Macadam Mambo Vinyl & CDs

Review: Lyon musicologists Macadam Mambo allow The Jaffa Kid ampler extra space to flex their experimental side. Though prior releases by the artist have verged fuller in the direction of jungly, 'A Teq Approach' hears the artist abstract and remould their breaks and ambiances to delicious degree, mechanising but breathing new life into an otherwise mostly single-tempo approach. Off the back of an almost daily production output on Soundcloud comes this 12-track album, where gestalt breaks are heat-set, cast into all tempos; 'A Calm Momentum' recalls the best of Skee Mask after his move away from techno proper, while 'Different Text' brings a hermeneutic otherness, interpreting constellated skies of detuned arp-bliss and hoovering, soundscaped lows. A choice selection for fans of of AFX, ERP, Drexciya, u-Ziq or Luke Slater.

Review: Pieter Kock shows us how it's done with The End II, a fantastic new experimental beats LP manifested on the Macadam Mambo label, in a move that has been described as "quite unexpected". A doyen of post-10s German kraut-tronics, Kock first found his savvy as a releaser of retrofutural cassette tapes for various outlets - the likes of RIO, Meakusma and Moonwalk X - all of which assumed album form (to date, Kock has not released a single single or EP). Macadam Mambo offer a suggestion as to why this is: "all the demos that he sent were so good that there was no question about doing something." If by "doing something" you mean releasing over 16 strident club-churners in the style of far leftfield dub, synthpunk and krauty Krankenschaften, you've made no mistake. Dive into any one of these exotic exo-treats, and your eyes will just as surely turn helical.

Review: It's pretty hard not to fall in love with Macadam Mambo at first contact. The French label represents the cream of Lyon's underground, a city that has for some time now been a quiet powerhouse of electronic and dance music, developing a reputation for strange, leftfield floor-filling sounds spanning slow burn chug, experimental tropicalism, Balearic and cosmic house.

Enter Axel Larson to prove our point with real precision. L'Ete Noir is an incredible EP, packing a generous six tracks on its wax, all of which are awesome. From the knife-edge atmosphere of poised and percussive rumbler 'Hygiene Du Squelette', to the downtempo joy of a track that feels like it's built largely on the sounds of dripping water and reversed rave keys ('Le Pyromane Du Chateau Rouge'), there are so many layers here you'll be busy for days.

Review: France's Macadam Mambo welcomes the ambient, minimalist progressions of Poperttelli to front their discog. Disjointed Dreams explores the concept of dreaming, dream analysis and dream travelling, bringing Krauty electronic workouts and modular hypnoses to an ultimately playful but also entrancing palette. Our highlights have to be the beatless murmurer 'Ukrussian' and the dubby rainmaking cascader 'Simplifie', which avow Poperttelli's apparent knowledge of and ability to work in a range of different styles and vibes.

Review: Sexo Y Fantasia previously released one EP of brilliantly eccentric music on Glossy Mistakes - in the press release accompanying their debut album, Oneirotic, they're described as a 'Belgian-Italian aural freak show', a fantastic description in anyone's book. It's certainly an inspired, hard-to-pigeonhole set that sees them cloak sparse, shuffling rhythms, tongue-in-cheek spoken word vocals, sun-splashed synth-sounds, baked acid lines and memorable melodies in plenty of delay and reverb. It's a little bit Balearic, a touch new wave, and undeniably quirky. As you can see, we're struggling to accurately describe it, but the key thing is that it's really good - one of the most imaginative, entertaining and off-kilter albums we've heard in 2022.