Back catalogue: Coldwave/Synth

Review: Savage Garden's Darren Hayes returned from the wilderness in 2022 after a hiatus of almost ten years. During that time, he tried his hand at stand up comedy, kept a social media presence in the form of shared videos featuring him bursting into song, and evidently spent a fair amount of time recharging. After all, you don't make albums with the energy of Homosexual, the comeback piece, if you're running on empty.
Let's Try Being In Love was the first single taken from that, and in many ways the whole package is more about message than music - a guy publicly celebrating his sexuality and marriage after spending a very long time not feeling ready to do so, during a period in which he was a bonafide global pop star. Here said track appears in both 12" extended form and a Louis La Roche mix, both of which are made for chugging dancefloors, filtered tracking synths firing on all cylinders and an overall sense of self.

Review: Bordello A Parigi is back with more of their sublime electro jams this time from Heinrich Dressel. The EP kicks off with 'Galatograd', a slow and steady jam with shimmering chords and lazy baselines. 'Eden Olympia' then picks up the pace a little with still skill drums and celestial keys that take you on a jaunt through the cosmos. 'Remoria' brings many layers of lush and futuristic synth work and timeless electro rhythms that are comforting and subtly celebratory and 'Mylos' shuts down this most lovely EP with another classy sound.

Review: Here comes a special Japanese edition of Harvey Sutherland's superb Boy album. Since debuting in 2013, Mike Katz has released a lot of music under this alias, always flitting between interconnected styles (electronic disco, deep house, jazz-funk, nu-boogie, revivalist New Jersey garage and Italo-disco) without ever laying down an album of all-new music. Boy, then, is a significant milestone in the Melbourne producer's career and offers an exploration of what he calls "neurotic funk" - a boundary-blurring fusion of jammed-out analogue electronics and live instrumentation that draws on a multitude of musical styles without neatly sitting in any one pigeonhole.

Review: Two years on from the release of his brilliant third album "Parallels", dark-wave and synth-wave explorer Hord returns to Avant with an equally impressive sequel. Rich in "Bladerunner"-era Vangelis synth sounds, clandestine grooves, moody chords, distant vocals and druggy arpeggio lines, the album is an altogether more atmospheric, tuneful and ethereal affair than some of the producer's previous outings. The overall mood is bittersweet and melancholic, but that's no bad thing. To our ears, it's the most impressively emotive Hord release to date, and that's reason enough for further exploration.

Review: A warm welcome back to perennial genre-benders Hot Chip, who return to stores after three long years with their eighth album, some 21 years after making their debut. Freakout/Release is no dramatic change in direction, but instead a further distillation of what has always made the band so appealing - a trademark fusion of synth-pop, loved-up house sounds, lilting and sometimes melancholic lead vocals, loose-limbed organic drums, nods to Prince and an ability to craft killer hooks. There are highlights aplenty, from the gravelly live hip-hop funk of 'The Evil That Men Do' (where rapper Cadence Weapon delivers a star turn) and the subtly post-punk influenced, saucer-eyed brilliance of 'Hard To Be Funky' (featuring Lou Hayter), to the classic Hot Chip sing-along flex of 'Time' and the krautrock-tinged 'Out of My Depth'.

Review: Southern California-based composer and improviser David Rosenboom is a figure who can't quite be aligned to one particular school, his work slipping intriguingly through the cracks. A collaboration with vocalist Jacqueline Humbert, Daytime Viewing is an extraordinary narrative poem set over a song cycle consisting of six pieces. Quietly released privately in 1983, Unseen Worlds has brought this seminal work back into view along with a full remastering. Exploring ideas of absurdist theatricality, TV soap operas, commercialism, and family, Humbert's voice and Rosenboom's production merge to create a landscape that is at once lush yet also dystopian. An entirely unique release that invites endless study.

Review: Music from Memory have coaxed a special one off long player out of the trio of talents that is Belgian producer soFa, German musician Houschyar and the legendary Turkish drummer and percussionist Okay Temiz. Second Circle is made from studio session that started back in 2018 and makes use of a number of homemade instruments. Plenty of overdubbing techniques have been sued to achieve the richly layered sound and each piece is an intoxicating and meditative study in otherworldly electronics and earthy percussion. A gloriously unique and original listen.