Staff Picks w / c 9th October 2020

Review: The latest EP in the 10 year series from forward thinking label De: Tuned kicks off with bona fide legends Future Sound Of London who get trippy from the off with a head soothe jam for electronic lovers. Berlin's Monolake aka Robert Henke flips the script with a much more heavy and industrial tune that is all about whirling machines and clattering effects. Last of all, David Morley is charged with closing out the 12" and does so with a dense atmosphere and fizzing electronics. His drums are churning, mechanised, and compelling. It's also worth noting the lovely artwork for this one was created by Kevin Oakes, who is a regular with labels like Nina Tune and artists such as DJ Food.

Review: Okbron have a stone cold killer on their hands here: they have connived DJ Krust to dig into his archives and unearth two previously unreleased cuts from his 1993-1994 era. The A-side is a real workout of scintillating drum precision, with high speed tumbles and kinetic hits all run through with a serene and calming synth that has you contemplating the end. Flip it and reverse it and you'll find 'Arizona II', a slightly more airy tune, with more room to breath for the high speed drums, and a more atmospheric mood.

Review: French electro legend Myd brought real summer heat with his new single, and now Because Music treat us to a land of remixes of it. The club edit allows the hands in the air chords and easy to sing to choruses soar over warm drums, while Bullion goes for something more deep and pensive. The Wuh Oh is a real main stage festival anthem with its inebriated drum stomps and Radio Slave & Thomas Gandey bring some class with their piano laced, heartfelt and joyous rework - not what you would normally expect from the Rekids boss. Sam Tiba closes out with a flurry of jungle drums and breaks to twist mind, body and soul.

Review: Malin Genie's purple patch continues to yield more delights with this latest drop on his self-titled label. This time around the prolific Dutch artist is delving into smoky, hidden corners of house music where dub lingers thick in the air and rough textures scuff depth and character into the synth work. "Aventijn" has a purposeful drum machine tick but its utterly somnambulant in its execution, while "KIAR" lilts on a dusty groove and woozy clouds of funk. "Duppy" has a distinct dub techno influence, but it's still a steadfast house groover at heart, and "Amulius Numitor" ditches the beats for a pure interstellar exploration. With some bonus locked grooves for creative DJs, this is a versatile and imaginatively rendered EP with creative spark to match its usefulness in the mix.

Review: Increasingly vital garage label Time Is Now keeps on kicking with this superb various artist six tracker. It recalls close associates like Holloway and Interplanetary Criminal as wells enlisting new names. All shades and sodas are covered here with face mangling jams like 'Mercy' covering the darker end of the spectrum and more sweet and fluid jams like 'Uptown' from Ollie Rant bringing plenty of soul, and a healthy dose of sax. Vocal pumpers from Soul Mass Transit and dubbed out minimalism from Holloway complete this most crucial of cuts.

Review: For well over 20 years, Warren "Hanna" Harris has proved to be one of the deep house scene's most reliable producers. As a result, his tracks remain in-demand amongst labels old and new. Here he adds another imprint to his growing list, recently launched Belgian outfit Penelope. A-side 'Champion' sets the tone, with Harris wrapping scratched-in rap samples, woozy Rhodes chords and dewy-eyed female vocal samples over a slipped, hip-hop influenced house beat. Over on the flip he combines pleasingly loose, MPC-programmed drum machine beats with boogie bass, drowsy chords and more soulful vocal snippets on 'Still', before delivering a chunkier slab of boogie/deep house fusion that's just begging to be played over a suitably meaty soundsystem (standout 'Until').

Review: DJ Plead (real name Jared Beeler) has won plenty of praise for his EPs to date, and especially his recent hook-up with Anunaku on AD 93 (the imprint formerly known as Whities). It's likely that critics will purr about this Livity Sound debut, too, because it's really rather good. Over the course of four tracks, the Melbourne man confidently strides between ultra-percussive, polyrhythmic techno brilliance (the Joe Clausell-meets-Kowton flex of 'Going For It'), bustling broken techno weightiness ('Rough Text'), bass-heavy business built around Stomp-style pots-and-pans percussion (the seductively sweaty and energetic 'Espresso'), and synth and guitar-fired, loose-limbed bounciness (the impossible to pigeonhole 'Ess').

Review: Canadian minimal veteran Tomas Jirku has been a little quiet of late, but now he makes a welcome and unexpected return with something quite different for Silent Season. You can hear echoes of his earlier work in the soundscapes he's sculpted across Touching The Sublime, as high-definition sonic manipulation draws on his experience and eye for detail in wielding music technology, but rather than creating pointillist rhythmic structures, he's more concerned with billowing clouds of ambience. It's easy to draw parallels with the likes of Tim Hecker, but there's space for more techno-oriented productions in the midst of the maelstrom. Epic in scope and powerfully rendered, this is an album that will feed your head for a long time to come.

Review: Autobhan, the 1974 album that began Kraftwerk's ascent to legendary status, is still capable of making the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. The headline attraction remains the absorbing, mesmerising, 22-minute title track, a musical whizz down an imaginary three-lane highway that's as evocative and atmospheric as they come. That said, the album's lesser-celebrated, more experimental flip-side tracks (and in particular the jaunty 'Kometenmelodie 2'), are also inspired. Here it gets the 2020 reissue treatment via a tasty blue vinyl pressing that comes packaged with a 12-page booklet of historic photos and typically utilitarian imagery.

Review: The ninth solo album from Machinedrum aka LA-based Travis Stewart sees him calling in an army of collaborators and encompassing a wide spectrum of underground styles from drum & bass and dubstep to trap and hip-hop into his musical vision. They key tracks? Well, there's a whole bunch of them here, from the breezy, sunny drum & bass effort '1000 Miles', produced in ;league with Subfocus and the glitchy trap strains of 'Spin Blocks', admirably voiced by Father of Awful Records fame to the more abstract groove glories of 'Sleepy Pietro' with Armenian jazz pianist Tigran Hamasyan. But ultimately it's more than a sum of its parts, and the variety contained within only strengthens its overall offering and creates a fresh, constantly evolving listening journey.

Review: Almost two decades have passed since Charles Webster's last solo album, the largely overlooked collection of hushed deep house and downtempo soul gems, Born on the 24th July. Soon he'll finally release a follow up, Decision Time, but first he's treating us to a teaser single, 'The Spell'. Webster's vocal and dub mixes - the former featuring the seductive spoken word vocals of poet Ingrid Chavez - are typically immersive, ultra-deep house affairs that combine analogue electronic instrumentation with hazy, crackling aural textures that come courtesy of surprise collaborator Burial, who cites Webster's sound design as a major influence. Arguably the most striking mix though comes from that man Burial, whose A-side interpretation is drowsy, deep, crackly and irresistibly opaque: an artistic marriage made in heaven and then some.

Review: Nas's 2002 album God's Sun is not his most iconic, but it still spawned some essential singles Chief amongst them is 'Made You Look', built around samples from Incredible Bongo Band's 'Apache.' The tune really established him in his ongoing battle with Jay Z and like all his work it displays intricate lyricism and old school boom bap beats. The free-associative rhymes touch on an array of themes that cover a wide span from hype to legacy, partying and chest beating self congratulation. The flip includes an instrumental that is not explicit like the original, so lacks some of the things that make it so raw.