The best new albums this week
The albums that matter – according to our writers

ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Linkwood – Stereo (Athens Of The North)
There’s always a tendency for producers to overthink the compositional process — endlessly tweaking parts to make barely noticeable changes, getting lost in the loop, or running out of impetus before the music is signed off. Not so for Edinburgh’s long-serving deep diver Linkwood, who follows up on last year’s magnificent ‘Mono’ with an equally engaging set of tracks. Just as its predecessor, ‘Stereo’ was composed in the tightest of timeframes in the Athens Of The North studio HQ, the music veering into subtly more expansive realms while retaining the laser-sharp focus that made ‘Mono’ so striking. An artist who’s managed to maintain an unmistakable subterranean allure throughout a long if sometimes sporadic career, it’s clear Nick Moore has well and truly tapped into his creative flow in the last few years. His work on the likes of Firecracker and Prime Numbers routinely struck gold, with each release showing a palpable desire for shapeshifting experimentation.
Though there have been frustrating spells where we barely heard anything from him (bar material he produced or engineered for other artists) recently he’s been on something of a roll, firing out high-grade albums at a furious rate, both solo and alongside Greg Foat and Other Lands. Just as his catalogue has journeyed through seemingly disparate sonic topography — joining the dots and smashing down the barriers between deep house, electro, ambient, techno and jazz — ‘Stereo’ is miraculously far-reaching in style and scope.
Gloriously polychromatic influences can be detected here, from the searingly poignant soundtrack breadth of ‘Glow’ with its tear-jerking harmonics and off-world aesthetic to the mutant electro-funk and arresting chords of ’S-Mode’. There’s a very real sense that this is a producer enjoying his time in the lab, drawing on decades of diligently refined musical inspiration and effortlessly channelling it into a coherent but adventurous long-playing meditation. Indeed, his sound appears eminently well suited to the album format, allowing time and space for twists and turns that singles simply aren’t able to support.
A sci-fi theme makes its presence felt throughout ‘Stereo’, in part due to the frosty synth textures and alien chords on display from the earliest bars of opener ‘I’m Ready’ right through to the closing track ‘Lookup’. The futurist fundamentals of Motor City Electro appear via the freak-funk of ‘RunStop’, where glistening synths echo over lush chords, growling bass and piercing machine drums, rearing up again on the space-age refrains and murky anti-gloss of ‘Clusters’. The rhythms roll and morph as the atmosphere shifts like evolving skies, skipping through the optimistic funk of ‘Joystick’ into the rolling drums and altered moods of ‘DipDab’. Abstract moments arrive too, not least in the unfettered strangeness of ‘Ping’, while the powerfully emotive chords and vocal lines of ‘Love’ prove one of the standouts, pitching cinematic synths against broken drums and jungle-themed bass. Deep, layered, and spacious, the music glides between warm hues and glistening frost.
As one would expect from a producer of his talents, Linkwood’s latest reveals more and more with every listen, creating, as it does, a parallel sonic universe in which to lose oneself. Somehow combining bursts of dance-ready thrust with zero-gravity weightlessness, ‘Stereo’ is wonderfully complete, demonstrating yet more creative depth from an artist at the very top of his game.
PC

Various Artists – Boogie Time Records The Album (Boogie Times)
In the annals of breakbeat hardcore, there were a few dominant forces which incubated the sound on its journey from acid house and hardcore hip-hop to jungle. Without being exhaustive, you can quickly think of the likes of Production House and Moving Shadow as vital forces, and in the same breath it would be remiss to overlook Boogie Times and its in-house label, Suburban Base. The folklore is well-documented elsewhere, but in brief Boogie Times was the Romford, Essex-based hub for the emergent breakbeat sound, close enough to London to have an impact, but also out on their own and able to develop a distinctive vibe which went on to be hugely influential.
As Suburban Base continues to dig back into its considerable legacy (check the excellent Marvellous Cain reissues amongst many others), now they’re turning their attention to the Boogie Times label itself, which set the scene from 1990 until 1994 when hardcore went from wildly undefined sonic chaos to a focused musical style. Across 16 tracks you can get a sense of just how open everything was, from tempo to musical content. You can’t say this music is timeless – it’s 100% of its era, and shows its age in kind. But like the best punk or early rock n’ roll, what gets communicated through these time capsules is the fearless sincerity of what the artists were doing at the time. This is raw, unrestrained expression and experimentation – a feeling which it’s hard to replicate no matter how roughly you slice your amens in a DAW.
If you drop in on Timebase and Kromozone’s ‘Unity’ you’ll be treated to a masterclass of breaks n’ bleeps, while e.kude’s ‘Common Sensi’ is a madcap patchwork of sped up funk samples, edgy synth blips and blissed out pads with some unexpected beatbox swerves for good measure. The pressure cooker is on overdrive through Sonz Of A Loop Da Loop Era’s seminal ‘Higher’, and without needing to resort to the raging tempos which would take hold deeper into the 90s. It’s all classic material, and gathered in one place it tells the story of a breakthrough moment for breakbeat culture – a movement which still ripples throughout electronic music and beyond.
OW

