Bass charts

Review: LOIF does a fine job of exploring a wide range of genres on this new EP for fast-rising Aussie label Animalia. Elements of techno, electro, bass, breaks and psychedelia are all melted together in the murky underwater world of this Melbourne producer. His tunes are a stylish mix of grooves that make you move and sonic details that intrigue as they drift by - they have the quality of alien life forms or bacteria that glow and scuttle about. Sometimes a weird vocals sample bleeds into ear short, at others it's purely abstract techno rhythms. Either way, this is fresh.

Review: Having previously worked with SBTRKT, Kanye West, Drake, Jesse Ware and Frank Ocean, amongst others, Sampha is no newcomer. This, though, is the British singer, songwriter and producer's debut album, and it's something of an understated gem. One particularly enthusiastic reviewer called it "an R&B album for the ages"; while that may be pushing it a bit, there's no denying that Process is an impressive collection of tracks. The beats are inventive, the electronics crisp, the samples carefully chosen, and the musical touches pitched just right. At the centre of it all stands Sampha, delivering thoughtful, heartfelt and sometimes poignant lyrics in his wonderfully evocative voice.

Review: In a fit of complex hybrid future funk, Second Storey and Appleblim consolidate their first three EPs for R&S into a long player that shows the full breadth of their sound in glorious technicolour. It's a thrilling world full of contorting shapes, glossy melodies and large doses of psychoactive fairy tale ingredients, with a gutsy techno heart pulsing away at the centre. Hearing all the tracks in one sitting gives a worthwhile context to the artists vision as they contort in and amongst each other, while new piece "Arpegmonger" opens the album in utterly glorious fashion. Craftily blending the notion of home-listening music and dancefloor madness, ALSO will have you twitching wherever it infects you.

Review: One riddim track, three hugely distinctive voices; Dub-Stuy continue their riddim series with "Santa Muerte Riddim". Loose, spacious, mystic and led by cold steel string twangs, Jonah Freed's beat sings on its own merits but each vocalist adds their own touch. Rider Shafique takes the lead with his signature smoky tones and poetics, Jahdan Blakkamoore contrasts between his gravelly spoken word and musicality on the chorus before Pupajim lets the beat breathe a little more before going full harmonic ham. Holy moly.

Review: Given that Four Tet's recent 0181 LP was comprised of material from Kieran Hebden's archives, and last year's Pink was largely compiled of tracks from the previous 18 months of 12" releases, it seems fair to say that Beautiful Rewind is his first proper album since 2010's There Is Love In You, and as such, it arrives with some degree of expectation. The past few years have seen the producer engage increasingly with the dancefloor, and these rhythms are most definitely present across the LP, particularly in the jungle breaks of "Kool FM", pirate radio-influenced techno of "Buchla" and hesitant dubstep style rhythms of "Parallel Jalebi". For the most part however Beautiful Rewind is as varied as the likes of Rounds and There Is Love In You, with the minimalist kosmische of "Ba Teaches Yoga", analogue gurgles of "Crush" and dawn chorus sounds of closer "Your Body Feels" all as beautiful as his most enduring tracks.

Review: 
After his surprise drop with music writer and producer Blackdown on the Keysound label last month, the enigmatic Burial is now back with a fresh new EP all of his own. It comes on his longtime home of Hyperdub and features two more of his deft designed, ghostly deep dubstep post-nightbus joints. 'Chemz' is a strict raver filled with rushed up sounds, plenty of dance floor love and big hooks that is many different tracks, moods and vibes all rolled into one. As always, these Burial sounds look back to go forwards and do so in thrilling fashion.

Review: Glasgow's Full Dose delivers its first injection of the year with Lvcchesi offering up a fascinating EP. Opener 'Vsna' is all about scratchy ambient textures, implied rhythms and bleak atmospheres, much like the work of early Actress. 'Vespucci' then lays down more of a club groove, with hissing and spitting electro beats and more great synth craft before 'Ominino' is a mix of caustic textures, frosted synths and explosive loops that is as eerie as they come. Last of all is an S&H Late Nite Hot mix that is just as unsettling, with whirring machine sound and a soulful feminine voice lost amongst the busted sounds.

