Juno Recommends Breakbeat: March 2023

Review: Johannes Kolter is Kolter, as well as being the artist formerly known as DJOKO, and here he follows up on his very recent Between Fragments album with a cheeky three tracker, once again for the Pilot label. This 12" kicks off with 'Techno Life', which ironically is a breaks/electro hybrid affair with all the hallmarks you could ask for from vocoder vocals to electronic cowbells. 'Can't Stop Rocking' borrows some serious chunks from a very famous electro record made by one of jazz music's legends - that description must surely narrows it down - and adds some tempo and the occasional vocal hook. Then we see proceedings drawn to a close by 'Sorry You Had To Wait So Long', every bit as lively as the other two, spaciously produced and peppered with the subtlest of electro flourishes. All round good work, you have to agree.

Review: Breakbeat Paradise's Toxic Funk series rolls out a ninth volume here with two more powerful cuts. These come from Paul Sitter and Crash Party who together cook up plenty of horn-lead action on 'Don't Touch Me.' It has old school bars and some retro synth work that all adds up to a full thrill funk banger. 'Wake Up' is another raw and raucous one with big rock guitars and slamming drums. A b-boy hip-hop vocal is paired with yelping female vocal samples and the crispy drums never let up. Two dynamite tracks for sure.

Review: DJ Absolutely Shit is the natural conclusion of ever-sillier DJ names if you ask us. Fortunately, there is nothing silly about the music which has already made an impact with lovers of a certain type of rave-ready dance sounds. Red Laser is the home for this collab between Il Bosco and Metrodome and this is one of two EPs they have dropping this month. 'Little Movies' rides on old school breakbeats with pitched-up hardcore vocals and euphoric synth work. It's familiar but essential. 'Only U' brings more playful chord stabs to tough breakbeats and 'Overtime Dub' then offered up leggy drum work, diva vocals and a darker bass line. 'Drop The Face' closes out with whirring machine madness that cannot fail to pump the party.

Review: Amphibian ambient techno artist Bufobufo (Ben Murphy) debuts a brand new breaks-techno project for Japanese label Cabaret; it's one of his few long-form projects, other than the sole album 'Flora And Fauna'. Recalling various breaks and trip-hop classics over the years (Smith & Mighty's 'Same' may or may not be sampled on the track 'Pixelated Dreams'), this is a retro-modern take on the genre of breaks, less concerned with old-skool scratchiness as it is with stoking sonic intrigue, through its many clippy and refined textures.

Review: Georgian electro-techno artist Toke Nikolaishvilli has cemented his name on the international dance circuit, laying down a yearly sprinkling of EPs for the likes of Pluto's Plan, Dawn State and Griffe. This latest EP hears him take on the melodic, product-of-its-time vogue of aquatic techno. Silly saw leads take charge of 'Sia', with long-released Fruity Loops style snares and a womping finesse making the track sound nicely retrofuturistic. Another cut of choice is the industrial breaks banger 'Avalon', not holding back for a second with its pulsating acid basses and 'phwoar' transitions.

Review: Control Freak Recordings launch their new reissue sub-label with Soul Oddity's Tone Capsule - a seminal electro/IDM classic from mid-90s Miami. Originally released as a series of three EPs, the reissue compiles these into a single release, newly remastered by Keith Tenniswood (Radioactive Man) - available digitally and, for the first time, a x2LP album. Soul Oddity are often 'credited' for bringing IDM to the US, through the already-popular-in-the-US guises of West Coast breaks and electro. Their efforts culminated into Tone Capsule, which sounds essentially like a British version of Drexciya, or if one of the Belleville Three had done an acid trip while watching Threads.

