CD Album Recommendations February 2017

Review: Given his impressive track record, hopes are naturally high for Bonobo's sixth album, Migration, which is his first full-length since 2013. Happily, it's a majestic affair, with the producer delivering another sumptuous set of tracks. It was partly inspired by an extended period musing on the nature of personal identity, and the role that nationality plays in that. This concept is translated via thoughtful lyrics, and songs that draw musical influence from the four corners of the globe. It's not a big stylistic leap, of course - his bread and butter remains yearning, emotion-rich downtempo music built around gently jazzy grooves and impeccable live instrumentation - but given that few artists do it better than Bonobo, we'll forgive him for that.

Review: Over a few short years, Tornado Wallace has gone from being a promising nu-disco producer, to one capable of creating brilliant Balearica. Lonely Planet is his debut album, and must rank as his finest work to date. The seven tracks are dreamy, trippy and atmospheric - we'd expect nothing less - and draw on a far wider palette of Balearic influences than we've heard on previous experiences. Coupled with a new-found desire to include more live instrumentation (particularly glistening, Peter Green style guitar passages, drums and exotic flutes), the result is an album that's as evocative, dreamy and humid as anything he's produced to date. In other words, it's a great album and comes highly recommended.

Review: As one of the founding fathers of the ambient scene, any new beat-less missive from Brian Eno should be considered essential listening. It's years, though, since the ambient pioneer has put out something quite as mesmerizing as Reflection. As critics have pointed out, the single-track structure - think 54 minutes of mostly meditative bliss, with occasional darker moments, built around chiming notes that slowly shift and change shape as the piece progresses - recalls 1985's brilliant Thursday Afternoon. It feels more minimalist in outlook than other recent Eno projects, with the "generative" nature of the music (supplemented by an app that rearranges the music depending on the time of day you listen) recalling the musician's early academic approach. Either way, it's uttering beguiling.

Review: Arriving five years after the London trio's last album 'Co-Exist', this third effort shows a band ready to make a bold step on from the sound that haunted radio and TV links alike around the start of this decade. And in what could be said to be a move from innocence to experience, they're doing so with hitherto unrevealed confidence and chutzpah..'I See You' expands on their trademark intimate melancholia with considerable finesse, yet longtime fans shouldn't worry too much about them losing their gloomy charm in the process - more so this is a band brandishing an expanded palette where once they were content to paint their room black.

Review: Since slipping out in 2013 in frustratingly limited quantities, Cavern of Anti-Matter's epic debut album, Blood Drums, has become something of a sought-after item. Those lucky few who managed to secure a copy back then - or pay three-figures for a second-hand one online - will tell anyone willing to listen that it is a modern-day krautrock classic. Happily, Stereolab has persuaded the German trio to agree to a re-issue, now expanded to three slabs of wax to allow for a louder pressing. It's certainly an impressive set, offering up tracks that combine a krautrock sensibility with elements of lo-fi indie-rock, and leftfield electronica experimentation. There's not that many copies of the reissue knocking around, either, so you're advised to move quick before they're all gone.

Review: Bohren & Der Club Of Gore has always been a unique proposition. Initially formed in 1992 by members of numerous grindcore, hardcore and death metal bands, they quickly became famous for creating their own dark, atmospheric and ambient influenced style of "doom-ridden jazz music". They've released umpteen albums since then, with Black Earth - a 2002 exploration of ambient jazz pastures full of horizontal intent - being amongst their most celebrated. Here it gets the reissue treatment, allowing a new generation to wallow in its fine combination of bleak track titles, foreboding chords, hushed percussion and gentle jazz motifs.

Review: It's been four years since experimentalists Emptyset last dropped a full-length excursion. In that time, their reputation has only grown, thanks in part to a string of impressive live performances. The fact that Thrill Jockey is releases Borders, their fifth album, confirms their ascent to the higher echelons of experimental electronica. This time round, they've slightly tweaked their approach. As well as their usual analogue sound design "processes", they've also made use of two instruments they built themselves - one a six-stringed zither-like instrument, and the other a drum. This, combined with their increased confidence in their live set-up, means that Borders has a looser, more immediate feel than some of their previous work. It's a hugely enjoyable development.