Mauskovic Dance Band – Bukaroo Bank (Les Disques Bongo Joe)
Global groovers Mauskovic Dance Band never fail to enchant with their internationally-charged rhythms. Their third LP ‘Bukaroo Bank’ sees the Amsterdam-based collective return to the Bongo Joe fold after a series of releases on Soundway, and the music they present is every bit as flamboyant as we’ve come to expect from the talented troupe. Formed by multi-instrumentalist Nic Mauskovic, their debut single arrived via Les Disques Bongo Joe back in 2017 with their eponymous long-player truly alerting the world to their distinctive sound when it followed in 2019. They may be positioned in the Netherlands, but their music has its sonic tentacles in Mother Earth’s farthest-flung corners, its dance-focused sensibilities and happy making feel designed to ignite even the most stubborn of floors. Fusing Afro-beat, funk, disco, post-punk and more, their music is instantly recognisable and uncommonly good.
As expected, their latest album bursts with energy from the very first note, with the quick-fire tempo of the title track launching with propulsive intent. In the main, this is music primed for body moving, the rhythm-heavy soundscapes constructed with sound systems in mind. The effervescent disco-not-disco charge of ‘Face’ is an early contender for standout, its leviathan bass and hyperactive congas driving faint vocals and grainy dub sweeps across syncopated guitar strums.
Equally energetic, the souped-up dub of ‘Wie Niet Weg Is Is Gezien’ is wonderfully zany and just as likely to fill floors, while the post-punk swagger of ‘Parata Est’ brims with atmosphere as it maintains its fervent pace. The punky reggae of ‘Zwaar’ feels deliciously live sounding as ad-libs and delay tails hover over rolling drums and bass, while the oddball refrains of ‘Bebi’ provide a brilliantly off-kilter interlude. Mellow moments arrive, too, (see the heavy dub of ‘Dr Rhythm Space’ or the gentle tempo of ‘Slow Crack’), but, by and large, this is music for loose-limbed merriment, and it does its job marvellously well.
PC

Ibrahim Alfa Jnr – Messier87 (Mille Plateaux)
For those who value the nooks and crannies of early UK techno history, Ibrahim Alfa Jnr is an artist who receives solemn, knowing nods. The kind of nods reserved for artists who are brilliant but all too often overlooked, who remain cult figures despite their obvious gifts. Alfa Jnr came up alongside the likes of Cristian Vogel and Jamie Lidell in Brighton’s pool of techno deviants breaking any prevailing paradigms apart in the pioneering spirit of the day. So Alfa Jnr has remained, dipping in and out of activity with his own labels Automatic, Semi-Automatic and Oyabun Audio, popping up on labels like Workshop and dabbling in aliases like Gameboy.
His sound has always been slippery, etched with experimentation and a cavalier disdain for perceived rules, so in many ways it’s logical to find him landing on Mille Plateaux, a true bastion of leftfield electronics. Even so, Alfa Jnr’s particular approach on Messier87 is primed to surprise you in all manner of positive ways. In the album’s opening stretches, it’s pointedly in thrall to breakbeat science in a true-skool, hardcore-rooted kind of way, but around the whipcrack amens there’s a lot of very interesting sonic tinkering afoot. From arrhythmic ripples to laser-keen shards of light, the elements refracting off the junglist engine set the music apart entirely. On ‘VEUM’, Alfa Jnr is more than content to let the music melt down into suspended ambience and psychedelic, synth-rich trip hop for an extended run that instantly moves in defiance of the dancefloor.
There are certain qualities in Messier87 which feels intrinsically rooted in the blueprint hardcore laid out before it had even honed its purpose into jungle. Certain jagged breaks, certain tweaked FX licks and more than anything an overall attitude and ruffness – when using these tropes, Alfa Jnr moves with an authoritative purpose, and yet he’s never constricted by them. The album plunges into dense thickets of dislocated sound which should be a million miles from hardcore, and elsewhere he indulges a more established instinct for boxy drum machine jack, but somehow there’s a ragged impulse guiding everything. Instead of making a note-for-note hardcore homage, Alfa Jnr’s stayed true to the music’s original impetus and ploughed further forwards, and the results are consistently thrilling.
OW

