Back catalogue: Leftfield

Review: At long last, the great Vince Guaraldi's complete score for It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown! sees its premiere release in full to celebrate the Peanuts' 75th anniversary. This 20-track collection includes a new bonus recording by David Benoit with Guaraldi's original bandmates while bringing the beloved 1974 soundtrack to life in stunning clarity. It has been mixed from original session tapes and mastered in 192kHz/24bit, while the score blends Guaraldi's signature jazz with Easter whimsy. Featuring fan favourites like 'Peppermint Patty' and 'Snoopy and Woodstock' with rich liner notes, archival images and a timeless sound, this is a long-overdue springtime treasure.

Review: It's not a scam... it's Skam! To the Skam sister label Kasm comes Russell Haswell with a mitre-sawing electro release, veering toward brash abstraction. A gobby intonation is wrought from the distortion send here, where drums near-vocally poke through the muck, like rambunctious talking ghosts in machines. Warring allusions to lost humanity take shape on titles like 'Fractured Bones' and 'Tournament Species', where cyborg gladiators rise from their catacomb internments to face off against each other again and again, in haunted perpetuity. 'Different Takes' is the best example of the record's at times tempoless ferocity, scattering what remains as an intuitive pulse across phase-distorted gargles and made-wonky beat hydraulics.

Review: So what happens when a European post-punk outfit meets an American 'ambient country ensemble'? The answer: A Nanocluster. In fact, three. This being the third. Immersion first met SUSS in September 2021, and the results were mesmerising. Three years on and the impact was no less staggering. Originally landing in September 2024, part tres takes us into the kind of musical places we're used to finding Spiritualized or Mogwai, and even then the references are misleading. For as many times as Nanocluster Vol. 3 sucks us into a thick soup of ambient and atmosphere, inviting us to get lost in opiate cloud formations, it also asks us to jump on board a stream train of rolling and driving rhythms, juggernauts gathering depth and complexity as they forge ahead. A stunning collection of highly evocative and incredible musical instrumentals.

Review: Kohei Matsunaga has spent over three decades dismantling and reconstructing the boundaries of experimental music. Born in Osaka and originally trained in architecture, his approach to sound is methodical yet unpredictable, reflecting a fascination with structure and abstraction. Across releases for labels like Raster Noton, PAN, and Skam, his work oscillates between dense rhythmic frameworks and fleeting bursts of sonic chaos, shaped through collaborations with the likes of Mika Vainio, Sean Booth, and Merzbow. His latest release continues this restless exploration. 'Filled With Vacuum' sets the tone with jagged percussive sequences and warped atmospherics, while 'Ancient Behave' layers hypnotic pulses with eerie tonal shifts. On the flip, 'Same Point Different Coordinate' pushes further into spatial disorientation, before 'Formulated Rhythm 4s' closes with a fractured yet intricate groove. It's another entry in Matsunaga's ever-expanding sonic architectureiprecise, disorienting and entirely his own.

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: Zyklus shows his compiler's class and deep knowledge here as he dives into the world of library and archive music with a distinctive edge. These sounds all come from the Arcadai vaults and take in some magnificently obscure and intriguing 1980's electronica. All the tracks are short sketches but are packed with evocative imagery, raw machine energy and gnarly basslines. There are also eerie ambient pieces, heavy industrial percussion and are playful radiophonics that make for a unique listen and will help you colour your sets and radio shows with great little vignettes.