Back catalogue: Experimental/Electronic

Review: It only seems like yesterday when Nick Cave delivered his wonderfully captivating joint piece with fellow-Australian Bad Seed Warren Ellis. In fact it was early March, and since then we've all likely been through the kinds of highs and lows this record reflects so accurately. There's a lot of space to Carnage, but it's also an album of intensity, in a refined and sophisticated way.

Packed with incredibly cinematic, theatrical and dramatic moments, at its loudest 'White Elephant' is bordering on a genuinely euphoric religious experience, one rousing and hugely emotional crescendo of chorus and big stage notes after another. At its quietest, 'Shattered Ground' sounds like one man alone with a piano and eternal sadness. Meanwhile, the title track is classic troubadour business. In summary, a grand, mesmerising and personal voyage.

Review: Shackleton and Waclaw Zimpel's first album Primal Forms was a masterful collaboration which arrived on Cosmo Rhythmatic in 2020. The pair clearly found fruit in their crossover as they return for a second instalment, this time on 7K! and with an expanded approach thanks to the addition of Siddhartha Belmannu, a strikingly talented young singer in the field of Indian classical music. The over-arching intention of the artists was to make a joyous album about the wonder of life and living, but of course this isn't a one-dimensional happy-clappy record. Rather, it's a meditative exercise dealing in fascinating microtonality and mesmerising harmonic interplay with the power to have a profound, uncanny effect on the listener.

Review: Los Angeles-based composer Tashi Wada steps out with his long awaited debut album, What Is Not Strange?, and a fine first solo outing it is too. It is by far his most ambitious and widescreen work to date and it comes laden with plenty of emotion as a result of the fact that it was written and recorded over a period that encompassed the death of his father and the rather opposite feelings of experiencing the birth of his daughter. As such Wada reflects inward to explore various themes including being alive, mortality and finding one's place in the world. His unique song based expressionism goes from ecstatic to denser forms and starker contrasts. It is a wonderful experiment and immersive listen.

Review: Wave Arising is former Spiral Tribe man Sebastian Vaughan with vocalist Kynsie and they are a duo that likes to eplxore body, mind and soul "through intuitive listening of senses and inner energies by means of music , workshops and gatherings." This is their debut album and is an otherworldly mix of deep grooves and occult sonic landscapes. It has been made from various improvisations and avoids there use of sampling and as an album, this is one that feels very much alive. There are cinematic dub techno workouts, cascading synths and alien sound designs, menacing low ends and moments of majestic melodic beauty such as on 'Ronde Cinetique'. A brilliant debut.

Review: London's Loraine James has built her signature sound through a mix of refined composition, gritty experimentation and intricate electronic programming. Under her Ghostly International alias Whatever The Weather, she explores emotional temperature and environment. Her second full-length offers a warmer tone compared to its predecessor by moving from an arctic cover photo to a desert scene. Mastered by Josh Eustis, the album blends hypnotic atmospheres and rhythmic textures with diaristic field recordings. The lead single, '12-C,' weaves melody and texture into a soul-stirring groove and is exemplary of James' imaginative and genre-defying approach.

Review: Proper Music embark on a proper reissue of White Noise's 1969 debut and power-electronics-populariser, An Electric Storm. A bastion of cult musique concrete albumry born of the triadic genii of David Vorhaus, Brian Hodgson, and Delia Derbyshire, An Electric Storm was a watershed album at the time. And given certain conservative proclivities of the music releasing landscape today, it very well still could be. Going into what would surely become a longstanding collaborative project, this LP established the trio's patented approach to recording - 'storm techniques' - which aimed to proffer to the listener sounds which, the band wagered, would've never been heard before. A natural stipule of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, the album is the sonic quintessence of the word 'tinkering' - the group combined all manner of tape loops, vocals, live percussion and weirdo-phonics - yet also works in motifs of the then popular modes of psychedelia and chamber pop; these songs are otherwise unsettlingly embedded in licentious, doomy texturescapes, comprising various groans, gulps, moans and bangs.

