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Review: Greyscale use the end of 2022 to look back at what they have achieved so far. And that's a lot as this third volume of their already much-loved Mood Series proves once more. This one focuses on releases #41 to #60 and features the label owner grad_u making the selections. Top ones they are too, with Conor OG's deliciously deep 'Disembarking' setting a nice dub mood before there are excursions into frosty minimalism from Francisco Aguado, sub-aquatic bass bliss from Stoll hypnotic horizontal rhythms from BT Gate X-138, amongst many more standouts. 2022 was a fine year, then, and we're already looking forward to what 2023 has in store for us.

Review: Second time around for the late, great Rai Harakami's second album, Opa*q, gets the reissue treatment. It's long been tricky to source outside of Japan and for whatever reason has not been issued in any form since it first surfaced in 2009. It's an attractive and at times off-kilter blend, with Harakimi mixing and matching ambient textures and enveloping electronic soundscapes with jazzy keyboard solos, quirky grooves, madcap post-techno acid lines, IDM and break-core style beats, and the kind of squelchy and tactile synth motifs more often associated with boogie albums made in the 1980s. It feels pleasingly lo-fi, too, as if a writer of 1980s and early 90s video-game soundtracks had made an electronica album. This edition also includes fine remixes by Ian O'Brien and Max 404, plus two hard-to-find bonus cuts.