Matt Anniss tracks down pioneering downtempo producer Riz Maslen to discuss her 1996 debut album, one of the standout releases on Ninja Tune’s long dormant NTone offshoot.
By 1984, a distinct “garage” sound was beginning to take shape in New York. Based around the dubbed-out, synth-heavy remixes of legendary Paradise Garage resident Larry Levan – particularly his reverb and delay-laden 1983 rubs of acts such as Imagination, Jeffrey Osbourne and Gwen Guthrie – the sound was slowly inching further away from straight-up disco and boogie and further towards what would later, in the hands of Tony Humphries and others, become garage (or, as it was known in the early years, “garage house”).
If July is the month when the vinyl releases traditionally quietly drop off as label bosses loll about under the Adriatic sun, it certainly wasn’t showing in the artwork department.
There does seem to be a particularly rich strain of albums across the electronic spectrum, many of them with cover art to match the music, and this is fully reflected in our choices for the best sleeve design for May.