Juno Recommends Breakbeat Best of 2018

Review: Bristol-based badman Borai has been quietly issuing some of the city's most immense club wreckers for many years now, sometimes in partnership with October, and sometimes flying solo (as on the crucial Anybody From London for Hotline Recordings). Here he's inaugurating Higher Level with some absolute dance slayers, kicking off with the mammoth pitched-down drum funk and gut-wrenching bass of "Razor" before switching stance for the dreamier but no less rowdy "Predators." Both cuts are a masterclass in classic breakbeat science, delivering the foundational UK sound with panache that sets these weapons far apart from the rest of the pack.

Review: More oddball grooves from Down Under, courtesy of new Aussie imprint Vulcan Venti - which follows up a great debut by Tambo's House earlier in the year. The Melbournians present Perth's Hamish Rahm aka Hame DJ, whose Dog Swamp EP features three tracks carefully constructed for the discerning disc jockey. Enjoy the throwback sounds of '90s rave on "LL", the frantic yet rather evocative electro bass of the title track and "Exe" which goes for that classic West Yorkshire techno sound of yesteryear.

Review: Since defining the band's hybrid rock-rave sound with 1994's "Music For The Jilted Generation" and 1997's "The Fat of the Land", Prodigy main man Liam Howlett has largely stuck to his guns. He is, after all, incredibly good at what he does, and the formula has given us a string of bombastic, full-throttle singles and albums that have lasted the test of time. "No Tourists", Howlett and company's first full-length in three years, offers plenty of trademark festival-friendly workouts, hard-wired dancefloor smashers and fuzzy, all-action cuts. Judged on these terms, it's a triumph. Fans of the band's trademark brand of slamming sonic hedonism will love it.

Review: Placid One's debut came in 2017, with a sublime EP for Ransom Note, and the artist is back with a new 12" for Spain's Nebulae imprint, a home to some of the wildest new techno on the scene. Much like his previous excursions, Placid One's opener here comes in the form of a break-centric dance juggernaut by the name of "Pygmalion", blurring the lines along the hardcore continuum; "Tropic" pitches down to a slow-releasing house abstraction that remains at a slow tempo. Over on the B-side, "Azure" calms the waters thanks to a deep-minded house gem with all sorts of dreamy sequences, and "When All The World's Asleep" builds on that by entering a totally beatless space, gliding and moving along a cloud of rich ambient drones. Excellent stuff.