14 days

Review: Stockholm's Eva808 returns to the ever-juicy White Peach with her first full EP for the label. Following the damage and soul exploding sounds of her Encrypted EP last year, once again it's a woozy unpredictable affair: "Oyuki" is a seasick damager with its warped textured and slurring momentum while the string-snapping "Empress" is straight out of Hitchcock's playbook. "Ro$e Gold" and "You Don't" play perfect counterpoint as hazier soft-focus antidotes to her peaktime venom. The former is like being in a church under the sea while "You Don't" is like having honey poured in your ears. TIP.

Review: Given that Junior Boys' Jeremy Greenspan is the man at the controls, it's perhaps unsurprising that this surprise debut full-length from little known Canadian chanteuse Jessy Lanza drips with smooth, synthesized sweetness. Packed with Greenspan's trademark melancholic, Metro Area-ish synths, but built around Lanza's fragile, otherworldly vocals, Pull My Hair Back is a contender for the best leftfield pop album of the year. Variously touching on synthesized R&B, deep boogie, sparse torch songs (see the sublime title track) and starbust wonkiness (the beautifully off-kilter "As If"), Lanza and Greenspan have delivered an impeccable, unassuming delight. Recommended.

Review: From Angola via Belgium and Manchester, Nazar follows 2018's Hyperdub rough kuduro debut "Enclave" with this immense multi-faceted body of work that analyses the Angolan war of independence, its atrocities and effects on its displaced people and his family. From the portrait on the cover of his rebel general father to many of the samples and stories, Nazar paints an unnerving picture that ranges from the militant drum shots fired on "Diverted" to the eerie juxtaposition of "FIM-92 Stinger" where a surface-to-air missile launcher gives it name to one of the album's most soulful, touching moments. Elsewhere we hear voices of his family on "Mother", we're fired up with gritty, unapologetic universal question "Why" and left asking more questions on the fractured finale "End Of Guerrilla". Much deeper than an album, this is a document, musically, politically, emotionally. Nazar and Hyperdub have created something truly unique.