Jeigo dropped a thrilling debut album Cerulean back at the end of 2022, worked in a tune with Elkka for her DJ-Kicks mix and also dropped a mix for Bicep not long ago. Now he follows all that up with a firing four-track EP on Tread Records that again collides different club sounds, great samples and hooky melodies. 'Hatchet's Cave' is hands-in-the-air house euphoria with blistering drums and warped pads, then 'Move X' is a gritty tech bouncer and 'Compulsions' is a bubbly one with crisp hits. Nervous Horizons label boss Anunaku remixes the title track into a bass-heavy banger too.

We're never short of new Ricardo Villalobos material and he's generous with his time as a mixer, but this project offers something different from the Chilean mad scientist of minimal. A Mountain Of One are a duo who deal in Balearic-leaning pop with a subtle charm and an adventurous spirit, and they initially approached Villalobos for a single remix of one of their tracks. As a fan of their sound, Villalobos ran with the project and it wound up as a full remix album of seven different versions. On the earlier tracks Ricardo takes a surprisingly light touch, while the later stages find us knee deep in the mesmerising roll of his minimal house, shot through with dubbed out ingredients from the original songs. It's surprising and satisfying in equal measure, showing Villalobos at his best and quite the scoop for A Mountain Of One.

With Into Closed Air, Francis Plagne returns to the songcraft that’s been the bedrock of his music since his debut, 2006’s Idle Bones. Since then, Plagne’s music has see-sawed between a particular, parsed kind of art song and explorations of homemade musique concrete - though to see these as distinct practices understates Plagne’s capacity to layer and fuse these two tranches of his music making. This capacity has reached its deepest articulation yet on Into Closed Air; for those who’ve been following Plagne’s music over the past two decades, through nine albums on labels like Black Truffle, Penultimate Press and Horn Of Plenty, or on his concurrent collaborations with Andrew Chalk, crys cole, James Rushford and Joe Talia (in Food Court), and Julian Williams (in The Inevitable Orbit), this won’t necessarily be a huge surprise. What is remarkable about Into Closed Air, however, is its duality of summation and variation, the way it ties a bow around the music Plagne has already made and suggests new ways forward.

Recorded in 2022 for the BBC Gideon Coe show, 'Christmas In Atlantis' is the Portland, Oregon band’s first Christmas track; released just in time to battle it out for a Christmas Number 1. Ahead of their fourth LP, for which they will be touring in 2024, the song comes to us as a heart-rending slow funk number, with the sultry, up-close, and breathy vocals of Amy Boone retelling a complex tale of sorrow, conspiracy, casinos, and a restored faith in the Christmas spirit, in spite of it all. The single features two other exclusive tracks that will also not feature on the next album.

35 years after the release of Volumes 1 and 2, now the time comes for 3 and 4! The first of the two to be released, this limited, unmixed version of the compilation comes in 2xCD format; the head honchos have meanwhile doubled the playing time, bringing forth the best of the last five years of High Fashion's music. Featuring High Fashion 12" releases only, some of even ‘upcoming’ and not yet released, fewer still come in the form of different (but only extended) remixes. These include T-Connection (Moplen), Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson (Ben Liebrand), SOS Band (Ben Liebrand and Michael Gray) , Tullio de Piscopo (Michael Gray), Blueboy (David Penn), Loose Change (Moplen), Donna Allen (Dr Packer), Ashford & Simpson (Joey Negro), Dance Reaction (Martin Boer), just to name a few.

For the fifth volume of The Encyclopedia of Civilizations, Abstrakce's collection of split LPs - in which selected artists offer insight into fascinating ancient cultures - hears them focus this time on the enigmatic Babylon, visited by two of the label's favourite electronic bands currently active. Berlin-based duo Driftmachine take us on a journey between the ancient cities of Akkad, Uruk and Ashur. Bringing together astonishing electronics with a superb and precise sound - floating somewhere between modular ambient, leftfield, abstract dub - every detail has been carefully crafted to produce a complex architecture. Unconventional tribal rhythms recall obscure rituals, while warm, dynamic pulses contract and expand, interacting on their journey along the sandy roads of the Mesopotamian basin. Afterwards, Glasgow-based project Komodo Kolektif delves into the Babylonian vision of magic through the figures of the Kassaptu (witches and wizards), and the use of Mandragora. A blend of both tribal primitivism and a futuristic vision is provided by their vast arsenal of vintage synths and effects units, Eastern metallophones and traditional hand percussion. This is deep, psychedelic electronics that capture the spirit of ancient Babylonian sacred ceremonies and their vision of the cosmos.

The first King Diamond song to ever be released, 'No Presents for Christmas' was originally released in 1985, and now Metal Blade Records is heard reissuing this 2-track classic on vinyl. In the words of the King himself, who offered an up-to-date comment on the classic festive heavy metal subversion, not to mention its stonkingly eerie new album cover: "it looks like something you would find in the Christmas albums aisle alongside Frank Sinatra. It has the Christmas feeling, but with something dark and sinister when you examine it more closely. I look like a ghost – the ghost of trying to destroy Christmas!" Coming thick and fast with the just-as-hard headbanger 'Charon'; whichever Christmas ghosts you choose to conjure this year-end, no amount of wishful thinking can ever truly deny the omnipresence of the Ghost of Christmas Stinginess. Truly, with King Diamond, we are duly reminded that there is always a dark side to our cheer.

A Gift from a Flower to a Garden made for a few firsts: the first double LP of Donovan’s career, one of the first box sets in pop and, most importantly for Donovan himself; the first pop album for the children of tomorrow. He resolved to make A Gift from a Flower to a Garden an album of two halves. The first, Wear Your Love Like Heaven, was intended for his own generation as they started to think about the kind of world they wanted to leave behind. The second, For Little Ones, was for the children they had or would have in the years to come. The result was a kaleidoscopic folk-jazz suite on the power of love, imbued with all the romance and mystery of an Arthur Rackham illustration for an ancient English fairy tale. The songs, remarkably adventurous given Donovan was a globally famous singer at his commercial height, combined the influences he had amassed so far. There is something about A Gift from a Flower to a Garden that could never be repeated, though. It is such an innocent evocation of the childlike imagination, so redolent of its time, yet set apart from it too. All these years later, the peaceful qualities of this pioneering, enchanting, deeply unusual album feel more valuable than ever.