Review: 20/20 Soundsystem were a four piece live band fronted by 20/20 Vision boss Ralph Lawson, leaving their stamp on events Sonar Barcelona, Glastonbury, Space Ibiza, EXIT, Love International, Creamfields Argentina, fabric London and Manchester WHP. They released two studio albums, the latter, 2008's Falling, lending its title track to a clutch of new mixes here courtesy of Random Factor and Fernando. The new versions bring a modern touch and fresh dancefloor-ready energy while never forgoing the spirit of the original. Random Factor's offering is a gritty and dubby electro version and Fernando offers a cosmic chugger with plenty of sci-fi sounds and wispy acid details. Sound.
Elevation (Tommy Musto Zero Hour vocal mix) (7:04)
Review: Last summer, Soul Clap Records giddily introduced their first ever singings from the UK, 2Fox, via digital-only vocal house number 'Elevation'. Nine months on, that track has finally made it onto wax, accompanied by the best remixes from the expansive digital EP. In its original extended mix form (A2), the track is a sublime slab of warm, tactile, nostalgic and gospel-tinged deep house excellence with superb lead vocals by Laville. Masters at Work man and all-round NYC great Louie Vega delivers a fantastic, lightly tooled-up soulful house take to kick off the EP, label bosses Soul Clap add tech-house style synths and attractive electronics aplenty, and New York veteran Tommy Musto leans further into 'Calling Your Name' style gospel-house joy.
Review: On the long-serving deep house label's latest reissue, Large Music takes us back to 1997 and one of the most beloved (and these days, hard to find) EPs by Washington, D.C duo 95 North (AKA Doug Smith and Richard Payton). As it did first time around, the EP contains four contrasting versions of 'Jazz Ascension'. The EP-opening 'Red Soul Mix' lives up to its name by wrapping breezy flutes, syynths, pianos and spoken word samples around a bumpin' bassline and classic-sounding US deep house beats, whilst the 'Red Dub' delivers a stripped-back and groove-focused take on the same musically expansive mix. Over on side two, the slightly darker and more bass-heavy 'Hard Dub' compares favourably to the then contemporaneous work of fellow Washington, D.C-duo Deep Dish. A handy, spoken word 'Washapella' rounds of an essential reissue.
Review: Bristol genre-blurrer A Sagittariun reemerges with 'The 23 Enigma', a three-track implied "conceptechno" EP, and his first new material since 2022's 'Strange Brew' on Rekids. Having already conquered Hypercolour, Running Back, Craigie Knowes and Secretsundaze, he's now spent close to fifteen years weaving strands of techno, ambient dub, breakbeat, and deeper electronics, lacing each with a heavy psychedelic dosage just shy of overdose. The latest hears 'Fountainhead' and 'Mind Games' offer a percussive jolt through rugged high-impact tools, set aside for dirtier floor works. The title track is the only one to trade the club's rough pulse for a subtler, high crown cognition, riding warped, muscular electronics till we reach an unbidden cavernous zone. A Sagittariun continues to operate outside the grid, where cosmic intent meets merciless studio power.
Review: A&A aka Anton Kubikov and Artem Rudakov, share a groovy, Detroit-influenced casualiser of an EP, bouncing between slipstreams of rubbery bass and slick, soulful chord voicings. Whatever said "blue transfer box" is, we're unsure whether it's wise to ask what exactly said box is transferring, or simply leave the mystery be. After all, it sounds great. And besides, we've also a 'Slow Disco Smoke Machine' to marvel at, one which wafts effortlessly between dreamboats of blue pad smoke and acidic stabs, facilitating the necessary headspace for 'Deep Thought'.
Review: Phonogramme is in the middle of a fine series of releases that highlight the great work of legendary US deep house don Abacus. Analog Stories Vol 3 opens with the lush depths of 'It's Bubbling (Short Stories)' then gets more busy with 'Beautiful African Girl' which features humid pads and jazzy keys with dense percussive layers. 'After The Disco' (Submariner edit) sinks back into smooth grooves with light sprinklings of percussion and nimble drums and last of all 'Take A Trip' (feat Keitajuma) closes out with ambient laced and late night sounds.
Review: Following a string of explosive releases on labels like Acid Artists In Action (Triple A), Stay Up Forever, Hydraulix, and Interruption, ACERBIC is raising the stakes with a colossal triple-vinyl, limited-edition LP on the SUF/Hydraulix collaboration label. Packed with nothing but high-energy, dancefloor-destroying cuts, it kicks off with the anthemic 'Acid Way Of Life' and powers through a relentless selection of techno and acid techno bangers that push the boundaries of both genres. No filler, just pure, peaktime fire. Already road-tested by scene legends D.A.V.E. The Drummer and Chris Liberator, this one is sure to rip up rulebooks and dancefloors alike.
