Juno Recommends Leftfield: Best of 2022

Review: Burial's first full-length EP since 2012's 'Rival Dealer' hears the South London enigma plunge the depths of his newest dark ambient sound, wrenching the emo essences of rave from their breakbeats to produce a purely ambient affair. Spanning every emotion from depression to triumph, 'Antidawn' opens with a cough, in a seeming nod to the COVID lockdowns of recent years. Meanwhile, disparate sections buzz and weave in and out of one another on 'Shadow Paradise' and 'Strange Neighbourhood', never quite landing on their feet before being whisked away again. One of Burial's most defining world-building works.

Review: Merrin Karras' 2020 foray into extended compositions combining his Berlin School tendencies and expansive ambient is finally pressed-up on cloudy transparent 12". Remastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri and featuring revisited art by Noah M / Keep Adding.

Review: "Game & Performance" from Deux remains one of the favourite transmissions in the ever blossoming discography of Minimal Wave, while the duo of Gerard Pelletier and Cati Tete are clearly second only to fellow Lyon act In Aeternam Vale in Veronica Vasicka's affections when it comes to her personal favourite French exponents of 80s minimal synth. Having already released a Deux retrospective in 2010 entitled Decadence, the Brooklyn label now presents Golden Dreams, a four track EP of studio and demo tracks that Pelletier and Tete recorded from 1985 onwards. Typically all four tracks are previously unreleased and have been newly remastered for this 12" issue - on golden vinyl no less! Final track "Fam Fam" perhaps comes closest to recapturing the magic of "Game & Performances" stripped down minimal synth compositions and hushed vocal duets, but all four tracks will prove temptation personified to Minimal Wave regulars.

Review: Four Flies present the first ever 45rpm to be taken from Giuliano Sorgini's masterpiece album Zoo Folle. The library and soundtrack specialist cooked up some irresistibly groovy and funky sounds on the record and two of the best are picked here for serious DJ deployment only. 'Mad Town' opens up with some killer and funky drum breaks with a slick flute line adding extra pizzazz up top. It's a psyched out number for big dance floor moments an on the flip, 'Ultima Caccia' is a more Afro-tinged and tribal number with blissed out drums from Giuliano and some mad funky percussion by session player Enzo Restuccia.

Review: Despite the title sounding like an archive collection, 1994 is actually the debut album from OKRAA. It has an emphasis on live performance and makes for a gorgeously immersive and even evolving listen from the aways excellent A Strangely Isolated Place label. All four pieces are over with minutes but they are worthy of their playing time for the way so much unfolds in such engaging fashion. Synths are cold and innocent on 'Ola De Luz' while 'Heartless' is more textural, dark, heavy in its mood. The title track is another heavy and introspective one while 'Plasma' has a more optimistic feel that lifts the spirts.

Review: Under the Jaz alter-ego, John Zahl has been serving up laidback, Balaearic-minded edits of musical obscurities since the mid 2000s. Initially, that was for Claremont 56 offshoot Sixty Five, but in the last decade he's also appeared on Passport To Paradise, Rotating Souls and, most recently, Pinchy & Friends. Here he returns to the latter label with four more rubs of atmospheric cuts from the dusty corners of his record collection. He begins with the wonderfully throbbing, solo-heavy dancefloor synth-scape of 'Cloud Worship', before successfully tinkering with a tactile, semi-organic proto-house gem on 'Pick a Toy'. Over on side B, 'Puzzle' is a tidy revision of a cosmic-minded, French language Balearic synth-pop gem, while 'Friday Night' is an eccentric, off-kilter slab of new wave disco oddness.

Review: Verdant's tenth release is another meandering and mystic trip through ambient electronic sounds that leaves you a million miles away from wherever you started. All four artists here excel with electro producer Reedale Ris kicking off in languid, far-sighted fashion with their mournful synths and distant cosmic designs. Out.Lier's 'Track 2' is another one cast adrift on deepest space with smeared pads and floating aural details suspending you in mid air. Jo Johnson's cascading synth motifs are pure and innocent and cathartic and Romanticise The World's 'Track 4' is mellifluous and hopeful.

Review: After much clamour from fans, Four Flies has managed to put together a reissue of this golden bit of sunny Balearic funk. The special 7" marked Azzuro's debut on the label and takes inspiration from the 80s Library scene as much as gentle sunset dances on the Med. It manages to sound retro yet future, with its analogue synth waves and jazz-funk rhythms, catchy pop hooks and warm grooves. After the dance-y opener 'Agip,' comes a more zoned out and horizontal groove with 'Telefono Giallo' while 'Astrotensione' closes on another celestial ambient vibe.

