Juno Recommends Leftfield: August 2023

Review: While his AR antics and massive stage shows might be a far cry from the subversive rave culture he came up in, Aphex Twin remains one of the most fascinating and gifted electronic dance music producers of his generation. Get past the fanfare and bluster, and it's still an incredibly exciting prospect to be opening up a new box of his charms, and he's as generous as he's ever been on this new four-track EP. As a key architect of the braindance sound (whether he likes the tag or not), Richard D. James demonstrates his gift for uncanny emotionality and dexterous drum programming on the lead single 'Blackbox Life Recorder 21f', hitting a spot not too far from the realm of his last album Syro and The Tuss material. With a lush fold-out sleeve to house it all in, it's another fine addition to the canon of a true cult phenomenon.

Review: Four Flies present another masterpiece from one of the all-time greats of Italian soundtrack and library music, Piero Umiliani. His work on the 1974 film Il Corpo ranks amongst his most famous work, and now two pieces have been selected from the soundtrack and presented on this exclusive single. 'Chaser' on the A side appears in an exclusive extended form which has never been released before, while 'Hard Times' on the flip remains the archetype of Italian jazz-funk perfection. This is a limited edition so don't hang around as these are sure to fly out.

Review: If you've seen the movie Aftersun chances are it hit home, and left unanswered questions. The touching yet troubling tale of a divorced father on holiday with his daughter, and his difficult past - which we never see more than abstract glimpses of, screened within borrowed recollection of the girl now in adulthood - there's plenty of suggestion about what may have happened to him before she was born, subsequent mental health issues, and his fate after the movie ends. But the flick's real power is found in the bond between parent and kid. Patient, quiet, and deeply personal, cellist, composer and electronic music producer Oliver Coates more than meets the standards required to score such a human story. The soundtrack is meditative and reflective, hopeful but also tangibly mournful. It invokes feelings of comfort, while also - for us anyway - inspires memories of things lost in our own fires.

Review: 2014 was a tumultuous period for Polachek as she and her band grew apart; She wanted to create an aesthetic world, make the band dress better and invest in visuals. Needless to say, the 2010s indie band Chairlift wasn't entirely on board. Polachek was creatively parched and set about a production career, producing 'Arcadia' on her laptop whilst on tour using only MIDI instruments, laptop microphone and field recordings (like on the atmospheric 'Hissing Pipes at Dawn'). This period continued with Polachek beginning to perform in small venues in New York under different names, donning a blonde fringed wig and creating an expansive, yet quaint universe that would unquestionably influence the creating of her breakout solo debut 'Pang' 5 years later. Arcadia spans from ambient medieval-esque wind sections to zany strings that conjure up gusts billowing through green pastures with blue skies overhead. 'Dominic' has stood the test of time as the most popular of the tracks, a relationship that's a 'perfect disaster'. Highlights are the organ-led 'Backwards & Upwards' on purging infatuation, stepping backwards to move upwards as Polachek puts it, and 'Lady's Got Gills' with its whistles and what may be a blend of harp, yangqin and guzheng that backs a story of a woman contained. Arcadia is lo-fi cinematic, in a sentence, and a must listen to Polachek fans.

Review: Yu Su's eclectic, organic sound is one that has been perfected over every consecutive release, and reaches its yetmost peak with 'I Want An Earth'. As if to make a defiant cry for a habitable planet, this one contains four tracks inspired by the artist's time spent in the deserts of Ojai, California, and the coastal areas of British Columbia, presenting a deeply pad-driven, warm and modular sound to match. A dazzling work of odd-timed cosmickery and varied sonics.

Review: Now widely regarded as one of the best soundtrack composers of his generation, at the very least, Hans Zimmer has been behind plenty of the most seminal movie scores. His work for The Last Samurai is right up there and now for the very first time it is pressed up to vinyl. The 2003 movie starring Tom Cruise was nominated for a Golden Globe for its score and centres around the struggle of Civil War veteran Nathan Algren, the newly formed Imperial Japanese Army and Lord Moritsugu Katsumoto. The music mixes up traditional Japanese taiko drums, shakuhachi flutes and kotos into pastoral passages full of drama and tension as well as beauty.