Review: Utter wildness ensues, and the dancefloor is left tarnished. After the success of their last release together, 'Mirazh', Thomas Schumacher and A.D.H.S. reunite for a potent follow-up, both bottling and jarring the essence of Berlin techno. Simplicity abounds on 'Ex Machina' - perhaps alluding to the portentous Alex Garland film of the same name whose artificially intelligent omens will never leave us - as repetitious carnival drums blend madly with a semaphoric, high-octave melody. 'Umbra' and 'Morbida' are of course wicked techno accompaniments to boot, but in our view, it's really the A that risks most for the biscuit; we're sure you'll love it.
Review: London's seasoned producer ADMNTi with four tracks that distil years of immersion in tech-house, jungle and grime into sharp, percussive club tools with distinct UK flair. 'Second Hand Sushi' drives the point home with its snapping drums, snarling basslines and wiry synth stabsibig-room energy and definitely no excess fat. 'Lost Fruits' stays steppy, leaning into sub pressure and pirate radio textures, soundbites crackling like a tape pack rewind. On the flip, 'Diptych' shifts tone without dropping paceichopped strings and warped vocals glide over crunchy drum work, locking into a more introspective groove. Closer 'Shrublands' dips further into dubwise atmospherics, pairing wobbly low-end with hazy flute lines and ghosted sax, while snippets of graffiti lore from both London and New York float through the mist. Early support from Ben UFO, Enzo Siragusa and Tristan da Cunha points to the range and functionality of these cutsiwhether heads-down or heads-up, they pull threads from the capital's soundsystem heritage into something that works across times and tempos. A strong first outing for Forms World and a clear step forward from ADMNTi.
Review: Leeds is a city that has always primarily been known for its house scene, but Nathan Alexander is an ever more vital talent who is delving deep into futuristic techno. After a fine outing on Drum Workouts late last year, he's now back on NIX with a shadowy, body-moving three-tracker. Opener 'Language' sets the tone with sharp stabs and a moody tension that gets the space-trip underway. 'Pulsewidth' raises the energy with heavy low-end and warped textures, glitchy stabs and funny, swinging drums. The title track 'Skin' stretches into tribal rhythms, hypnotic vocal snippets, and deep filter sweeps and taps into that liminal space where reality slips. All in all, these are seriously punchy but sensual and immersive late-night weapons.
Review: Lempuyang is a label you will know and respect for its high quality stream of immersive dub techno and now the man behind it, Alastair Kelly, debuts a new label with none other than revered UK techno mainstay Ibrahim Alfa Jnr. He opens up with 'Component A' which is a moody melange of slow, broken dub beats and fizzing synths. There is further experimentation on 'Untitled B2 1' which pairs a churning dub rhythm with naive and innocent melodies and lots of li-fi static. 'Entangled' ups the ante with the suggestion of a fast paced rhythm through a skeletal groove and the flip brings broken beat dub weight, meaning and percussive bass with a 2-step swagger then deep introspection on the closer. A classy EP that suggests this label is one well worth watching.
Review: The Alien Edits label and in-house and eponymous production outfit serves up a pair of banging, Summer festival primed house edits. The first is a shuffle, high inapt take on a Wailer's classic with the original vocals left in for maximum bait for dancers. On the flip, it's another stone-cold gem that gets the treatment with 'Abacadabra' reworked into a big, bubbly house sound complete with vocoded Steve Miller vocals coming back from the future to infuse it with irresistibly hooky energy.
Review: Two toolroom essentials from Rob Amboule, former London stalwart come Frankfurt familiar. Where years of collecting and playing gradually evolved into Rob making music of his own, it wasn't long before he made the move permanent, settling in around the Main. A late stopover in Paris has now domino effected this new one: 'Wovv Tools' brings 'Melortra' and 'Kopuie', equal parts dance-incenting and vagus nerve-soothing. The B is especially brilliant, cycling through generative hypnotic whirls and sweller padwork.
Review: Superfriends is a new label project from German tech house duo Andhim. They take care of the first release and export outside the usual realms on opener 'Tosch (feat Piper Davis).' It has an air of DJ Koze's hazy nostalgia to it with gentle tumbling drums, broad bass notes and plenty of lo-fi texture. 'German Winter' is not as harsh and cold as the season it is named after, instead layering up subtly hopeful, sustained chords over a groove that's not too heavy, not too airy. 'Mond' brings smeared and smudged melodies, flutes and pianos together over a dubby, delightfully deep house low end. 'Horse Society' closes with the distant sound or bird tweets, a hooky percussive lead and plodding kicks for day-time open-air dancing.
