Northern Electronics Vinyl & CDs

Review: Rune Bagge's inviting new mini-album, Grab a Star, is a second outing on the Northern Electronics label. It is one steeped in beautiful melancholy with narrative themes and a beautiful back-lit cosmic glow that makes it seem all the more otherworldly. The delicate synth craft defines the entire selection of tracks and brings thoughtfulness and tenderness to a range of rhythms and tempos. Some work for the club, some are more for lost-in-the-moment home listening, and all are essential. This is machine music but with a real heart and soul of its own.

Review: Lundin Oil's latest effort is nothing if not powerful and, at times, intimidating. It's also rooted in an important message. People, by nature, have a habit of deducing things about each other. Or thinking they've deduced, when in reality they've assumed and presumed. Underneath the industrial mechanisms at the centre of these soundscapes, then, there's something vulnerable and human. It's challenging stuff, but also reassuring to be back in this particular experimental fold, with Exploit Divisions the first Lundin Oil album we've had since 2016. While fitting precisely into the back catalogue, you also can't help feel that this is up there with the broadest sonic palette painted by the artist yet. Spanning razor sharp, jagged rhythms and wider, more patient ambient refrains.

Review: ***B-STOCK: Sleeve damaged but otherwise in excellent condition***


The highly anticipated secnd full length album from Polar Inertia is here. It makes absolute sense that 'Environment Control' makes its way to the Swedish label Northern Electronics. For those that know the label and this artist, it seems like the perfect pairing. Formed in 2010, Polar Inertia has been one of the leading new producers of darker techno. The title track is opener and a sign of things to come. Futuristic techno of the upmost. These tracks engulf you with their power and depth. Some tracks are sinister and foreboding while others are atmospheric and cavernous. 'Artic Horizon' shows the deft touch of his producing ability. Sinister techno beats shrouded in a deep haze of ambience give off the impression that you are almost outside a club listening to the techno inside. For fans of techno and ambient, you are hard pressed to find a producer who does it better. These copies are sure to go fast so pick one up as quick as you can.

Review: Swedish duo SHXCXCHCXSH distort club music by using a refined, idiosyncratic palette that challenges functionality. As logophiles, they twist language into fragmented, barely recognisable sequences, reflecting their experimental process. Their new album marks their debut for Northern Electronics and showcases a broader exploration of sound. Spanning 15 tracks in style, it combines drone elements, shredded vocals and chaotic melodies to make for a dark, intense atmosphere. Interspersed with brooding yet effervescent breaks, ......t is their most focused and comprehensive work to date and it also pushes their sound into new territories.

Review: Originally released in 2013 on Periferin, former Mayhem man Varg's debut album, Skaeliptom is a ride and a half. A ride to where is the question. It's dark and mechanical, but at the same time freed of Earthly constraints - the ambient techno equivalent of becoming uncoupled from the mothership during a space walk and calmly residing yourself to enjoying floating away into the eternal darkness. Even if there's a sense nobody comes back. It's not that there's a sinister vibe here, more of an unknown quantity. It's sparse and strangely quiet, patient yet edgy and always moving us onto new, previously unexplored soundscapes. Vast and somehow also very personal, Skaeliptom is a curious experiment in electronics that gives us perspective on just how much there might be out there waiting for us to find.