Review: The very first live stream on 9128.live broadcast from the studio of Rafael Anton Irisarri, as he and Thomas Meluch (Benoit Pioulard) pieced together a completely live improvisation, christening the newly created 9128 airwaves and setting the bar for many more live takeovers. With one album between them as Gailes, and profound work individually (also together as Orcas), Rafael and Thomas are masters of the ambient craft, combining intricate field recordings, guitar, pedals, vocals and heady reverb across a 40-minute non-stop immersive listen, split into two 20-minute sides for the inaugural 9128 vinyl release. The 9128 label aims to document significant live performances by artists that previously performed on the 9128.live platform. With recordings initially created for a singular collective listening moment, and often as part of a festival or takeover weekend, label recordings will re-present this music for further listening across various formats that best suit each release. Gailes - Session Two, will be available as a digital download and 12", printed in a reverse-board die-cut sleeve, black vinyl.

Review: Hassan Ideddir's 1989 single "Atfalouna" sees an expanded repress courtesy of Dark Entries. Born to Berber parents in Morocco, Ideddir began making music at the age of 10 after being discovered singing in the stairwell by his school's headmaster. Encouraged by his peers, he began playing concerts, and his status grew. In 1987, he played a string of sold-out concerts in Casablanca, Rabat, and Marrakesh, in support of a children's charity. The success of these concerts secured him a record deal, and he went to Paris to record his debut single "Atfalouna" in 1988.

Review: The Cowboy Bebop was an anime series that was much loved for its soundtrack albums by Japanese composer and instrumentalist Yoko Kanno and his band the Seatbelts. The sounds were weird and wonderful affairs that made odd connections between seemingly disparate worlds - jazz, rock, J-pop and electronic, often with a curious aesthetic. Just this year, Kanno has returned to soundtracking the series on Netflix so this reissue is sure to connect with fans old and new. It is largely instrumental, with big band pieces next to more ambient passages and extensive alto sax deployment. As far as cult records go, this one is right up there.

Review: School Daze is a killer compilation put together by the Dark Entries label and the Honey Soundsystem crew, collating some of the early recordings produced by Patrick Cowley in the years between 1973-81 and were later used as soundtrack material in two gay porn films. You will probably know Cowley for his Hi-NRG output or 'that' Donna Summer remix or his behind the buttons work on Sylvester tracks. Be prepared for a surprise (well quite a few as the 'explicit content' warning on the cover lives up to its billing) as this collection presents Cowley as a producer capable of many styles and moods. The closest School Daze comes to the sound Cowley is most identified is opening track "Zygote" and from here the collection runs through primitive electronics, short bursts of wave and more with a few extended gems that highlight Cowley's talent for arrangement. One of the compilations of the year!

Review: **Repress** The Music From Memory label was launched by Redlight Records founders Tako Reyenga, Abel Nagenast and Jamie Tiller earlier this year, sporting a proud mantra of "giving overlooked and unreleased music that we love a second chance". The focus of attention for Music Of Memory's second release falls on the works of celebrated ambient composer Gigi Masin. Born in Venice, Masin's work has been sampled by the likes of Bjork and To Rococco Rot and his albums attract feverish acclaim, with Wind, Masin's privately pressed debut LP a desired rarity for the only the most well-heeled of second hand collectors. It's from this album and a selection of Masin's other released works that Music From Memory draw from for this stunningly meditative double LP retrospective Talk To The Sea, which also includes a healthy amount of unreleased material.

Review: The latest release on Jonny Nash's Melody As Truth label sees Los Angeles-based talent Diego Herrera come forth with a new album under his familiar Suzanne Kraft moniker. It is of course just one of several projects the West Coast artist is involved in (Pharoahs, Dude Energy, Blase being several others) but the overall sunkissed, melodically rich sound he brings to them all make him a perfect fit for Melody As Truth. The seven tracks on Talk From Home were recorded over a few weeks in the winter of 2014, and feature Herrera playing guitar alongside more familiar synth tones in a mood that stays resolutely mellow from start to finish. Its three releases deep for Nash's label now and all of them have been sublime.

Review: "Another Bjork album?!" cry the naysayers. But little do they know they've been duped into thinking the Icelandic legend's last full-length, Utopia, was a recent affair. Actually, it's already been a good five years since the singer's flowery flabbergaster, and collab with experimentalists Arca and Doon Kanda, came to be. Fossora, by contrast, is a much more mournful LP: it's a meditation on generations, and was in part inspired by the death of Bjork's mother. It also contains collaborations with her two children, Sindri and isadora. A homelier affair, revisiting Bjork's upbringing in Iceland, on which she hadn't reflected on record since she was 16.