Reeking Aura – Blood & Bonemeal (Profound Lore)
Following on from their crushing 2020 EP, ‘Beneath the Canopy of Compost’, New York/New Jersey based death-doom hybridisers, Reeking Aura, return to deliver a punishing, pummeling blend of grandiosity and fury on their debut full-length, Blood & Bonemeal.
A concept album detailing the “caretaker of a desolate agricultural property and that person’s struggles with morbid psychosis,” their ferocious blend of doomscaping and technical death metal brutality, is elevated immensely by a three-pronged guitar assault, complete with virtuosic dual leads. Ambitious and desolate in equal measure, the cavernous and corrupt collide with abrasive cacophony, conjuring nightmare sonics for even the most hardened of audible masochists.
Comprised of members of several acts including Unearthly Trance, The Howling Wind, and numerous Buckshot Facelift alumni; the project was born out of Covid restrictions and an urge to continue creating, utilising the backdrop of a world on fire to inspire their hellish machinations.
Amicably departing with founding drummer Keith Harris (Afterbirth), the group have enlisted Sam Shereck of Blame God and Stabbed, whose octopus-like performance overwhelms without ever detracting from the maelstrom. Vocalist William “Big Will” Smith already has his name on another of 2022’s most essential extreme metal releases; the hypnagogic sci-fi death of Artificial Brain’s self-titled (his last with the band), but his performance this time around is far lower and guttural compared to the squelching unintelligible utterances found on the former.
A career-best for all involved, with malevolent credence paid to the greats such as Gorguts or Cryptopsy; Reeking Aura reaffirm the intensity and unsettling staying power the death metal genre can exude when approached with artistic finesse and cryptic vision. One listen to the succinctly titled fever dream, ‘A Vegatative Mush That Melts Among The Shelves Lined With Meats Of Indeterminate Origin’, should be enough to intimidate and spellbind in equal measure.
ZB

Cluster – Cluster II (Bureau B)
We’re never short of anniversary editions of seminal albums, and yes, they do represent a certain cynical opportunism which wedges lavish reissues in the way of more new music being released. But sometimes there is great value in tracking back for a focused reappraisal of a classic work, and as Cluster’s Cluster II reaches a sizable milestone of 50 years old it’s no bad thing to drop the needle on it once more and consider it in the context of everything that has come since.
With Conrad Schnitzler departed from the band, Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius plunged themselves into their second album in a swirl of electronics and guitar feedback which now has a vast range of reference points, but back in 1972 sounded positively revolutionary. To modern ears, it comes on like fearless post rock, unshackled by the formalities of the rock tradition and embracing the hypnotic power of tape loop repetition and motorik patterns. It’s still very much an organic record which heaves and huffs, swells and surges with all the imperfections of a human touch. The electronic qualities, from modulating synth lines to errant FX and experimental mixing, are hard to differentiate from guitars that have been squeezed and stretched into unfamiliar forms.
The extended pieces, such as ‘Live in der Fabrik’, present a vast cosmos to become untethered in, but even over a 15 minute run time the music never feels static, no matter how insistent the feedback pulses are. Elsewhere there are much more concise ideas, like the teeming squeaks and squiggles of ‘Fuer die Katz’. The sound is uncompromising and experimental at all times, but never for the sake of pure self indulgence. Everything on Cluster II feels intentional, and 50 years on, its influential status is glaringly obvious.
OW

Ready For Death – Ready For Death (Translation Loss)
Newly founded Chicago thrash-punks, Ready For Death, boast an impressive roster of teeth-cutters with a line-up of Artie White (Indecision, Milhouse, Concrete Cross), Dallas Thomas (Pelican, Asschapel, Swan King), Dan Binaei (Racetraitor, Haggathorn), Shawn “The Beast” Brewer (Haggathorn), and Luca Cimarusti (Luggage, Annihilus). If that seems like an abundance of visceral experience, then their self-titled debut (originally crafted as a demo), and its decimating attitude should come as little shock.
Upon guitarist Dallas Thomas’ realisation that vocalist Artie White was no normal parent during their children’s playdate following an initial meeting at taekwondo class, they opted to start a project drawing on both of their previous history within the scene. Named after Thomas’ daughter bursting into a recording session with toy sword drawn, screaming “Ready For Death!”, the band take an authentic, hyper-aggressive approach to thrash metal; plumbing the genre’s intrinsic hardcore punk influences without necessarily careening headfirst into crossover territory.
As soon as acclaimed extreme metal label, Translation Loss, heard the demo the group had been crafting, which details a “deranged, dystopian, cosmic cult leader”, (known as the Cyborg Priest), they informed the band that this demonstration had album legs.
The resulting self-titled debut serves, for all intents and purposes, as a sci-fi-horror rock-opera delivered by the scuzziest chorus band to ever disgrace an opera house. Breakneck pace, brevity and energy are at the core of what makes these vicious cuts so powerful, from the buzzsaw riffage to White’s hyper-snarled, hallucinatory narratives that lead tracks such as, ‘Church Of The Nuclear Bomb’, or the mammoth closer, ‘Microchip Mutilation’, down ludicrous rabbit holes of cosmic conspiracy delivered with an oppressive straight face. Make no mistake, however, this genre-splicing collection of thrash-hardcore fury prioritises fun over all else, you just need to cut through the murk to reach the joy.
ZB

