New releases last two weeks: House

Review: Tim Bergling's music as Avicii was loved enough in his lifetime, but it doubly shook the world after his untimely death in 2018. This career-spanning compilation brings together 19 key tracks by the Swedish DJ and producer, zooming back in mainly on the key works by Berg under the Avicii name, on top of another unreleased tune, 'Let's Ride Away' with Elle King. Avicii's instinct for brain-lodging hooks is on full display here, from the anthemic and unforgettable 'Wake Me Up' to the introspective of 'Heart Upon My Sleeve'. Also included are fan favourites like 'The Nights', 'Without You' feat Sandro Cavazza, and 'Lonely Together' feat Rita Ora, tracing his evolution from bedroom producer to international headliner.

Review: Prolific Italian maestro Black Loops returns to Freerange with Always Moving, a debut album steeped in high-grade dance heritage. Drawing on over a decade of production, he moves beyond club tools to something more personal and musical, with guest appearances from Harvey Sutherland, Byron the Aquarius and Marlena Dae. Rooted in funk, soul and 90s grooves, these are rich, warm tracks with fully authentic swing i with much of the percussion played live by the artist himself. The result is fluid and human, from the broken beats of 'CDMX' to the shimmering chords of 'Detroit Love Letter'. Marlena Dae adds her touch to several standouts, including the disco-leaning 'Electrical' and hazy deep house of 'Pleasure Ride'. Even at its most downtempo, like the closing 'Good Bye Berlin', the album stays focused and melodic. A confident and expressive full-length that shows how far Black Loops has come while hinting at where he might head next.

Review: Black Loops directs a welters' worth of experience into Always Moving, his debut full-length for Freerange. Far beyond club tools, this is a sensitive elusion of watery neo soul instrumentation and distant broken beat jazz, and we're not surprised in this breath to learn of Black Loops' own background as a drummer. Nor is it any wonder either that such auteur's disco house regals such as Harvey Sutherland, Byron The Aquarius and Berlin vocalist Marlena Dae all appear on the record, through 'CDMX' to the ever so eerie, Erie-downstream deep house of 'Detroit Love Letter'. 'Electrical And LSD' takes after such influences as Metro Area's disco house shimmer, while tracks like 'Pleasure Ride' and 'Good Bye Berlin' further locks down the abiding nighttime tension - that least comparable part of his sound.

Review: Chilean-born, Bristol-based Shanti Celeste has always brought a unique colour and emotion to her often bass-heavy sounds. She's a party-starting DJ, too, but delves into whole new realms with her wonderful sophomore full-length. Romance sees her exploring themes of love and friendship through shimmering pop textures and emotionally resonant songwriting. Her vocals take centre stage for the first time and lead single 'Thinking About You' is a heartfelt tribute to a late friend with a glowing groove and airy falsetto. Crafted between Bristol and London, the album features collaborations with Batu and harpist Miriam Adefris, whose delicate touch enhances its celestial tone and following last summer's acclaimed 'Ice Cream Dream Boy,' Romance is a luminous return and smart evolution.

Review: Given that even their most dancefloor-focused tunes are remarkably deep, immersive and sonically detailed, you'd think that Chaos In The CBD's music would suit the album format - it's just that until now, they've not recorded a full-length. A Deeper Life, then, marks a big step forward in the Helliker-Hales brothers' career. Predictably, it's borderline brilliant. Made with the assistance of a cast of collaborators and guest performers (flautist Nathan Haines, boogie revivalist Saucy Lady and original NJ garage-house hero Josh Milan included), it sees the Kiwi duo sashay their way through enveloping, musically expansive cuts - many downtempo and home-listening focused - that variously mix and match elements of deep house, nu-jazz, dub, 80s soul, hip-hop, trip-hop, Latin soul and much more besides. A genuine triumph, even by their high standards.

Review: Fraternal duo Chaos In The CBD open the latest chapter on a roundly impressive musical career, calling on an ensemble cast of creative collaborators to contribute to their debut long-player, 'A Deeper Life'. Louis and Ben 'Beans' Helliker-Hales have been on a non-stop roll since they began releasing music under the Chaos In The CBD moniker just over a decade ago. Recently adding a Fabric Presents compilation to their hefty singles catalogue, the siblings step up with arguably their most outstanding work to date. The likes of Blaze's Josh Milan, saxophonist Nathan Haines, longtime collaborator Isaac Aesili, and UK grime MC Novelist are just some of those drafted to embellish productions that range from head-nodding Balearic to the duo's more familiar dusty house thrust. Vast in scope, the collection drifts through all manner of sounds and styles, held together by a coherent production aesthetic and a gorgeously limber live musicality on display throughout. Highlights include the street soul swagger of 'Tears' (featuring Beantown disco queen, Saucy Lady), the searing soul of 'Wanna Tell Somebody', and the bittersweet deep house magnetism of 'Otaki'. All told, this is nothing short of brilliant work, arguably representing a coming of age as Chaos In The CBD simultaneously pay homage to their eclectic roots and transcend the floor-focused nature of the bulk of their previous output. Highly recommended.

