Specimen Vinyl & CDs

Review: Having spent the last 18 months guesting on numerous compilations and multi-artist EPs, rising electro star Arsonist Recorder has finally been given a chance to showcase his wares across an entire vinyl EP. He's grasped the opportunity with both hands, filling his debut outing with club-rocking rhythms, foreboding Drexciyan bass, and similarly mind-altering synthesizer sounds. We're particularly big fans of EP opener "Vaxxer", which feels like a breathless, hyper-speed rush through the farthest reaches of the galaxy, though the deeper, more evocative "Multivers" and fizzing "Shifty" are also top-notch. As debut EPs go, this is pretty darn good.

Review: Remarkable conceptronic electro from French electro artist Romain Jauzas, who's submerged his production efforts in a schizophrenic, abyssal liquid soundworld recalling abandoned submarines, half-malfunctioning psychonautic machinery and gilled alien lifeways. Telling the story of the artist "hidden in the shadow of his room" - trying to make sense of a recent transformation into an extrahuman, proto-Drexciyan entity known as "Jauzas the Shining" - this EP is a noxiously bubbling, effervescent slow-release of amnestic venom from just five digisonic vials.