Review: French techno stalwart Vitalic has flipped the script on Voyager, his first full length for five years. Whereas his previous sets focused on gnarly, club ready techno and ragged electro, Voyager draws inspiration from the music of his youth. In practice, that means a range of tracks influenced by the muscular electro-disco of Patrick Cowley and Giorgio Moroder, the soaring dancefloor camp of Cerrone, tongue-in-cheek Italo-disco, and even the cheeky productions of Bobby Orlando. It's a little bit of a departure, but there are still heavyweight dancefloor cuts to be found throughout, alongside collaborations with David Shaw & The Beat and old pal Miss Kittin.

Review: It may be speculative to wonder what difference moving to LA from Vienna may have made to London-born electro-soul crooner Christopher Taylor, but it's perhaps resulted in a more upbeat and upfront sound, one that for all its sample and beat-driven experimentation wastes little time in consigning talk of 'blubstep' and comparisons to James Blake firmly to history. Yet for all this album's flirtations with mainstream R&B, it still maintains strength in depth, with both Taylor's mellifluous voice and politically-inspired lyrics rendering it a fine blend of hooks and heart.

Review: Ulrich Schnauss and Jonas Munk first got together in the studio at the tail end of the noughties, subsequently releasing the well-received album, Epic. This belated follow-up continues in a similar vein, fusing Schnauss's ethereal electronics and ambient soundscapes with Munk's evocative, shoegaze style guitar passages. It's a combination that works well. Munk's guitars add a loose, raw feel to Schnauss's impeccable but occasionally overbearing compositions, while the latter does a bang up job melding the two things into a perfectly pitched whole. If My Bloody Valentine collaborated with James Holden or Trentemoller, it would probably sound something like this.

Review: Last year, Echospace duo Stephen Hitchell and Rod Modell spent many happy hours going through the old master tapes of their work under the CV313 alias. Through that, they discovered a number of previously unheard tracks, edits and alternate versions from the Dimensional Space sessions. This "re-mastered" edition of the hard-to-find LP version contains some of those previously unheard works, alongside freshly touched-up mixes of original album cuts. If anything, it's even deeper and more intergalactic than the 2014 version, gently drifting between hazy dub techno, densely textures ambience, and head-in-the-clouds soundscapes.

Review: Echospace member Rod Modell's latest solo work has been trailed as a "generative-music composition" aimed at sound tracking the shift from waking consciousness to deep sleep. Modell does this by combining his usual dub techno inspired sonic textures, with a battery of barely audible voices that flit in and out of the mix. All of this, fused with additional field recordings and sleepy electronics, results in an extended piece that's both calming and, if you listen to it intently enough (which, to be honest, isn't the idea), really rather odd. As ambient works go, though, it's quietly impressive.

Review: It would seem for all the world like Ty Segall is locked in some deathless conflict with Thee Oh Sees man John Swyer to see who can be the most prolific garage rock genius of the here and now, with this self-titled effort - a record as awash with his trademark blend of jam-kicking cheer and stylish chutzpah as ever - the latest case for this cause. But with his band The Muggers taking a more prominent role here, 'Ty Segall' is not just that same old fabulous thing - sure, there are three minutes punk gems, cocky T-Rex ramalama and head-spinning psych-pop, yet one song here hits a mighty ten minutes, hinting that there may be evolutionary pathways open to this modern-day marvel even beyond his ability to rock out like no-one else on earth.

Review: There have been so many peculiar releases from Wayne Coyne and his merry men in the last few years that it comes as something of a relief to not only be confronted with their new album proper but to discover that it follows in the fearlessly experimental style that they embarked on with their last two trips to neverland. This ris testimony to a band still firmly intent on transcending the everyday with heartfelt emotion to spare. 'Oczy Mlody' may be sonically adventurous and otherworldly, yet like all of this band's finest works, its sense of wonder is more commonly down to melody and songcraft than sonic trickery or head-spinning psychedelia.