Review: Burial's first full-length EP since 2012's 'Rival Dealer' hears the South London enigma plunge the depths of his newest dark ambient sound, wrenching the emo essences of rave from their breakbeats to produce a purely ambient affair. Spanning every emotion from depression to triumph, 'Antidawn' opens with a cough, in a seeming nod to the COVID lockdowns of recent years. Meanwhile, disparate sections buzz and weave in and out of one another on 'Shadow Paradise' and 'Strange Neighbourhood', never quite landing on their feet before being whisked away again. One of Burial's most defining world-building works.

Review: Is there any artist in electronic music that releases as little music yet remains as highly revered as Burial? We can't think of any. As it happens, this new Streetlands EP is actually the hallowed UK producer's second outing of 2022 after the ambient offering Antidawn back in January. As always it finds him back on Kode9's Hyperdub label. 'Hospital Chapel' is eerie atmosphere and lo-fi samples, 'Streelands' is another sparse ambient cut that is full of melancholy and 'Exokind' is the soundtrack of a faraway planet with distant solar winds and only the smallest of microbial activities for you to tune into before a signature angelic vocal brings the beauty.

Review: By now, it should be more than well-known that Joe-Armon Jones and Maxwell Owin are two of UK's jazz's most prominent and deserving fixtures, with the former having made a name for himself as part of outfits like Ezra Collective, and the latter for his unique blend of jazz and future garage. Together, they have an unmatched synergy; not staying too rooted in the potential quagmire of jazz alone, Archetype is a critical exploration of genre, as both Armon-Jones and Owin segue through explorations of their favourite non-jazz genres (dub, funk, garage, hip-hop) as "archetypes", paying homage to their infleunce on the music they make now. Guest features from Mala, Fatima, Lex Amor and O The Ghost cement this notion of tribute and versatility, making for a serene and virtuosic albu that best falls under the category of "jazzifyer".

Review: The latest drop in the Mysticisms Dubplate series welcomes back Persian for another round of reggae-inspired electronics. Once again the artist draws from across a spectrum of bass, digidub and breaks and also throws some jungle into the melting pot. Opener 'Survival Dub' is powered by classic breakbeats and great mic work that is sure to liven up any party. 'Smoke Mari' then slows it down to a fat dub with a vocal sample from a well-known smoker's anthem with plenty of mind-melting effects and stepping rhythms. On the flipside is 'There Is No Love' with a prime junglist drop and last of all comes 'Zatoichi's Troubles' which has devastating bass.

Review: Maintaining his trajectory into the upper echelons of alt-pop with carte blanche to do as he pleases, James Blake returns with his sixth studio album Playing Robots Into Heaven. From his brief dalliance with the post-dubstep underground into his sombre strain of electronic indie songwriting, Blake has confounded expectations at every turn and the drop of lead single 'Big Hammer' should maintain that trend. There's no big vocal turn from his delicate voice, but rather a twitchy, sub-loaded beat somewhere on the outer edges of trap with some diced up MC samples, pointing to an exciting foray into unpredictable waters from a truly gifted major league maverick.

Review: Of all the artists past and present who claim to let their music do their talking for them, Burial is one of the elite band of whom this truly is the case. In fact, so reluctant is he to engage with the cult-of-personality hoopla that surrounds almost every modern producer and musician of merit, that he remains a genuine recluse; he has never appeared live, only one obliquely-angled publicity photograph is known to exist, and the number of interviews he has given can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Yet despite this, his music speaks loud and wide, and the world has been listening ever since his 'South London Boroughs' EP debut on Hyperdub in March 2005. His eponymous album, which began life as a low-key release in May 2006, is now widely regarded as the benchmark release of the ever-widening dubstep genre, picking up unanimous critical acclaim along the way, and ending the year heavily featured in many 'best of' polls. Now Burial returns with 'Untrue', a new record of weird soul music, which lovingly processes spectral female voices into vaporised R&B and smudged 2step garage. Vocal lines are blurred, smeared, pitched up pitched down and pitch bent until their content is cast adrift from their original context and they whisper their saccharin sweet nothings into the void. The album continues with the debut's crackle-drenched yearning and bustling syncopations, haunted by the ghosts of rave, but also reveals some new Burial treats with a more glowing, upbeat energy. Kicking off with the skittering 2step syncopations and vocal science of 'Archangel', 'Near Dark' and 'Ghost Hardware', before long it descends into a space of radiant divas and ambience. Where 'Burial' first was humid, suffocating and unrelentingly sad, 'Untrue' is less sunless. Many of the tracks are so sweet, they become toxic, underscored by the almost geological rumbles of growling basslines. Unlike the overpoweringly melancholic prevailing mood of before, Burial's sound is now better defined as a downcast euphoria typified by the epic, muted optimism of the album's last track 'Raver'. Forget central heating the radioactivity of this album is all that you'll need to keep you warm this winter. 'Untrue' is available as full 13 track digipack CD, including recent underground hit 'Ghost Hardware', and 9 track DJ friendly double vinyl set, from which some of the beatless pieces have been edited.

