Back catalogue: Leftfield

Review: Noton Records - an outfit dedicated largely and almost solely to the output of experimental electronic / minimal legend Alva Noto - here presents the full 10" box set version of Infinity, the mammoth set of originally 72 (here just 50) "sound graffities" commissioned to the artist by contemporary art exhibition Documenta X. The aim of Documenta X was to abstract the member of the public from their everyday lifeworld, exposing them instead to bare sonic spaces in which modernist sound fragments were played back, expressly challenging the collective listener's cochlear gaze. None of these pieces amount to full songs on Noto's part; instead they serve as auditory "throw-ups", to borrow from graffiti parlance, mirroring the unconscionable nature of certain visual or aural perceptions - public art works, gradual alterations in the environment, etc. - as we perceive them only intuitively, only in passing, as we submit to the daily bustle of the street. It comes as no surprise that many of these pieces were also played in public spaces outside the white cube, such as airports and public spaces: the tracks squeeze and bend time-space with twinging noisebursts and glitching digital scuzzes; cortically, convexly, chirally inverting the dysthymias of urban life and transience.

Review: Some 25 killer library music cuts by the German film music maestro Peter Thomas, on audiophile pressing, in a deluxe 2×10? set. Uber-rare, never-before-released material spanning 1968-1976 - and sourced from Thomas' personal reel-to-reel tape archive - this bombastic instrumental set spans a whole range of quirky overseen by the composer himself, documenting an approach to composition that essentially augurs electronic music production as we know it today. Prolific in scope, the 25 pieces here rival the sheerly industrious proliferations of many of today's artists, and even outstrips them in quantitative ambition; but then again, what less might one expect from a soundtrack artist by trade, whose work spanned over 600 films? Best of this bunch have to be 'Meeting Palermo', whose brushes revel in a beaucoup frisson, and 'Astral Snow' - a whacked-out absurdist electro-disco frazzler for the most frenetic out there. This one also comes with four recently unearthed 'lost' tracks from Warner Chappell's CPM Archive series, which have never been released on vinyl before. We'll hazard a quip: the word 'timeless' often doesn't come to mind, yet it has done here.