Review: Approach Release have done more than just approach release; they've actually sealed the deal on releasing - all while managing to work in a great deal of inhalatory EBM tension too - what with this new tenth addition to Talking Drums' Drum Chums vinyl series. Here the pair steer the brazy train through heady style-blends over four shapeshifter tracks; 'So Wrong' sallies forth with snarling synths and rigid drum patterns before a ghostly vocal twist pulls the whole thing into a haunting Italo dreamscape. The mood lifts with 'LuvLuvLuv', where slo-mo soul meets glistering psychedelia - equal parts groove and wooze, the track's as suited to sunrises as slow dances. Flip over to 'E-Killa' for an inflammable powder trail of Afro-disco and fizzing tropicalia, built to move a room from the waist down. Fade cut 'Lou Cee', finally, is a heartfelt Balearic blear; a finale that's as sentimental as it is stylish.
Review: The Alone Together Remixes EP breathes new life into Viken Arman's acclaimed 2023 album and has standout reinterpretations from Acid Pauli, Session Victim and Mano Le Tough. Session Victim first infuse 'You With Me' with their signature soul and craft a rhythmic, percussive journey. Acid Pauli blends 'You With Me' and 'Lonely Raver' into a surreal, experimental trip of modular rhythms and dreamlike textures and deep house master Mano Le Tough offers a wonderful take on 'Vibrations'. It is a pulsing club workout designed for peak-time with plenty of lush synth textures. Importantly, each remix is sympathetic to Viken's original analogue warmth.
Review: Smiling Phases returns with its second outing and hands it over to Parisian producer Arve, who clearly has a deep understanding of many different genres as the two tunes he serves up go way beyond the predictable. Opener 'Pyroclast' is a fast and physical one that blends radiant house grooves with deep, disruptive rhythms and myriad cosmic synth lines that swirl around the mix. 'Tephra' is another busy workout with pumping drums and an array of different synth textures spraying around the groove. On the B-side, 'Pyroclast' gets a remix by Belgian producer DC Salas, who takes it into retro-future 90s trance-techno territory and Italy's Paolo Mosca, who injects warmth and depth as well as a little cosmic mystery.
Review: Polish label FOMO_ debuts with the first in its news Spectral series, and who better to kick off with than the ever innovative ASC. He is a master of musical tension and abstraction and shows that with four tracks that build up the pressure and never let it go. 'Calm Under Pressure' is soothing up top with its smeared, spectral pads, but there's pent-up tension in the low end that keeps you on edge. 'Dark Arches' soundtracks an underground cavern with haunting pads and icy, watery droplets and 'Maelstrom' gets more direct with jostling broken beats, hissing trails and unsettling deep space mystery. 'Torsion' is the most maximal of the lot - an in-your-face collage of loopy, snappy drums and sordid synth sludge.
Review: This new 12" from Glaswegian producer Harvey McKay sees him reworking Daniel Avery's 'Drone Logic' into a driving, big-room missile i and it absolutely slaps. Upping the tempo and leaning into a more percussive framework, McKay doesn't just touch up the original's swirling psychedelia, he rebuilds it for peak-time pressure. The acid line is still there, twisted and stretched, but now it rides atop galloping drums, shimmering hi-hats and the kind of pneumatic swing that's become McKay's signature. It's a brand new release on Phantasy, pressed in a limited run of 500 and already a fixture in the sets of Avery, McKay and Erol Alkan. The sound is somewhere between soulful techno and heads-down warehouse hypnosis i powerful without being punishing. What's clever is how it stays true to the hazy mood of the source, but flips it into something entirely more immediate. As a one-sided 12" it's a bold statement, but one that's easy to understand: it only needs one track when it hits this hard. Built for high ceilings, smoke machines and stretched-out moments mid-set, this is an edit that earns its hype. A slow-burn classic reborn as a proper dancefloor weapon.
Review: Emergent talent B Ai, hailing from China, contributes to Paris-based label and Chat Noir family member Cosa Vostra, following storm surging releases on Motivation, Altered Circuits and Picnic Records. Spanning post-EBM lasershot fires and SFX-ed spanners-in-works, 'Act5' kicks off 'Blue Or Red' with a tense introductory interstate hyperride, while 'Glance Back' offers us a contrasting chance to look back down the road on whose mac we've just blazed a thick, blackened tire tread trail. Diego Santana crops up on the B1 titler, guiding through a tight Italodance au-diorama, while another fellow producer, David Agrella, lets us down further on the synth tubular breather 'Danse'.