Review: Make Your Own Meaning continues to convey its unique techno message with a new statement of intent from label head Lurka. The artist has been busy of late and continues to be on a roll with another fascinating four tracker that genuinely serves up some original sounds and rhythms. 'Trip' gets things underway with organic percussive patterns stacked up over drilling bass to make for a prickly groove. 'Airlock' is similar but darker and heavier and 'Sick Flips' keeps the nimble feel going with dancing perc, rigid synths and scratchy sound effects all coalescing over broken drum patterns. Last of all is another dense, busy and multi-layered melange of tiny percussive sounds, synths and clipped rhythms that will make any floor move.

Review: Few are aware that the historic city of Bristol is still home to secret cabals of subaquatic explorers, the most open secret among which is the Challenger Deep crew. From the depths, one of their many regiments, duo Inner Echo, break the surface tension with two new ones, 'Aurora' and 'Ruminate'. Both tracks are masterclasses in deep dubstep, the first revelling in a low-bubbling lead line that leans heavy on the harmonics, the latter preferring a subtle ambience of piracy and novel Atlantean exploration.

Review: British producer Burland and Ghanaian vocalist Zongo Abongo join forces here for UK to GH, a new collaboration that collides the respective backgrounds of each artist. Reggae, highlife, dancehall, UK bass and rave all meet in a world of fresh rhythm and melodic invention. 'Telephone No Wire' opens with a feel-good highlife sound on a 2-step beat with vocalist Adotey Johnson in fine form. 'Nyura' heads to the club with weighty bottom ends and enchanting melodies then things get darker on the flip with 'Try To Test' exploring another take on 2-step with hints of UKG and grime overlaid with catchy vocal hooks. 'Last Chance' pairs dancehall vocals with downtempo breaks for a superb conclusion.

Review: Originally released digitally in 2013, Pink collated a series of 12" releases from Kieran Hebden issued over an 18 month period on his Text label. Hebden and record club and subscription service Vinyl Me, Please have teamed up to give Pink a double vinyl release for any Four Tet fans that weren't quick enough to nab those 12"s at the time. There is plenty of classic Four Tet to be had here too. "Jupiters" experiments with swung garage beats in an unmistakably UK Bass style, while "128 Harps" is a whipcrack MPC workout given his light melodic touch and "Peace On Earth" is a beatless 11 minutes of analogue kosmische. But it's the centrepiece of Hebden's Fabriclive mix, the brilliantly moody "Pyramid", and the loose limbed jazz-house of "Pinnacles" that really set this album apart from his other long-playing efforts, two examples of timeless dance music which demonstrate why after nearly 15 years in the game Hebden is only improving with age.

Review: J. Dugdale returns under his Sumgii alias for Swamp 81 again with some meditative and minimalist rollers. Judging by the pic on his Facebook page, he definitely likes the green, and the collection of tracks featured on Who Is Genre Anyway are perfect for getting blunted. It's total fire on the A side, from the deep, down and dirty grime of 'Absurd' followed by 'Chunks' and it's bouncy wall of sound. On the flip, things get more hi-fi on EP standout 'Skanker' before deconstructing nefarious techstep sounds of the late '90s on the fittingly titled 'Dark Side Burns'. The jagged and off-kilter bass experiment 'Wollop' closes it out.

Review: Given the hype that surrounded the release of the first Moderat set back in 2009, we can surely expect more of the same for this second outing from Apparat and Modeselektor. Those familiar with the first album's woozy blend of IDM, Thom Yorke indebted vocal dreaminess, porchlight techno and post-dubstep rhythms will immediately feel right at home. Online reviews have focused largely on II's atmospheric warmth, and the way in which the Berlin-based trio seems to have refined their sound. Both are valid critiques; certainly, there's a maturity and musical complexity to the album that betters much of their previous works. It's not much of a dancefloor set, but that's entirely the point; this is locked-in headphone listening for the wide-eyed generation.

