Versatile France Vinyl & CDs

Review: French outfit Chateau Flight have spent two years in the studio making music, playing around and experimenting and now the fruits of that work are presented on this new album La Folie Studio. It is full of the sound of analogue machines conversing and the artists themselves speaking through their darkened basslines or eerie pads. Occult worlds are crafted, ambient soundscapes are cooked up and leftfield cosmic explorations occur throughout a journeying album full of a wide range of emotions. This lovely record features guests on the odd track such as Johnny Nash on guitar, Cosmic Neman mumbling on 'Mange', John Cravache playing 'his special organ" and Bony Bikaye singing on 'Esika Molimo Ezali'. It's an occult world of left of centre sound that will keep you coming back for more.

Review: There's always some magic in the air when you receive and start to unwrap a new I:Cube release. One of the lesser sung but undisputed legends of the French electronic, house and dance music landscape, his rise through the Parisian underground in the mid-late 1990s has informed a stylistic diversity throughout his oeuvre, and in his club sets, meaning you could be about to hear almost anything, but it's definitely going to be amazing. That's certainly true of studio album seven (under the I:Cube solo moniker). Eye Cube is another trippy triumph, calling at pitstops like the beguiling downbeat synth jazz dream of 'Kaszio Plus 1', the heavy, immersive and slightly shamanic tones of 'La Grotte Aux Fees', and the raw, Silver Apples-esque hypnotic dance floor business of 'Vantableu', among other destinations. A gripping ride we implore you to take.

Review: Versatile's new Uprooted project, masterminded by serial curator and long-time label contributor Vidal Benjamin, has an intriguing concept. It focuses on the 'duality' of musicians who grow up in one place, then move to another and absorb that culture. The two tracks on release number one were picked by Vladimir Ikovic, who has selected a track a piece from Belgrade, the city of his birth, and Dusseldorf, his current home. On the Serbian side, he offers up 'Track 1' by Rex Ilusivii, Goran Vejvoda and Milan Mladenovic, a trippy, slow-motion slab of dubbed-out, Eno-influenced slab of post-punk experimentalism from 1984. Flip for some rough, powerful, mind-mangling proto-techno from 1981: the stylish, lo-fi and pleasingly intense 'NBKE' by CHBB. Inspired obscurities that are well worth a listen.