Review: At this stage in his career, Jon Hopkins should be able to do whatever the hell he likes. After proving his synaesthetic abilities throughout the 2010s - with masterpieces like 'Light Through The Veins' and his last album 'Singularity'- it's clear this climactic electronica artist knows no bounds. Now he debuts a new full guided meditation-style LP documenting his ketamine-fulled revelations realised in a remote Ecuadorian cave. Relinquishing beats and drum sounds, this is a fully ambient affair from Hopkins, and routinely features soothing, sampled vocal snippets from the late yogi and guru Baba Ram Daas, as well as collabs with producer and psychedelic ceremony guide East Forest.

Review: FKA Twigs' latest LP 'Caprisongs', widely known as her poptimist opus (contrasting to her earlier experiments) now gets a luminous vinyl pressing via Young. It does well to justify her reinvention after breaking up with a disgraced actor whose name we shan't name: the album is a colossal collaborative affair, and even come with a carnivalesque duet with pop king The Weeknd ('Tears In The Club'). The melodic abandon that follows is just as apt.

Review: 25 years on from its original 1996 release, Neil Ollivierra's debut album as the Detroit Escalator Company gets a reissue. Emerging like a phoenix from Detroit's early dance music scene, 'Soundtrack [313]' deals in the rawer end of atmospheric, arpreggiated techno, each track taking on a different facet of the same shapeshifting platonic form. Enthusiastic panning and crystalline plucks adorn each mix here, re-evoking the same refractive, ascendant image we had of this album in 1996.

Review: Polish composer Olga Wojciechowska and veteran electronic producer Robin Rimbaud aka Scanner, combine on A Strangely Isolated Place to revisit a beloved Strie album - Olga's more electronic and experimental alias. With previous releases on Serein and Time Released Sound as Strie, Olga Wojciechowska's 'Struktura' was released in 2015 to a limited audience due to its physical-only format. As Olga's work becomes increasingly more coveted, through her more recent releases on A Strangely Isolated Place (Unseen Traces & Infinite Distances), and with Struktura praised as one of her finest albums to date, the discussion to breathe new life into the album resulted in a unique pairing with Scanner, an electronic music producer and multimedia artist responsible for some of the most defining works of the genre since the early 1990s.

Blurring the line between harmony and dissonance, Struktura's original recordings paint an eerie, haunting and beautiful picture, conceptualized around abstract art, with intricacies and mystery abound. Here, Strie's original recordings remain untouched, albeit lovingly remastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri, and it is left to Scanner to provide further interpretations of Olga's original recordings. Scanner productions can typically traverse a myriad of styles, but here, Robin took a primarily live-hardware approach to the remixes, allowing the rawness of his recordings to add story and depth. Recorded in one take, with no overdubs, the reinterpretations strip the melodies and textures to their original essence, bringing an entirely analog element to Olga's intrinsically detailed originals. Featuring artwork by Rep Ringel and mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri, Struktura Revisited will be available on Gatefold 2LP in a black/grey half-and-half vinyl, with 6x6" soft-touch heavy art card.

Review: After a run of reissues and a boundary-blurring fusion of classical music and electronica (January 2021's Angel's Flight), Norwegian ambient veteran Geir Jennsen AKA Biosphere has gone back to basics on Shortwave Memories. Ditching software and computers for analogue synths, drum machines and effects units, Jennsen has delivered album that he claims was inspired by the post-punk era electronics of Daniel Miller and Matin Hannett, but instead sounds like a new, less dancefloor-conscious take on the hybrid ambient/techno sound he was famous for in the early 1990s. The results are uniformly brilliant, making this one of the Norwegian trailblazer's most alluring and sonically comforting albums for decades.

Review: Nobody's Business re-release Kittin's first album, 'First Album', harkening to way back when the electroclash queen (Caroline Herve) formed one part of the duo Miss Kittin & The Hacker with Michael Amato. Perhaps it's time for an electroclash comeback, as we're no less keen on this album as we were back then. We're happily reminded of the hit popcorning single '1982', while between-the-beats coldness prevails on lesser-known cuts like 'Nurse' and 'L'Homme Dans L'Ombre', showing off the pair's near-sociopathically calculated sound. Also of note: this album's original release year, 2001, is to 2022 what 1982 was to it.