Back catalogue: Deep House

Review: Based in Reykjavik, Iceland, since 2012 and established by by Jonbjorn Finnbogason & Viktor Birgisson, Lagaffe Tales celebrates a decade in the game with this terrific various artists compilation. Label staple Felix Leifur serves up the slo-mo balearic bliss of 'Cohen Social Club', Moff & Tarkin get some emotive sunset breaks in effect on the mood music of 'Pure Fury' while Jonbjorn - on point as always - contributes the glassy-eyed electro cut 'We're Not Alone' and finally Viktor Birgiss delivers the deep and dubby afterhours cut 'Ad Handan'.

Review: It has been a rather remarkable three years since Yuko dropped its first release, but finally, they are back with more. It is co-founder Emo Omar who features both solo and in collaboration with Luje from Club Pizza while two exciting new French talents Chud and Vivant also make their mark. 'Pollen' is a bright and hooky melodic electro sound then 'You & Me' gets more percussive, with old school cow bells staying busy next to all sorts of wonky synth work. 'Tomorrow's Made Of Breaks' is built on rigid funk and trippy synth bleeps and 'Zeus' shuts down with some retro-future vocoder vocals. This is a great return from a label we hope now pushes on.

Review: Art Gang Records bursts onto the scene with Volen's Stinger Pinger EP, shows the LA-based producer's highly energetic and intergalactic sound. The three original tracks are excellent dancefloor numbers perfectly suited for the dark-lit rooms of underground clubs. 'Go' kicks things off with a great groove and techy atmosphere, offering a fun and futuristic dancefloor workout complete with infectious melodies. 'Last Tab' follows suit with its heavy acid house stomp, delivering a relentless assault on the senses. On Side-2, the title track 'Stinger Pinger' is successful with its deep rhythm machine programming, catchy hooks and jackin' beats, sure to keep the crowd moving till dawn. Markus Sommer's Gary Ablett Double Drop remix of 'Stinger Pinger' adds a groovy twist to the original, offering a fresh take that complements Volen's raw energy perfectly. Overall, some really strong dance tracks that are poised to win over techno and house crowds old and new.

Review: New York maestro and Loose Control Band member DJ Spun has served up a superb compilation for Above Board here. It is his third such collection and one that focusses on the specific subject of West Coast breaks, rave and electro funk from the late eighties to mid-cities. It was a fertile scene by this account and one that still sounds current today, right from the blistering open eats and trance-like synths of Tasti Box's 'San Francisco' to Deep2's old school house jacker 'Sphere' which closes out the double pack. In between are plenty of gems, not least the deep and dreamy sounds of Hawke's '3 Moods In A Purple Garden' (Robbie Hardkiss mix).

Review: Theo Parrish is a world-renowned name in the global Detroit house and techno game, and he's thrown a fascinating curveball as the latest entrant for the acclaimed DJ-Kicks series. Mr. Parrish has gone above and beyond the duties of most invitees - rather than just licensing tracks from his favourite artists and big-name-friends, he's asked his own community from Detroit to each produce their own mixable tracks, exclusively for the comp. What's more, these are hardly established names - they're organic connections to Parrish, not occupying the top layer of attention and recognition. Bits from H-Fusion, Jon Dixon, Donald Lee Roland II, Ian Fink and Raybone Jones all dominate this anarchic new deconstruction of the otherwise exclusivist mix series.

Review: Theo Parrish is a world-renowned name in the global Detroit house and techno game, and he's thrown a fascinating curveball as the latest entrant for the acclaimed DJ-Kicks series. Mr. Parrish has gone above and beyond the duties of most invitees - rather than just licensing tracks from his favourite artists and big-name-friends, he's asked his own community from Detroit to each produce their own mixable tracks, exclusively for the comp. What's more, these are hardly established names - they're organic connections to Parrish, not occupying the top layer of attention and recognition. Bits from H-Fusion, Jon Dixon, Donald Lee Roland II, Ian Fink and Raybone Jones all dominate this anarchic new deconstruction of the otherwise exclusivist mix series.

Review: Anja Schneider has been at the heart of the Berlin underground for decades. Famously she headed up the Mobilee label which was a powerhouse of, well, house, and now she revisits her sizeable back catalogue for a bumper triple album of remixes, works and updates. If nothing else this collection shows what great range she had as all styes are covered from dark and driving tech to more blissed out deep house. The likes of 'Turning My Head' show great percussive flair and 'Dubmission' (Julian Muller remix) is quick and slick, stripped back minimal. Vocal delight 'Rain' is a real classic amongst many here.

