder affair that flits between gritty, beat-driven electronica (the fuzzy techno pulse of "Tell Your Tale To The River" and the doom-laden fizz of "God's Face In The Fire") and blissful ambient soundscapes ("God's Face In The Water").

Review: If you're unfamiliar with the name Phillip Sollmann it's important to lay out the land first. This is the real name of Efdemin, one of techno's most respected and revered players who calls Berlin's much-feted Berghain and Panorama Bar home, and the moment you know this the omnipresent rhythms driving this distinctly not-really-dance-music nine-tracker forward make perfect sense. Tracks like 'Rara' will be a joy for more adventurous DJs but also work incredibly well as standalone listening pieces. Wooden percussion mimicking the kind of top ends we associate with bouncy but tough club stuff, sans kick drums and bass. 'Micro', which follows, applies the same principle to layers of chime. Elsewhere, things veer into twisted pseudo-rave - 'U/O''s lengthy refrains and drones create the impact of a 5AM breakdown in some strange otherworld, while 'Mono' closes it out on a huge, smile-inducing high.

Review: Inspired by the pressing issue of climate change and ecological catastrophe, Rone's latest album grew out of a commission he received from Paris' Theatre du Chatelet to create a live show featuring 20 dancers from the Ballet National de Marseille. Interestingly, he decided to use the show as an excuse to go "back to basics" and create the kind of electronic music he made during the early part of his career. The results are largely impressive, sitting somewhere between synth-wave, IDM, ambient and off-kilter experimentalism. Highlights come thick and fast throughout, from the melodic arpeggio lines and hypnotic grooves of "Nouveau Monde", and the layered haziness of "Room With A View", to the skewed dub techno pulse of "Liminal Space" and the near symphonic bliss of "Babel".

Review: When it was first released by Scape in 2006, Jan Jelinek's "Tierbeobachtungen" album never appeared on vinyl, hence this limited-edition reissue from Faitiche. While all of Jelinek's albums are worth a listen, this remains one of his most pertinent, in part because it grew out of live shows in which the loop-jammer created slowly unfurling epics out of little more than odd samples, effects pedals and a very small number of "miniature synthesizers". Musically, it's not as percussive and beat-driven as some of his work, instead sitting somewhere between classic American minimalism, music concrete, unearthly ambient and the similarly drowsy, locked-in hypnotism of some of krautrock's more cosmic, synthesizer-wielding pioneers. There's beauty to be found from start to finish, but also creepiness by the shipload.