Proper Vinyl & CDs

Review: Here, celebrating its 40th anniversary, Level 42's World Machine returns with a special reissue of the 1985 album that launched them to global fame. Departing from their jam-based roots, the band embraced a more structured songwriting process and also set to work producing the album themselves with engineer Julian Mendelsohn. The result was a polished, pop-funk breakthrough led by the hit single 'Something About You' which of course became a Top 10 hit worldwide, including in the U.S. Follow-up singles like the emotive 'Leaving Me Now' and the infectious "'World Machine' cemented the album's success and helped mark a major turning point in the band's career and 80s pop history.

Review: Photek's masterpiece for the new millennium Solaris catches a repress on Proper recordings. From propulsive, metro-setting opener 'Terminus' to the elegiac, trouble-in-paradise closing synth meditation 'Under The Palms ', Rupert Parkes casually shakes off all expectation with a flurry of infectious head boppers channeling everything from the fragmentary half-step of the nascent broken beat stylie- read: 'Juno' (sic), to the snarling Valve-era techstep of Dillinja and Lemon D on 'Infinity' via Larry Heard's late 90s deep lounge leanings on the peerless 'Mine To Give' (note the similarity in artwork with Heard's Genesis). Solaris is very much a product of its time, the highest praise possible given the early 00s was one of the most amoebic and fluid periods in UK dance music history. It speaks to the undying british dancefloor tendency to allide tempo and atmosphere, casually felling boundaries in genre to create something as reverential as it is innovative. Classiq.

Review: By 1997 Photek had already marked himself out as a wild card in the rapidly evolving d&b scene. He'd had three years to carve out some frankly dizzying displays of break editing wizardry and such was the innovation on display there just had to be an album coming. Modus Operandi smartly stepped to one side of the dancefloor, offering a smoky reflection on where jungle and d&b had got to, highlighting the compatibility between half-speed downtempo and breakneck drums and bringing inherent jazziness to the forefront of the beats, which avoided all the usual cliches. It's a masterpiece which hasn't dulled with time and here it's getting a heavyweight reissue across three slabs to ensure the loudest cut. All the better to blow your mind with, all over again.