New releases last four weeks: Coldwave/Synth

Review: Broken English Club is the alias of techno veteran Oliver Ho and here he explores his signature industrial wave and post-punk sound with unflinching intensity as he lands on Dekmantel's UFO Series with Songs Of Love And Decay. It is a raw, brooding album dedicated to the late Juan Mendez aka Silent Servant with tracks like 'Crawling' and 'Death Cult' echoing his tribal techno roots. 'England Heretic' meanwhile channels eerie synthwave and Giallo vibes and 'Vessel Of Skin' delves into distortion-laced post-punk that contrasts with the stark futurism of 'Pacific Island Kill.' Ho blends cinematic textures with club energy throughout so makes for a dark, emotionally charged tribute that pushes beyond typical boundaries and is sure to resonate in the club.

Review: Berlin-based producer JakoJako aka Sibel Kocer's debut album for Mute - after appearances on a stream of leading German labels including Tresor - is described as a distillation of ideas that she's been exploring for many years. In reality, that means working on a minimal set up, away from the computer while restricting herself to just a Eurorack and a Waldorf Iridium Core, in the search for spontaneity. She found it, for sure, as the results - recorded in Vietnam during the Tet Lunar New Year celebrations - are a feast of glistening arpeggios and lush modular textures, stripped back but full of expression and personality. 'Ghi-ta' will appeal to fans of vintage perky ambient productions the Pete Namlook/Mixmaster Morris collaboration Dreamfish, while 'Gio' has a touch of Tangerine Dream's classic widescreen sensibilities. Bold tones, bold debut.

Review: Reissued over two decades since its original release, the second full-length from Liverpool's Ladytron still thrums with the same sharp-edged futurism that made it such a cult touchpoint. Tracks like 'Seventeen' and 'Evil' captured a tension between robotic detachment and raw emotional charge, anchored in the band's icy synth palette and minimal, deadpan vocals. While 'Blue Jeans' flirts with glammy melancholy, 'Turn It On' and 'Fire' dial up the menace, tapping into something more volatile. There's something surgical about the sequencing tooi'Cracked LCD', 'NuHorizons' and 'Cease2exist' stretch into more abstract terrain, before folding back into hook-laced electro-pop with the closing title track and 'The Reason'. With Daniel Hunt and Mickey Petralia co-producing, the album took shape in Los Angeles but never lost the European chill that defined their sound. It's a record that helped redraw the map for synth-pop in the early 2000sineither retro-futurist pastiche nor pure nostalgia, but something sleek, cinematic and entirely their own.

Review: In 1984, Gary Numan launched Numa Records and started a new phase in his career with the release of Berserker. This album introduced a harder-edged digital sound into his canon while maintaining the analogue textures of his earlier work. It's a testament to the fact that Numan's creative evolution never stopped and blends both personal and fictional narratives into haunting tracks like 'My Dying Machine,' 'This Is New Love' and 'Berserker.' The remastered double vinyl edition includes the original album with bonus tracks that add extra perspective to this pivotal period in his career.