Review: To mark a century of releases, admirable Bristol imprint Tectonic has served up something rather special: an EP of future bass business that sees long-serving grime MC Riko Dan adding his flow to fresh beats from some of the label's heaviest hitters. Check, for example, the woozy "purple" synths, ragged sub-bass and stepping beats of the Joker-produced "Hard Food", the indsustrial-strength grime assault of the Pinch-produced "Vibration" and the sparse, clandestine rumble of "Hungry", where Riko Dan's gruff patois flow rises above a skeletal groove. Elsewhere, the Ziro-helmed "Alright Then" sounds like a club anthem in waiting, and Walton's remix of "Big Slug" - a previous club cut from Pinch and Mumdance - is an ethereal, string-laden treat.

Review: Over the course of his career to date, shadowy London producer Filter Dread has proved to be one bass music's most imaginative producers, offering up a range of EPs that snugly sit in the cracks between sub-genres. On "Ice Rave", his debut album, he continues this approach, romping through a collection of weighty, club-ready cuts that variously touch on dancehall/140 fusion ("Ice B8ass"), eight-bit electro ("Space Conga"), mind-altering post-grime intensity ("Time To Let Go"), hybrid hardcore/dubstep insanity ("Ice Rave") and mutant tech-funk (the skittish and doom-laden "Tekker Wave"). In other words, it's a sub-heavy sprint just overflowing with ideas.

Review: Loraine James is the latest going talent to make a bold statement on Hyperdub. Her new album reflects the sounds of the London she grew up in while also exploring issues around identity and queerness. Grime, UK drill, electronica and jazz all colour the album and can be as abrasive and confrontational as it can sweet and soothing. Our picks are "London Ting/Dark As Fuck": a caustic brew of distorted drums and frazzled synths with angst ridden vocals and "For You & I" which is a soothing beauty despite its hyperdriven loops. A personal and expressive album that also acts as a fine snapshot of London as it sounds right now.

Review: Last year Burial and the Bug joined forces as Flame 1, delivering an in-demand EP on the latter's Pressure label featuring two sizable slabs of industrial strength soundsystem science. Here they return as Flame 2, once again offering up a pair of weighty dancefloor excursions. A-side "Dive" is a loud and claustrophobic affair, as the duo wraps dystopian dub bass and sparse, mutilated post-drill rhythms in layers of apocalyptic aural textures and mind-altering dub techno style processed noise. Flipside "Rain" is arguably more suitable for dancefloor plays and sees the esteemed twosome combine pulverizing sub-bass heaviness with dancehall style drums that come smothered in mind-melting effects and paranoia-inducing aural smoke.

Review: Chasing the heat of his mighty "Modulator" EP on Simply Deep, London's J-Shadow dents the discography of Beat Machine with another generous collection of oddities and far-out designs. All writhing around his tech/grime/bass axis, highlights include the MC snippets and Pulse-X style depth plunge breaks, the tabla-style triplets and Indian jungle elements of "Orlov's Casket" and the iceberg dubstep glitches of "Contact". Complete with Gantz on the remix, it's another formidable dispatch from the shady one.

Review: Following a low-key EP way back in 2011, Eprom and Stillcold founder Andrew Doubek's Deep Sky Objects go high-key with this raw and rampant LP. Nine tracks spanning the electronic diaspora, we're treated to everything from warm jacking house ("Brothers & Sisters") to industrial strength techno ("Lethwei") to schizoid bashment ("T.M.K.F") to divine dubbed-up haunted house ("The Chant") and all manners of club flavours in between. Unbounded business.

Review: NX12X is the first in a new series of experimental records from this label and the artists given the keys for the inaugural release are Goldsmiths student and modular synth maestro Sam Hostettler and electronic innovator La Leif who tackle a pair of tracks each. Hostettler's sounds are the moody, heavy ambient atmospheres of 'Pointalims' and the more light and airy li-fi soundscapes of 'Opalescence.' La Leif offers broken beats with a skeletal feel and a burial-style synth aesthetic on 'Kyoto' and then crunchy breaks and fizzing, distorted synth malfunctions of 'Kimochi.'