Review: The Udacha label might have been away for a while but is now back with a vengeance. First up for this return is a new long player by the mighty fine Kurvenschreiber quarter, which is made up of Sergey Komarov, Vlad Dobrovolski, Ilya Sadovski and Alexey Grachev. These sound artists have been excelling in their field for some 10 years now and use synths as well as found sound objects to create their work. Magnetic tape loops, various instruments, pre-recorded loops, shortwave radios, transformers and much more give rise to this unique record which mixes up Boolean jazz, kurventronika and post-rock.

Review: German electronic artist and co-founder of the Noton label, Alva Noto, presents the standalone release of his original soundtrack for the film 'This Stolen Country Of Mine', first composed in 2022. The documentary film explores the question of a state's sovereignty in the face of foreign powers, portraying Ecuadorian resistance fighters and journalists who oppose the sell-off of an extensive part of the country's resources to Chinese investors. Touching on these ominous themes, Noto crafts an intimately minimal, but tense ambient electronic score, reflecting the quiet determination of the communal spirit of the Ecuadorian mountain village portrayed in the film.

Review: Caterina Barbieri has rightly earned her position as one of the leading lights in modern minimal synthesis, following the legacy of the great composers of the 20th Century and presenting stark, compelling ideas revolving around spare, purposeful compositions. Her 2019 album Ecstatic Computation was her calling card to the world, and many high profile performances have followed since. Now we're being invited back into the thinking behind that first record with an expressly-framed sister piece recorded at the same time called Myuthafoo. Hey algorithmic approach to composition yields powerful effects as she ruminates on time, space, memory and emotion, presented across six additional pieces which add wonderfully to the narrative from her debut album.

Review: Six tracks by Inhmost emerge, doing solid justice to the Swiss producer's latest addition to his vision in ambient and dub techno. His second LP for the Swiss label re:st, each track evokes the immersive motional 'scapes conjured in the artist's own mind, as he revisits old memories from a space of peace. 'The Feeling Of...' is the follow-up project to the artist's former project 'The Meaning Of...', coming as an example of the simpler, more tactile and less thought-out interpretations of the same spaces.

Review: The Dedalus Ensemble have performed a collection of legendary albums by the great Brian Eno. They are Discreet Music (1975), Music For Airports (1978) And Thursday Afternoon (1985) and all of them set the blueprint for the then-new musical genre known as ambient. These versions go beyond what you might expect and take you far away from the source material but stay true to the original theories of ambient. It is music without a beginning or end and music that makes you want to get lost in its midst.

Review: Canadian composer, arranger, songwriter, and electronic music pioneer Mort Garson just keeps on giving, even now, 15 years after his death. Archival releases since have come not-so-thick-and-fast, but occasional and well thought through, with Journey to the Moon & Beyond the latest example of this. Not, as the cover and title might suggest, the score to some forgotten 1970s animated classic, but instead a collection of stuff very few will have heard before, let alone had opportunity to buy, it's really something special. On the track list, then, you'll find the soundtrack to 1974 Blaxploitation movie Black Eye, or at least part of it. Similarly splendid, but in a very different way, are the grand tones of 'Zoos of the World', originally made to accompany a 1970 National Geographic special of the same name. Then there's the music he wrote for the 1969 moon landings, as used by CBS News at the time. History bottled, or rather pressed, get it while it's fresh (and in stock).

Review: Daljit Kundi and Ludvig Cimbrelius have Indian and Swedish backgrounds but actually came together in the UK music scene and specifically ambient jungle. They set off to explore that world totters and did so with aplomb across several great albums and EPs. This new album was actually nearly done many years ago but was shelved owing to struggles with record labels. When Past Inside The Present heard it though they encouraged the album to be finished and so here it is. It's an emotional work which "attempts to represent a psychic darkness that is as deeply restful as it is ripe with creative potential." It's absorbing, beautiful ambient from a pair of real dons.

Review: Among that coterie of visionary artists who left their bands to fly solo on the cusp of abundant riches and fame, John Foxx flew from Ultravox in 1980 to pursue his own creative vision. He quickly cemented his own style with albums like Metamatic and The Garden, but arguably delivered the fullest iteration of his sound on this 1983 album. The Golden Section straddles synth-pop and pop rock with ease, and it stands shoulder to shoulder with the greatest of the era. From his former band to Duran Duran and even moire niche concerns like Freur, this is the sound of the new dawn for pop music in the UK as the vast possibilities of synthesis were finally being understood.