Review: All-round powerhouse Ransom Note - label, promoter and publication - are veterans on the scene, having promoted nearly every facet of the dance music scene since the early 2010s. This new compilation hears the Ransom Note core outfit team up with Richard Sen, an equally battle-scarred DJ and producer active since the late 80s. The project is Sen's tribute to the UK rave scene of the early 1990s, featuring rare and obscure tracks by artists not normally cited among nostalgists: Centuras, Bandulu, Strontium 90, Orr-Some, Biff'um Baff'um Boys, Epoch 90, Mind Over Rhythm, Dream Frequency, As One and UVX. Techno, house, breakbeat, acid and hardcore collide to synthesise a sonic zeitgeist, which occupied a brief but spectacular four-year period in dance music's early golden decade.

Review: Dance Music From Planet Earth is a new sub-label from Ransom Note that kicks off with a heritage compilation, Dream The Dream. It looks back in great detail at UK Techno, House and Breakbeat 1990-1994 with Richard Sen as the man in control. He was a DJ back in those days, playing the most epic raves around Europe and taking some of the photos which now form the artwork for this collection. His obsessive record collecting from those days is reflected here across a series of sometimes obscure but always brilliant UK tunes for the worlds of ambient, techno, tribal house, breakbeat and early trance.

Review: The last few years have really seen Paul Woolford reach the top of his game in many different ways. Be it bowel emptying rave as Special Request, festival baiting piano house tunes or chart topping pop dance crossovers under his own name, the man is proving himself to have a real golden touch. He sure does crank out all these tunes at a prolific rate, too, but you still feel he does everything with meticulous precision. This DJ Kicks is a case in point. It touches on all the many different facets of his sound from glossy and feel good house to early Chicago classics, post-rave dreamscapes to brutal jungle breaks. What a legend.

Review: Efficient Space's latest essential release sees Andras and Instant Peterson take a trawl through the darker, lesser-visited corners of Australian electronic music. According to the label, the pair lifted material from "local 12" singles, CD-Rs and the archives of community radio station 3RRR FM". Highlights come thick and fast throughout, from the acid-flecked, "Nude Photo" style Detroit fun of FSOM's "Resist The Beat" and chiming, trumpet-laden bliss of Ian Eccles-Smith's "The Slaughtering Eye", to the jaunty, mid-90s New York style bounce of Blimp's "Yellowgold" and the ultra-deep ambient techno pulse of Tetrphnm's "Track 11". Check, too, the enveloping dreaminess of Screensaver's drifting ambient closer, and the jazzy dancefloor depth of Inner Harmomy's "Da Lub Club".

Review: Over the last seven years, Shall Not Fade has become one of Britain's most consistent outlets for quality club music, with a vast roster of artists, a string of offshoot imprints, and a release schedule that refuses to settle on one specific sub-genre or sound. It's fitting, then, that the label's seventh-birthday celebration - a wonderfully produced triple-vinyl compilation of previously unheard cuts - does a fine job in summarising this eclectic, all-action approach. Amongst the 18 top-notch tracks you'll find warped UK techno (Alan Fitzpatrick and Reset Robot's 'Alpha'), wayward dancefloor psychedelia (Red Axes), jazzy and drowsy vocal deep house (Laurence Guy and Miller Blue), organ-fired 90s garage revivalism (Main Phase), sub-heavy breakbeat house hedonism (Borai) and even a dash of two-step UKG/grime fusion (Killjoy and Kwam).

Review: Astonishingly, GRIT is Luke Vibert's 18th album under his given name (he's released many more as under other aliases such as Wagon Christ, Kerrier District and Amen Andrews), though his first for a couple of years. It's a predictably fun, TB-303 heavy affair, with the prolific Cornishman giddily sprinting through rubbery acid-electro ('Surrounded By Neighbours'), deep acid wooziness ('Decay Hole'), thrillingly wayward machine funk ('Partron'), subdued, bass-heavy swingers (the vaguely Wagon Christ-ish 'Gas Legs'), surging jack tracks (the breathless title track), jaunty house retro-futurism ('Swingeing Cuts'), Kerrier District-goes-acid insanity ('Disco Derriere'), hard-to-pigeonhole madness ('Screwfix Typeface'), and much more besides. A must-check for lovers of trippy acid lines and sweaty, loose-limbed beats.

Review: London-based label For Those That Knoe returns with a terrific release by underrated Slovenian producer Vid Vai. He's been slowly yet steadily honing his craft over the last 12 years with releases on respected labels such as Assemble Music, Tvir, Gilesku and Oskar Offermann's White to name but a few. Laminar Flow also happens to be his first full-length, taking in a wide variety of moods and grooves along the way. From the evocative and acid-laced flow of 'Incubation Theory', the sci-fi electro of 'Oort Cloud' to the sublime ambient offering 'Dusk By The Bay' and the saucer-eyed sunrise breaks of 'Shifting Sands' - the result is a timeless piece of liquid-smooth sonic art.