Houndstooth

Review: Aisha Devi's brilliant Of Matter And Spirit release from last year gets the remix treatment by a stellar cast here, merging her esoteric electronica weirdness into new hybrids. Irish duo Lakker turn "Anatomy of Light" into a freeform techno excursion with ferocious broken beats and Devi's vocals chopped and morphed into new forms. No Pain In Pop/New Ninja Tune signing Throwing Shade turn in a rendition of "Kim & The Wheel Of Life" that's ethereal as much as it is jagged and unusual. Knives associates Mind:Body:Fitness give "Mazda" a turnover that mutates it into some alien urban flavour much like their associates on Kuedo's label. Finally there's another version of the track by Bristol's Killing Sound featuring MC Rider Safique and Bogues exploring the dark side of bass music and truly exorcising the demons.

Review: Such has been the rise of Marquis Hawkes in recent times that this debut album must mark as one of the most anticipated house sets of 2016. Happily, Social Housing is a superb showcase not only for Hawkes' talents, but also his understanding of house music in its' many myriad forms. The album does include, of course, a sprinkling of jackin' workouts, but these are outnumbered by such thrilling chunks of loved-up positivity as the Tiger & Woods style loop funk of "Fantasy", the Theo Parrish-ish jazz fuzziness of "Summer Memory", and the cheeky, Todd Edwards style cut-up garage of "Something In Yr Head" [sic]. The album's most potent moment, though, is "I'm So Glad", a collaboration with Jocelyn Brown that already ranks among 2016's most potent tunes.

Review: Fabric's offshoot label, Houndstooth, has reached the dizzy heights of a century of releases. Fittingly, they're marking the occasion with a new album from Marquis Hawkes, which is also his first since hyped 2016 debut full-length Social Housing. It's an attractive and punchy affair full of good-time grooves, joyous house workouts, bumpin', Chicago-influenced fare and the kind of luscious, loved-up, garage-influenced deep house goodness that sounds like aural sunshine. While there are a couple of woozier downtempo moments, for the most part it's a deliciously floor-friendly affair, with Hawkes serving up seriously listenable cuts that work both at home and in the club. We actually think it's better than Social Housing, and that was pretty darn tasty.

Review: Despite being one of the UK's most prolific electronic musicians, Jacob Martin AKA Hodge has never released a solo album. "Shadows In Blue" is therefore one of the most hotly anticipated debut full-lengths for some time. Appearing just under a decade after his first single, the set expands on his sub-heavy, club-centric blends of techno and bass and showcases a producer at the peak of his powers. There are a number of speaker-busting dancefloor workouts - see "Sense Inversion", the tropical techno creepiness of "Lanes" and the Lone-ish stomp of "Ghost of Akina (Rainbow Edition)" - but the most striking thing about the album is Martin's promotion of pastoral sounds, blissful melodies, picturesque new age soundscapes and trumpet-laden, dubbed-out ambient jazz (see closing cut "One Last Dance").

Review: Despite being one of the UK's most prolific electronic musicians, Jacob Martin AKA Hodge has never released a solo album. "Shadows In Blue" is therefore one of the most hotly anticipated debut full-lengths for some time. Appearing just under a decade after his first single, the set expands on his sub-heavy, club-centric blends of techno and bass and showcases a producer at the peak of his powers. There are a number of speaker-busting dancefloor workouts - see "Sense Inversion", the tropical techno creepiness of "Lanes" and the Lone-ish stomp of "Ghost of Akina (Rainbow Edition)" - but the most striking thing about the album is Martin's promotion of pastoral sounds, blissful melodies, picturesque new age soundscapes and trumpet-laden, dubbed-out ambient jazz (see closing cut "One Last Dance").

Review: Although Abul Mogard has made some stunning albums over the years, in recent times it's his reworks that have been celebrated most. It's perhaps for that reason that Houndstooth has decided to offer up this retrospective of the shadowy artist's most admired remixes. The most notable inclusion is the producer's previously unheard revision of Becoming Animal's "The Sky Is Ever Falling", a stunning, stretched-out soundscape that re-imagines the song as a heart-aching ambient epic. It's almost as good as Mogard's jaw-dropping interpretation of Fovea Hex's "We Dream All The Dark Away", whose fragile folk vocals, ever-intensifying modular synthesizer cycles and layered electronic drones deliver a stunning climax to an impeccable collection of inspired ambient soundscapes.

Review: Since bursting onto the scene via a series of bustling, bass-heavy and dancefloor-focused 12" singles at the turn of the decade, Pariah (AKA late developer Arthur Cayzar) has been surprisingly quiet. It turns out he was ridden with angst about the music he was making and unsure of which direction to take. As this long-awaited - and, we should add, rather brilliant - debut album proves, he's final found inner peace. "Here From Where We Are" is, first and foremost, a home listening album. It contains gentle, evocative and slowly shifting electronic soundscapes that largely look towards ambient, neo-classical, drone and dub techno for inspiration. There's no speaker-busting sub-bass explosions or riotous peak-time rhythms, just becalmed and stunningly beautiful compositions that are in turns spellbinding, melancholic and hugely poignant.

Review: Paul Woolford has spent a good chunk of his downtime over the last year or two making Special Request tracks in his pants. So much so, in fact, that he's created enough material to fill four albums, all of which will be released this year. "Vortex" is the first and is, in Woolford's own words, high on "bangers" and low on "conceptual guff". In practice, that means lots of gut-busting low-end frequencies, trippy analogue electronics, razor-sharp rave-style riffs and bustling rhythms that variously touch on electro, early '90s progressive house, breakbeat hardcore, slamming Joey Beltram style techno (see album highlight "Fahrenheit 451") and metallic, delightfully mangled drum and bass ("Fett", whose wonky electronic undulations hark back to early Woolford classic "Erotic Discourse").

Notes: 'Untold' is an experimental electronic LP from multi-disciplinary artist and author Sophia Loizou. Depicting a series of speculative sonic landscapes; animals, ocean waves and weather systems are abstracted into eco-centric cyber-dreams creating powerful ambient compositions that invite us to see the Earth through the eyes of others.
Untold is not about the natural or the technological but the relationships between the two; sonic textures, breaks and melodies are shaped by the dynamics of a lion's roar or the rhythm of a dolphin's echolocation emissions."I didn't want to make it human-centric," explains Sophia."I wanted to remove my compositional and structural domination, to find ways to make it about the symbiosis of systems I see in the world."

Untold is part of a much bigger multi-disciplinary project that also includes a collection of poems with accompanying audio, artworks, an AV show and a lecture performance.

Multidisciplinary artist and doctoral researcher Sophia Loizou's debut poetic collection 'Untold: A Tellurian Memorandum' imagines a series of speculative sentient landscapes. The six works envision different aspects of entangled Earthly relationships; from the aqueous roots of biotic life and non-human systems of perpetual growth, to biologically enhanced futures where multiple forms of life collide, connect and share their material qualities. "I wanted to portray an open and empathic multiform future,' explains Sophia. 'a world that celebrates the vibrant, messy and multifaceted beauty of non-human forces and forms."

The book is accompanied by a 30-minute speculative sonic landscape in which sounds from living systems, field recordings from human, animal and technological origins meet - producing wild and unpredictable results.

'A Tellurian Memorandum' is part of a much bigger multi-disciplinary project that also includes the LP 'Untold', artworks, an AV show and a lecture performance.