Experimental/Electronic charts

Review: Kampala's Nyege Nyege is no longer a niche name in electronic music, having risen to become Africa's most prominent stable for experimental synthesised tracks, carving out not necessarily a sound - artists and albums vary pretty wildly - but a kind of aesthetic which, once recognised, can usually be identified in most output. Of course, there's a problem there, with so much light now being shone on Uganda and the label itself, meaning so much else is missed from nearby countries, let alone this vast continent. Nevertheless, all that attention is not without good reason, and this collaboration between Durban, South Africa-based gqom futurists Phelimuncasi and abstract sound system crew Metal Preyers is a case in point. At once rooted in authentic African dance genres, and yet staunchly determined to reconfigure them, it's pretty much unlike anything you'll hear this week/month/year.

Review: Recorded in Essaouira, Morocco, Pedro Vian and Maalem Nabob Soudani present an exercise in melding the traditional and unorthodox, the old and new, the abstract and the direct, the exotic and, well, something even more exotic. Rooted in the Gnawa sound, but leaning heavily into deep electronic worlds, EMS AKS Synthi and buchla meet the qrebeb and guimbiri, everything contrasting yet complementing. The result is this intoxicating brew that transports you to the North African coastline on which this collection was conceived and captured, and then onto somewhere that's almost beyond the terrestrial. Close your eyes, allow the hypnotic looped musical phrases and organic aesthetic of the recording itself to wash over you, through, and around your body. Something to truly get lost in and a fantastic example of cross-pollination done properly.

Review: There aren't many characters quite like Lori Vambe in British music. He was a self-taught drummer, inventor, and sonic experimentalist who also made his own instrument, the drumgita, or string-drum. He was born in born in Harare, Zimbabwe but moved to London in 1959 and soon became entrenched in the Brixton squat scene. Now revered as a fine outsider along with the likes of Moondog and Daphne Oram, his privately pressed album Space Time Dreamtime: The Four Dimensional Music Of Lori Vambe now gets a first ever issue on Strut. It is an international and experimental work full of overdubs, tape effects, temporal shifts and reversed sound.