Northern Electronics Schallplatten & CDs

Review: Rune Bagge's inviting new mini-album, Grab a Star, is a second outing on the Northern Electronics label. It is one steeped in beautiful melancholy with narrative themes and a beautiful back-lit cosmic glow that makes it seem all the more otherworldly. The delicate synth craft defines the entire selection of tracks and brings thoughtfulness and tenderness to a range of rhythms and tempos. Some work for the club, some are more for lost-in-the-moment home listening, and all are essential. This is machine music but with a real heart and soul of its own.

Review: Seven arresting, original new exercises from E-Saggila aka Canadian producer Rita Mikhael. She wears her love of dub on her sleeve - see the slow motion skank of 'Amnesiac' aming others - but not in the usual reassuring, bubbling echoes of dub techno, aiming for something much more angular and alarming. "Breaks remain staccato hammers," says the blurb, with maximum accuracy, "and kicks are cast to negate cardiac systems," while the rhythms veer from off kilter to nailed down and the sonics vary from the lush to the caustic. This territory to the left(field) of electronica is over saturated with identikit productions, but Mikhael does it like you've never quite heard before.