Review: Nathan Pinder is at the helm for the long-awaited second release on the Arcadia Sounds label. It marks a mighty fine debut for him across five cuts pressed on nice180 gram vinyl. he shows off his range with a spectrum of sound that indeed makes a fine Brain Dance Experiment. Things kick off with 'Sonic X', a mid-tempo and woozy exploration of spaced-out pads and percolating new age rhythms before the energy levels pick up with punchy electronic house wonk-out 'Freaky Machines.' 'Open Sky' is another sleek and slick electronic adventure with a hint of retro 90s magic and astral synth work then 'Jammer' pumps another balmy cosmic house groove and 'Back Again' brings some turbo funk.

Review: Innervisions presents the 14th edition of its Secret Weapons series. This breaks-inflected, glossy, and high-octane release is emblematic of what we might call experimental EDM, all of which is chart-worthy yet not overblown. Glowal's 'Encore' opens the compilation, Bicep-style, in which we hear rave-trance stabs complemented by military snare rolls in the pre-drop, before a triumphant breakbeat sets in thereafter. It gets weirder and weirder from there, as 'Olden Daze' opts for all kinds of experimental tomfoolery, and 'Ara' works jackin' house vocal science into a beat more fitting for '70s industrial music than the '20s charts. This is an eclectic yet euphoric dance compilation from the masterminds Dixon and Ame.

Review: Following his recent impressive release for Animals On Psychedelics,2 is the second appearance of rising Ukrainian talent Volodymyr Gnatenko on Treviso, Italy's Where We Met. It opens with the moving twilight breaks of 'Een' on the A-side, followed by the evocative slo-mo beats of 'Twee'. Over on the flip, Gnatenko finally ups the tempo on the tranced-out euphoria of 'Drie', with 'Vier' following in equally elevating and psychedelic fashion that will have you reaching for the lasers.

Review: Featuring choice selections of twisted-up samples unearthed from dancehall and ragga archives, Seekersinternational make another massive appearance on Sneaker Social Club, building on the manifesto set out on their original RaggaPreservationSociety EP back in 2016. Showing serious dedication to their source material whilst also injecting it with their cosmic-come-experimental approach to production, Seekersinternational embrace the energetic volatility of junglist breaks and the rawness of ragga to deliver an EP that slips effortlessly between the contemporary and the classic. This release is a time-travel device, a portal into ragga-jungle's past and the future.

Review: 'Waiting For The Lights' was first released in 1992, and is a breakbeat heartbreaker in mono, marrying stuttering leads and bleepazoid melodies into a hissing stew. Mandalay's mix is a heavyweight remix, not shy of indulging in 'tribal' additions such as marimba and djembe. By far the best remix is the Thai Mix, adding the perfect amount of weight with a rollicking acid line. We'll only say this about 'Waiting For Champion Sound', the B4: it deserved to be more of a hit.

Review: Think Bicep but with a darker, deeper undercurrent and you have this latest release from DJ and producer, Franky Wah. 'This is Shen' is a tour-de-force in vocal sampling, featuring vocals from Luisant, Robinson, and Lunar June. The opening track, 'Pandora', strikes the perfect balance between euphoria and driving breakbeats - an ideal selection for those moments of dancefloor reflection. The tonally darker, 'Patroller', fuses a nu-disco style chorus with softly spoken verse vocals - an impressive merging of styles. Another standout track, 'EYWA' merges a spliced, distant voice over a dance-ready garage beat. 'Hausa' deploys a rousing reggaeton-esque rhythm melded with melancholic pads which, again, reach towards Wah's signature, deeper sound. This offering from Franky Wah is a wonderfully varied introduction into the soundworld of Shen.

Review: Dance death-harbinger Drumskull's latest EP, 'Muscle Memory,' weaves a hypnotic tapestry of sound that builds on the artist's dual sonic and audiovisual artistry. Uniquely combining the quite far-flung-from-each-other genres of footwork, jungle and deep house; this is an unusual EP that draws on everything from the scratchiest oldskool rave tropes to more modern dance approaches. It's no surprise we hear a rare, rhythmically swaying, and ecstatic remix from Lone on the B, not to mention a grime curveball version from maestro LMajor.