Back catalogue: Leftfield

Review: When Cabaret Voltaire returned to the release schedule in 2020 as the one-man Richard H Kirk show, fans were relieved to find that mind-bending meld of 1970s Kosmische, techno, dub, house and space-age experimental electro was as pure as it ever has been - the results being a typically fresh and forward-thinking record the man in question summed up as "no nostalgia... normal rules do not apply. Something for the 21st Century. No old material."

Less than six months later and the big CV has more next level business to offer us, coming in the form of Shadow of Funk, a new EP that offers something of a counterpoint or extension to last year's full-length, Shadow of Fear. Based on 'Billion Dollar' alone - an acid-driven big, dark room banger that closes this EP -this release looks set to make an equally heavy impact, but as with anything this man touches, the joy is in discovery. So, let's leave it at that.

Review: London's legendary Mute institution goes back to its roots and digs up some of the best work by one of the UK's finest Cabaret Voltaire. These guys don't really need an introduction give the fact that they're pretty much responsible for the rise of post-punk right through to the birth of techno. It was about time a new compilation of their stuff was released, especially one as brutally on-point as this one! All the classics such as "Nag Nag Nag", "Kneel To The Boss" and "On Every Other Street" are one here but the more obscure rarities that were previously only available on 7" are the real winners. "Just Fascination", for example, is one you'll certainly want on a longer, re-mastered cut! Downright essential!

Review: The arrival of a new Cabaret Voltaire album - the first since 1994 according to our records - should excite all those who hold the work of the pioneering Sheffield outfit dear. It's now a solo project from Richard H Kirk (he decided to keep the name after parting company with Stephen Mallinder in the late '90s), but the distinctive stylistic ticks remain (think paranoid sonic textures, metallic percussion hits, clear dub influences, plentiful spoken word samples, curious electronic noises and nods towards the industrial funk, EBM and post-punk). Naturally it's not as ground-breaking as Kirk and company's work in the '70s and '80s, but it is undeniably a Cabaret Voltaire album - and one that subtly updates the Cabs' particular brand of dense, dancefloor-ready paranoia for a new century.

Review: Vince Clarke (Erasure, Yazoo, Depeche Mode, The Assembly) presents his first ever solo album, Songs of Silence. As the album title suggests, it's a lyricless (though not vocal-free) instrumental album, and unlike anything you might've previously heard before from Clarke as an artisan of dynamic electropop. Rather, this LP brings with it a comparatively sober ambient electronic beauty, its unique characteristics lending it a category of its own. But two self-imposed oblique strategies underpinned its creation - first, that the sounds Clarke generated for the album would come solely from Eurorack (a modular synthesizer format introduced in the mid-90s), and second, that each track would be based around one note, maintaining a single key throughout.

Review: Trailed as a direct sequel to his previous solo album, 2017's "Avanti", "Volume Massimo" sees Nine Inch Nails member Alessandro Cortini offer up another immersive trip through droning guitar textures, repetitive synthesizer motifs, exotic sitar parts and fuzzy electronics. It's effectively a series of "maximal" instrumental soundscapes with sounds so large and layered they rise above the "meditative" tag pushed by Mute's PR team. This is no criticism, though, just a reflection that while contemplative at times, one of the most joyous things about the album is Cortini's ability to build thrilling walls of sound.

Review: Italian musician, producer, composer, and instrument builder Alessandro Cortini unveils his latest release, NATI INFINITI, via Mute. Following up on 2021's Scuro Chiaro, NATI INFINITI is a forty-minute piece split into five movements, based on an immersive audio installation that Cortini originally created for the Sonar Lisboa festival in 2022, where it was presented across four floors of the Museu de Lisboa's Moagem. Marked by intense bouts of airy, tubular ambiences; and yet more sawwing tones counterposed with stark, angelic highs, giving rise to intensely beautiful arp sequenes, Cortini's latest is a real distillation of the sublime.