Review: The story of this one revolves around San Diego native Anthony "Antone" Williams. He was one day alone in a studio, messing about with the gear and before he knew he it lay down the haunting rhythm that underpins the tune now presented here by the good folks at Athens of the North. It's a sinister, restless one that got released as a hugely limited 7" on Unity Records with otherworldly soul production and a pained vocal up top. Post punk soul, some call it, and that's a fitting descriptor. A remix appears on the flip but the allure of the original is hard to beat.

Review: Hyperdub continues to stamp its authority down on a wide variety of electronic music, in this case throwing the light, bouncing club-ready sounds of Canada's Jessy Lanza into the mix of a back catalogue that touches on everything from ambient to dubstep and footwork. But, while we open on the snare-happy garage-house of 'Don't Leave Me Now', and tracks like 'Drive' also look to the dancefloor, things don't stay there long. 'Don't Cry On My Pillow', for example, is a low stepping piece of alternative electronic soul. 'Big Pink Rose' opts for synth refrains and staccato drums to create a steamy, heady neon r&b brew with added yacht. 'Double Time' deconstructs pop balladry and makes it sound lo-fi yet huge, 'I Hate Myself' seems to take a lead from tropicalia-hued, leftfield electronica.

Review: Delsin's Mantis series continues to dive into hidden corners of techno abstraction with this outstanding display from Italian producer Katatonic Silentio. Often found releasing albums on Ilian Tape, her approach to glitchy, exquisitely sculpted electronics translates perfectly to the immersive, dubby mode of the label, resulting in four elegant and original pieces that strike a balance between fragmentation and hypnotism. Whether it's the tense patience of 'To' or the loaded bass pressure of 'Hide' that draws you in, this is a record which will yield repeated discoveries whether you approach it as a passive listener or a curious selector.

Review: There's multi-talented, and then multi-talented. John Foxx is credited as singer, musician, artist, photographer, graphic designer, writer, teacher and lecturer, first making a name for himself up front of the new wave pioneers Ultravox (eventually handing the reigns over to Midge Ure), he presided over a period in the band's history that was less commercially successful, but incredibly forward thinking musically. This desire to keep pushing boundaries has rung true across Foxx's entire - and extensive - oeuvre, as Annexe, one of his solo efforts, goes to show. A pervading sense of darkness carries many of the tracks 'Dance With Me' being just one example, which contrasts the polished, highly synthesised productions, veering from the complex percussive patterns of 'Wings & A Wind' to the sparse, ghostly, near-spoken word operatics of 'A Woman On A Stairway'. Coldwave, some might call it, others would just say John Foxx.

Review: Three years on from the series' inaugural 12-inch - a superb collection of cuts from Forest Drive West, Delsin's Mantis Series notches up its 12th release. It comes courtesy of Nullfunkt contributors RVSHES, AKA Dylan Brownsword and James Parker. To our ears, it seems to have two inspirations: twisted, polyrhythmic techno of the sort associated with the likes of Livity Sound and Timedance, and the cyclical, marimba-heavy American minimalism of Steve Reich. It's a smart formula that the pair explore expertly over six differing variations on a theme. Comparse and contrast, for example, the intoxicating, mind-altering drum-work of 'RHS III', the acid-laden polyrhythmic hallucination that is 'RHS IV', the melodious and delay-laden shuffle of 'RHS II', and the pulsating, echoing, genuinely psychedelic techno stomp of 'RHS VI'.

Review: In 1984 Japanese pianist Satsuki Shibano composed and compiled a series of reinterpretations of compositions by the French composer Erik Satie - in turn known for his minimalist and avant-garde works, the 'Gymnopedie' the most ubiquitous among them. Shibano's takes on an incredible quantity of Satie's works, from 'La Balancoire' to 'Voix D'interieur', are about as pure as piano compositions can get, starkly carving out their nearly Platonic form.. This reissue via WRWTFWW also features the original artwork by Shinro Ohtake.

Review: .By the time the earliest tracks on this impressive collection of rarities first came out, post punk had already ushered punk out the door and into the back room, the raucous and uncompromising genre that had given the 1970s their bloody-nosed personality giving way to something even more alien to the establishment, perhaps less aggressive but certainly equally innovative. Inspired by the likes of Joy Division and Public Image Limited, many of the artists on this generously-priced package can't claim to have pioneered but they certainly helped with the evolution, development and continuation of the sound. Perhaps what's most remarkable is the universality of it, with names spanning countries from Poland to Sweden, Yugoslavia to Denmark, at a time when not only was there no internet, but borders between East and West remained largely closed.