Review: To mark 15 years since its original release, DJ Hell's landmark Teufelswerk long player returns as a very collectable limited edition triple vinyl set that also includes a poster of the original cover and a special hype sticker. When it was released in 2009, Teufelswerk made an immediate impact and over time has remained a pivotal work thanks to its brash and inventive collision of techno, ambient and experimental sounds. It features collaborations with artists like Bryan Ferry and explores the contrast between Day and Night so looks to, and does, balance euphoric dancefloor highs with immersive, cinematic atmospheres that make a longer-lasting impression. It's proven to be a timeless, genre-defying classic.

Review: Oskaa-born but truly otherworldly producer Daichi Furukawa, aka Ground, is back with a new album that is here to bend your mind and distort your reality with his fourth world follow-up to 2018's cult favourite Sunizm. This experimental odyssey truly defies genre, logic, and linearity as it assembles a chaotic yet mesmerising fusion of organic samples, synthetic textures, tribal rhythms and cosmic noise that are fantastic and freaky. Yaoyorozoo is one of those records that feels both ancient and futuristic as it taps into beautiful and unsettling, inviting and disorienting rhythms and sample sources. Across 73 minutes, it mutates like a dream-always shifting, never settling, so it makes for a cerebral collage for wide-open minds and ears only.

Review: Detroit dub techno don Luke Hess says that this is his "most eclectic and techno-driven album to date" and that it blends together his signature subterranean sounds with his indelible Motor City touch. It again works well on cultured dance floors but is also a deeply spiritual album that will have your mind wandering to some lovely places. From the opening moments of 'Dokimion' you're sunk into widescreen soundscapes that pair painterly synths with immersive low ends. Cuts like 'Stoicheo' bring serene melodies and closer 'Hiketeria' is a misty, foggy cut that oozes late-night intimacy.

Review: Vick Lavander is a name that has always been a byword for deep house quality. His sound is couched in a classic template but comes with subtle tweaks and plenty of its own musical character. BEYOND is a bumper collection of beats which proves just that. There are silky and cosmically minded sounds like 'Time & Time Again' next to subtly jazzy dancers like 'Sunset BLVD' and dubby, elegant grooves like the life-affirming 'Grace'. The pace picks up with joints like 'Knights' but never at the expense of atmosphere and slows right down with swab-tinged downbeat delights like 'Good Timing'. A magnificently rich work.

Review: Paris-based Loris is a cult minimalist who heads up his own aeTERNUM MUSIC and plays plenty of the scene's most tasteful events. This new extended project finds him serving up an array of solo cuts and collabs with the likes of Praymond & Abe and countryman DJ W!ld. The latter, 'Dirty Busines', is a standout with its shimmering rhythm looping beneath percussion that sounds like it was recorded next door. 'Standardized Human Era' is a clean and synthetic, sparse and abstract sound for 5 am, 'Dekstra Orelo' is a slow motion dub percolator with plenty of mad effects and trippy treated vocals. All in all, this is like the soundtrack to a perfect afterparty.

Review: Inspired by his neon-lit walks around London's docklands, crate digger Ilan Pdahtzur's 2019 compilation Night City Life marked him out as a dusty-fingered crate digger and record collector with a distinctive, synth-heavy musical vision. It made him the toast of the selector/collector community, but more than that it was a genuinely superb selection of obscure, hard-to-find cuts. This belated sequel is every bit as essential and filled, unsurprisingly, with rare and lesser-known gems. Highlights are too plentiful to mention, but our current favourites include Sharon & Tracey's 'The Sheik' (a belly-dancing inspired slab of TB-303 bass-driven house hedonism), Jennifer's 1992 Euro-house gem 'Come Into My Life', Scicilian musician Claudio D'Ignoti's boogie-era treat 'Ache Per Noir', and the fashion scene inspired leftfield synth-pop of Lena's 'Embrasse-Moi (Strumentale)'.

