Numbers

Review: This Numbers debut by Lanark Artefax is an ode to a waterfall above the Scottish village of New Lanark and comes after his breakout offering on Whities as well as a busy run of live shows that make reference to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bass heavy and melodic, with falling keys and glassy pads raining down the face of each track, "Moo Orphaned Drift" has a cosmic air to it while opening cut "Corra Linn" is an IDM drum flurry, but it is closer "Ferthenheap" which makes the most impact; it's an ambient, emotionally devastating neo-classical piano piece of the highest order.

Review: Sicilian artist Nino Pedone is back for a first full length in four years. It's his debut on this Scottish label and draws on noise, industrial, metal and hardcore but in stripped back and reductive ways. Rather than a barrage of sound, his gritty soundscapes are suggestive and skeletal, allowing you to fill in the weather freaky gaps left behind. The texture of it is always frayed, scratched, scuffed up, and there's always a sense of distant doom in the billowing bass or lurching drums. Serious stuff designed to be played loud, and makes for a brilliant hybrid sound.

Review: Proving that a track doesn't have to be lengthy and laborious experience, SOPHIE comes bowling up to Numbers with a second dose of rapid fire neon-lit madness to get heads a-spinning while marking another step towards a full-blown J-pop-meets-electronica zeitgeist. As singular as his approach is, you can hear how the beats powering SOPHIE's tracks reach out to bass weight ravers and teeny boppers alike. "Lemonade" is positively cheeky in its deployment of catchy hooks, garish choruses and occasional bursts of monstrous bass, sounding utterly futuristic in its vision of where chart-minded dance music might well head. "Hard" takes a more obtuse approach that actually seems to distil some of Plaid's starry-eyed melodic wonder and Aphex Twin's Drukqs-era sound design, while the lyrics nod to S&M in the most sinisterly cartoonish way possible. As such, it's a triumphant collision of styles and ideas.