Review: Berlin-via-Tokyo artist Courtney Bailey lands on Naarm's Animals Dancing with a debut packed with hypnotic force. Three versions of 'I Wanna Feel You' form the core: the Berlin cut drifts in slow and hazy, Bailey's bilingual vocal wrapping around a rubbery acid line and slinky percussion. Tornado Wallace's Tokyo version ramps up the pressure with sharper drums and a more focused low end, while the short version distils its essence into a tooly spiral. 'Animals Ate The Mushroom' is a wild-eyed polyrhythmic trip, bristling with shakers, broken FX and warped animalistic calls. 'I See The Future' edges closer to dancefloor propulsion, FM bass flickering beneath spectral vocals and birdlike synths. Released on Wurundjeri Country, this marks the offering number 12 from the label and a powerful first move for Bailey. Equal parts lucid and dreamlike, it imagines a world just out of reach: a city populated only by animals, where language breaks down and rhythm takes over.
Review: Ari Bald & CJ Scott are "Stockholm pals and soulmates" who have made waves on the legendary Studio Barnhus before now and here return to another local imprint in Baenger. Across the four tracks they delve into feel-good sounds with a hint of nostalgia that are perfectly in time for summer. The sample-heavy EP opens with 'Cloudy White', a thumping house cut with poppy synth magic and r&b vocals that swell your heart. 'Pan Riche' taps into filter house with sugary leads and 90s house drums that will have you rushing in an instant. The flip side starts with more contemporary disco-house fusion gold and finishes with 'Dime Girl', a funky and low-slung groover.
Review: Scruniversal's sub label Tunes Delivery invites Moscow scene veteran Leonid Lipelis to don his Beard In Dust moniker for their third instalment, one which dips into various different eras of dance history for inspiration. There's a distinctly late 80s feel to opening tune 'Music of the U', complete with sampled bell stabs and the kind of beats that wouldn't be out of place on an S'Express or early Coldcut house affair. 'The Armenian Break' and 'City of Love' look back even further, back to the female-fronted disco efforts of the 70s, the latter adding a touch of Balearic flourishes. 'Abstractish P' circles around some serene arpeggios, with rave whistles and, as it progresses, twisting guitar notes, lending it an individual air, while closer 'RoRyaRe' nods to ExCel-era 808 State with some nice bleepery before settling into more progressive headnodding territory and some distinctive synth play.
Review: The first ever release by the elusive Benedict on 12". 'Can't Stop' is a lacrimal liquescence of red-lit dance music, one that does an impressive job of obscuring its vocal sample source, though they've not stumped us: the siftage in question is The Internet's 'Hold On' (2018). Syd Tha Kid's condensed vocals are made nymphlike in their buttery brush-up against warbled deep house prods, marking out a truly luxurious listen.
In Alto Mare (Adriatique remix instrumental) (7:13)
In Alto Mare (Adriatique remix radio edit) (3:25)
In Alto Mare (4:23)
Review: Loredana Berte's unmistakable voice meets the glittering finesse of French touch as Dimitri From Paris spreads her 1980 hit 'In Alto Mare' across a hot griddle of club-ready disco. The track launches a new remix series celebrating Berte's legacy through the lens of contemporary producers and DJs: Dimitri, known for his stylish refits of Jamiroquai, Chic and Dua Lipa, now leans into a comparatively classic funk groove, elevating it with a cinematic glide and streamlinear post-prod polish. Long a staple of his DJ sets and broadcasts in bootleg form, this official release feels fated. "It's melodic, disco-flavoured, cinematic, and emotionally powerful - all the things I love," he says, as it manifests as the first of seven reworks dropping over the course of May 2025.
Review: The man behind legendary London underground techno bash Lost, Steve Bicknell is back on KR3 with a nine-track LP that helps mark the label's fifth anniversary. Bicknell delivers seven of his raw signature sounds here and they combine the physical drive of techno with plenty of heady and atmospheric pads, all of which are frazzled, dusty and imperfect across four sides of wax. The first three are all intense and unrelenting deep techno odysseys with shadowy corners and unsettling sounds that bring a menacing presence. Side D shifts the tone with a 15-minute ambient piece that is tribal, luminous and meditative with cosmic signifiers and deep space energy, all keeping your mind locked in the moment.
Review: Norm Talley's Upstairs Asylum label approaches its 20th outing with more of that low-key, high-quality house tackle it has long been associated with. Black Eyes is behind the beats and opens up with the nice and lazy, low slung grooves of 'Gerry The Fish Whisperer' then 'Valley Of Sharks' gets more raw and percussive with its energy. 'Soul Fish' lands on heavy, knackered sounding kicks with soft shakers along for the ride and 'The People Want Hydro' closes down with heady pads swirls and wispy motifs that occupy mind and body as one.
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