Back catalogue: Balearic/Downtempo

Review: Lol Hammond is a former member of Spiral Tribe and early live techno act The Drum Club who now makes music on his own as Wah Wah Planet. Back in 1990 is when he penned this fantastic five track Balearic house EP alongside Russell Crone and with female vocal contributions from Lucy Sian. It very much lay out an early blueprint for UK street soul and the opener on the A-side 'Jewel' explores a romantic theme with hooky pop lyrics. Things get more left of centre on the 'Love FXU' with three trips into a smoother sound world perfect for sun kissed island dancing and with influences ranging from early breakbeat and trip hop to elements of dancehall music.

Review: Brothers in sounds (and lineage) Mark and Clive Ives deal with two of the biggest issues impacting music right now on one incredible record.WOO have a reputation for taking parts of archived sounds and formulating new things from those segments, and in this case the work is born from excerpts of four-track tape recordings made in the late-1980s. They then began reflecting on the "imminent nature of humanoid robots", and starting to create Xylophonics/Robot X. From artificial intelligence to reuse and sample politics and economics, these themes seem to guide the sounds themselves, which feel strangely nostalgic and futuristic, a vision of tomorrow that is inseprtable from the humans that made it - their understanding of the unfolding machine age through weird distorted jazz tech, deconstructed dub and psychedelic electronica. So, remembering all this is a reconfigured version of stuff made almost 35 years ago is truly mind-blowing.