Review: "One might thus regard the Welsh rarebit as a Machine in which a process is applied to the conditioning and perception of the world of bread and cheese." Suffice to say, John White might not have had the same ideas about what constitutes Machine Music back in 1976 as you do today. This is also the first time we've ever managed to get a reference to Welsh rarebit into the first line of writing about a record, so everyone is learning something today. "The Machines" White refers to are the individual tracks themselves, all recorded between 1967 and 1972 and all comprising different combinations of a thing. Six pairs of "bass melody instruments" made 'Autumn Countdown Machine', different permutations of "the articulations 'ging, gang, gong, gung, ho!'" comprise 'Jews Harp Machine'. And 'Son of Gothic Chord' is crafted from the sequential chord progression of four keyboard players, spanning an octave. Conceptual experimental and wildly imaginative stuff on the borderline of electronica, abstract, mathematical and something otherworldly.

Review: The Will Gregory Moog Ensemble's debut album, Heat Ray, is a riveting exploration inspired by the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes. Recorded on analogue synthesizers alongside the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the ensemble - led by Goldfrapp co-creator Will Gregory - brings together up to 14 talented players, including Portishead's Adrian Utley and Mute's Daniel Miller. Heat Ray fuses spirals of melody, circular structures, and intricate patterns, drawing inspiration from Archimedes' mathematical principles. The album's genesis during pandemic lockdowns reflects Gregory's deep dive into Archimedes' life, sparked by online lectures. With a lineup boasting instruments like the Minimoog and Prophet 6, the ensemble weaves a stunning superstructure of sounds, guided by Gregory's effervescent spirit of discovery. The result is a splendid blend of ancient history and modern innovation, where musical exploration converges with mathematical curiosity. Heat Ray not only pays homage to Archimedes' legacy but also propels listeners towards an endlessly fascinating future.

Review: BertBert's boundary-free TOPO imprint returns with a fascinating body of work from one of his nearest and dearest influences; Windu. A collection honed from hundreds of sketches, grooves and soundscapes written over the last eight years, Juxtapose is a beguiling blend of ambient textures, gritty technoid grooves and thunderous showers of breaks. At points bubbling with aggy rave energy ('Deck 16'), at others entirely disarming and likely to knock you horizontal ('Ti Si Isceljenje'), Windu (which stands for wave is not defined) has a refreshing ability to completely negate DJ formula, arrangement and genre trappings. A debut dispatch built up over years before unleashed into the wild on vinyl, this is a truly unique album.

Review: Norwegian composer and producer Erik Wollo has a many sided musical approach which has produced a steady stream of music since the early 80s, with a generous tilt towards ambient pastures and jazz experimentation. Having made an impressive debut in 1983, he was already well into the rhythm of recording and releasing when he delivered Traces in 1985, but still this record marked a more sizeable leap forward as Wollo embraced the possibilities of MIDI to create a spectacular ambient electronic excursion. Rendered in crisp, gleaming tones and full of spellbinding charm, it's redolent of the era and yet also transcend the trap of sounding dated to truly become a record for the ages, now lovingly reissued by Abstracke.

Review: Adam Winchester and Laurie Osborne (probably still best known as Appleblim) are Wrecked Lightship and they have an inventive approach to dub, breaks and bass. Their work creates an immersive world full of rich, atmospheric textures and the latest example of that is Drained Strands, a new album for Peak Oil full of fragmented, genre-blurring sounds. The six-tracker is full of experimentation and new ideas from the off. 'Delinquent Spirits' for example is a jumble of jungle breaks and vast basslines with minimal percussion, 'Reeling Mist' is warm, blissed out dub and 'Somnium Sands' is an eerie and evocative world of synth designs and industrial decay.

Review: Peak Oil welcomes UK duo Wrecked Lightship for 'Antiposition', a debut EP on the label from the pair of Laurie Osborne (once known as Appleblim) and Adam Winchester aka Dot Product. The pair refine their sound and bring a range of innovative rhythms here with elements of dub, d&b, tribal sounds and deft sound design across hard-to-define cuts. 'Hex' is a cosmic broken techno trip, 'Bizarre Servants' is a slower and heavier dub and 'Sunken Skies' is prickly and kinetic as it flirts with live sounding drum & bass tropes and 'Diminished Ark' as well as with wispy sine waves, refracted melodies and barely there rhythms.

Review: Portland's Luke Wyland is back with a deeply personal album exploring themes of flow, identity and self-expression. Named after a coastal Oregon location, it transcends its physical origin. Recorded live and blending computer-based composition with electro-acoustic instruments, the album features discontinuous ripples and repetitions that create emotive arcs that challenge the usual linearity of music. Wyland reflects on the complexities of self-expression throughout while offering an intricate soundscape that mirrors the unpredictable movement of water. Kuma Cove is a fine trip through transitory states and energies.