Frederik Valentin & Loke Rahbek – Together (Posh Isolation)
By now the wiser out there will have pretty high expectations of any Frederik Valentin & Loke Rahbek collaboration. 2020’s Elephant was a phenomenal piece of work, and three years prior, Buy Corals Online set an early precedent for the pair. Now we have Together to keep those other two company, a record that’s every bit the preceding two’s match, but feels and sounds resolutely of its own mind. Whether evolution or jump in new direction is probably down to the listener’s own ear, but it wouldn’t be pushing things that much to suggest this is the finest of the triptych. Maybe.
You might not notice, but Together isn’t really a stand alone outing. To accompany a special screening of Chris Marker’s remarkable 1983 travelogue documentary, Sans Soleil, Copenhagen non-fiction film festival, CPH:Dox, commissioned a brand new score. Valentin & Rahbek were responsible for delivering, and this is the end result. A series of aural vignettes, they run the gamut between blissful reflective ambient, rousing leftfield guitar pop, and experimental electronica, each (often rather brief) track is as vivid as the last, painting sonic pictures of imagined settings and situations, presenting ears with a micro-odyssey all of their own.
MH

Soulside – A Brief Moment In The Sun (Dischord)
Washington D.C. Revolution Summer adjacent post-hardcore pioneers, Soulside, cut their teeth in the formative eighties scene that would largely direct the ensuing decades of melodic hardcore and emo, even recording their early albums at Minor Threat/Fugazi mastermind Ian MacKaye’s Inner Ear Studios.
Following a one-off reunion show in Prague in 2017 to celebrate guitarist, Scott McCloud’s fiftieth birthday; the band would embark on full EU tours come 2019, with the unexpected yet much welcomed, ‘This Ship’, 7″ single landing in 2020. Now, ‘A Brief Moment In The Sun’, marks the band’s first full-length in thirty-three years, and serves as follow-up to 1989’s outstanding, ‘Hot Bodi-Gram’. Naturally, released on MacKaye’s, Dischord, there’s almost a surreal “what year is it?” quality to a Soulside record dropping on said label so deep into the 21st century.
With the members split between New York City, Los Angeles, North Carolina, and Austria, during the midst of a global pandemic, no less; they utilised biweekly video conference calls to keep themselves on track before convening in Brooklyn for four days of intense rehearsal to help the work coalesce before travelling to Magpie Cage Studio in Baltimore to begin tracking.
From the psychedelic punk-fuzz of, ‘Runner’, to the muted melancholia of standout cut, ’70’s Heroes’, all the way down to the emotive anthemics of penultimate stomper, ‘Survival’; this is the sound of seasoned veterans reinvigorated and rediscovering their chemistry and cohesion, without ever resting on nostalgic laurels. It’s good to have you back, gentlemen.
ZB

Nation of Language – Introduction, Presence (Record Label)
Selling yourself as ‘working class synth pop’ is a bold move. Honing down on a musical style that sounds exactly like that description, and unarguably similar to a number of musical titans from the formative days of synth pop, suggests that same confidence pervades every aspect of the group. Nation of Language certainly aren’t shy, then, and it’s safe to assume they don’t really care what onlookers think — they’re committed to doing things on their own terms whether on trend or not.
Formed in 2016, although their sound isn’t exactly out of sync with these times of ours (let’s face it, what is?) the tracks on Introduction, Presence would feel more at home a few decades back. That might make some more sceptical parties rush to words like ‘pastiche’ or ‘throwback’, but neither really here. While clearly influenced and informed by the likes of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (word is Ian Ricard Devaney first got the idea for this project after hearing OMD’s ‘Electricity’ in his dad’s car), the Brooklynites come across as authentic, and this record remains as essential and compelling arriving on wax now as it did when we first encountered it in 2020. Timeless stuff, really.
MH
This week’s reviewers: Martin Hewitt, Oli Warwick, Zach Buggy, Jude Iago James, Patrizio Cavaliere.