Review: Tony Price's new album on Maximum Exposure delivers eight raw, no-nonsense house tracks packed with attitude, all of them recorded swiftly in his Toronto studio to capture the energy of the moment. The album - a dancefloor-focused follow-up to his jazzy Requiem for the Ontario Science Centre - is a fierce homage to Chicago house so it collides slamming drum machines, sharp synths and radioactive funk into new forms that hark back to everything from Z-Factor, Prince and WBMX to Ron Hardy. Street Theatre channels midnight energy with primal intensity that adds up to a truly ecstatic statement.

Review: Retrouve retrieve eight new future house retroversions for their resident PIV label, bringing brilliant syntheses of 80s inspo, speed garage, and hard dance groove-dynamism. So far having rocked dancefloors from Amsterdam's Thuishaven to Miami's Space, an electrifying past two years have fed the febrile fan anticipations going into this one. The sound is distinctive, with no pulse missing the mark, though the experimental ante is upped as the record progresses, as on the dark jacker with Midas Field, 'Gravel', whose textural palette hears the duo cross into an uncharted otic darkness.

Review: This 2025 reissue of the British duo's 1995 breakthrough offering captures the raw energy and genre-blending brilliance that made it an instant classic. Still revered for its fusion of techno, house, and ambient with a distinctly industrial edge, the album's resonance continues to define electronic music today. Tracks like 'Dark & Long' and 'Surfboy' showcase their ability to create expansive, atmospheric soundscapes that are both tough and emotive. The low-end drive of 'Cowgirl' and the serene tones of 'River of Bass' reflect the duo's mastery in blending dancefloor-ready beats with intricate textures. Hailing from the UK, the duo pushed boundaries with their dark, melodic sensibility, crafting a sound that remains influential. Their influence on modern electronic music is undeniable, and this reissue serves as a vital reminder of how they redefined the genre back in the 90s, keeping the core of their vision intact while inspiring new generations of listeners.

Review: British heavyweights Underworld delivered one of the 90s' most enduring dance albums with their second LPivisionary, sprawling, and wired with tension. This 2025 reissue does it justice, pressed onto heavyweight vinyl with a half-speed cut that gives its deep, hypnotic sonics fresh bite. From the moment 'Juanita : Kiteless : To Dream Of Love' opens with glitchy insistence and locked grooves, it's clear how ahead of its time this was. The glitch-techno swirl of 'Banstyle/Sappy's Curry' and the growling 'Rowla' nod to Sheffield and Detroit in equal measure, while 'Pearl's Girl' pulses with breakbeat aggression and warped vocals, its grit sharpened here by the remaster. 'Confusion the Waitress' and 'Air Towel' show the band at their most meditative, layering ambience and submerged breaks into something closer to sound design than club tool. Even 'Blueski' and 'Stagger'ishorter, sketch-like piecesifeel essential to the album's industrial-sublime mood. Still fiercely modern, still haunted, still euphoric. An artefact of the past that belongs squarely in the now.

Review: Originally released in 1999 and now reissued, Beaucoup Fish captures UK techno icons Underworld at their peak popularity. Karl Hyde, Rick Smith and Darren Emerson were just coming off their Trainspotting movie fame due to their legendary track 'Born Slippy'. Following Dubnobasswithmyheadman and Second Toughest in the Infants, this record feels heavier and more restless, mirroring their ambivalence toward their growing profile. Where their previous albums flowed like introspective night drives, Beaucoup Fish often barrels forward with full-throttle energy. Tracks like 'Push Upstairs' and 'Kittens' tear through at blistering tempos, merging techno heft with psychedelic texture. 'Shudder / King of Snake' is the album's pounding centerpiece, a kinetic beast built on a mutated 'I Feel Love' bassline and layers of frenetic percussion. Yet it's on 'Jumbo' and 'Cups' that Underworld tap into something deeper, more elegant and melancholic for solitary moments on packed dance floors. Hyde's cryptic, associative lyricism are half preacher, half poet that add a compelling edge throughout. His stream-of-consciousness delivery turning even the most muscular tracks are very introspective. Beaucoup Fish may reflect a band conflicted about their identity, but it's also Underworld at their most refined, striking a potent balance between euphoria and alienation, bombast and subtlety. It remains a hypnotic artifact of late-90s rave culture, vivid in both its unease and its ecstasy.

