Today Only: Leftfield sale vinyl

Review: Swiss imprint Phantom Island specialises in the kind of atmospheric, slow-motion Balearica that looks far and wide for inspiration. Their latest EP, a collaboration between live electronic performer Tillman Ostendarp and singer/songwriter Gina Ete, naturally takes a similar approach. Title track 'Le Bouqet', for example, features subtle nods towards the more atmospheric material on Peter Gabriel's 1980s album 'So' with drowsy chords, ethereal electronics, clicking beats and the sweetest of vocals, while 'Tetra' is creepy, dark and atmospheric in the extreme, with live percussion catching the ear. Elsewhere, 'Nonchalant' is like trip-hop after a hit of opiates, 'Customer Care' is a wonky number with distorted vocals, ambient textures and West African percussion, and Fuga Ronto's remix of 'Le Bouquet' is a retro-futurist leftfield synth-pop gem with added dub delay.

Review: Lorenzo Montana is an Italian soundtrack composer, sound engineer, and producer, with a prolific career spanning decades. Vion is his 29th full-length album, and marks his first solo effort for the Oakland-based emotive electronics outpost n5MD. Here Montana fleshes out the full possibilities gleanable from the use of drum brushes, diving into the wonderful world of jazz brush patterns, in order produce an electroacoustic record with a glistening ambient palette - whereas beforehand, the use of drum brushes might have otherwise felt mostly unfairly relegated to 'jazzy' electronic genres like broken beat. From 'Nympalidea' to 'Vilu', Montana's expert digital touch, and ear for texture, is heard and felt throughout, with the central brush patterns banking on their distinctive timbre to both stand out and yet also melt into the surrounding, progressive ambiance.