Review: Underworld's sixth LP A Hundred Days Off heard them wean their sound down to a finer but still full Brit-rave sound, not to mention a readiness on their part to break the charts compared to their earlier, yet by all means more esoteric, studio projects such as Dubnobasswithmyheadman. Praised by Uncut as a "beautiful and baffling enigma", the record gave birth to such wonders as 'Two Months Off', 'Trim', 'Ess Gee' and 'Dinosaur Adventure 3D', tracks whose long-form structures and brutalist trance ballistics would continue to prove lactic boons for the stylistic milking. Sheffield art collective The Designers Republic were commissioned to design the iconic balloon-head cover by label V2, also enshrining a spectacular modern art and modern music crossover in this ingenious record.

Review: After the chart-topping A Hundred Days Off (2002), what was to come next for the albums arm of Underworld, aka Karl Hyde and Rick Smith? Clearly, it was to be a return to gritty chillout rave schematics - now tapering into ambient dub and progressive - that defined their earliest works, in stark contrast to their mid noughties crowd electrolysers. Oblivion With Bells (2007) saw mixed critical receipt, the aesthetes among us referencing to the record's pull towards directionless absurdity (mirrored in track titles like 'Cuddle Bunny vs. The Celtic Villages'), but its nurturance of highlights like 'Crocodile' and 'Ring Road', and their increasing use of flamboyant post-rock theatrics onstage, still make this moment a stellar one in our books.

Review: First released in 2016, Underworld's Barbara Barbara, We Face A Shining Future returns in a 2025 reissue on nice heavyweight black vinyl that has been cut at half speed for optimal sound and housed in a double gatefold sleeve with added spine detailing. The album - the Essex duo's ninth - marked a creative rebirth for Karl Hyde and Rick Smith and features seven spontaneous, emotionally raw tracks born from strict studio sessions. From detuned basslines and celestial techno to lyrical monologues and off-world electronics, it's a typically expressive and genre-blending statement that stands proud alongside their celebrated classic albums and has aged well over the years.

Review: This 2025 reissue of the British electronic duo's 2010 release revisits a moment when their sound was at its most refined and expansive. Tracks like 'Bird 1' and 'Always Loved A Film' have an almost trance-like quality, drawing listeners into a rich web of pulsating rhythms and repetitive motifs that feel both hypnotic and unsettling. In contrast, songs like 'Diamond Jigsaw' and 'Moon In Water' offer moments of clarity, their crisp melodies and infectious hooks cutting through the layers of sound with a bright, shimmering energy. The duo's ability to shift between moods is strikingi'Hamburg Hotel' brings a brooding weight, while 'Between Stars' provides a lift, its airy textures pushing against the track's grounded pulse. This reissue feels less like nostalgia and more like a timely reminder of their ability to blend pop accessibility with experimental edge, marking their unique place in the electronic canon.

Review: Through standout tracks from artists like Magnolia, Maryag and Third Attempt, as well as remixes from Bosq and Dr Packer, this new one from The Disco Express embodies the irresistible fusion of house, nu-disco, and classic disco, prefiguring the beatdown summer to come. Over seven sizzling tracks, spread across an eye-catching orange vinyl, La Felix's 'Hot', Rayowa's 'Can You Feel The Love' and Bustin' Loose's funk-flecked and wriggling bass-led 'Pharaoh's Lean Time' are but a few several cooldown quenchers to be found here, all of which are sure to add a natural flavour to the sure-to-be parching heatwaves of Summer 2025.

Review: New York legend Louie Vega and Detroit icon Moodymann - two titans of house with deep but divergent lineages - collide again on 'Seven Mile', reissued here as a hefty double pack with remixes. Originally released in 2022 on Vega's Expansions in the NYC LP, this expanded edition gathers fresh reworks from trusted names across the house spectrum. Dennis Quin goes punchy and percussive, Kai Alce turns in a soulful NDATL roller, and Rocco Rodamaal teams up with Alex Finkin before offering two lush solo interpretations across the C-side. Vega's own instrumental demo mix adds vintage bounce, while Charlie Soul Clap, here credited as Charlie Levine, delivers an ecstatic final pair - his 'Wild Version' the most unhinged of the lot.

Review: Ben Westbeech returns with his first solo full-length since 2011's There's More To Life Than This, marking a new chapter in a varied career as a singer-songwriter, DJ, hit producer and curator. The Glitterbox release hears Westbeech step back from the mic to focus fully on production and arrangement, bringing together a cast of musicians to channel a message of self-empowerment and inner peace, through pristine delays, diachronic desert grooves and a freed disco-bedience. Joined by fellows RAHH, Dames Browbn and Obi Franky, Westbeech's latest is a full-length ode to changing times and inner openness.