Search dance music

Review: It's hard not to be impressed by everything Grimes touches. From the moment this album's trippy downtempo titular opener emerges from submerged depths of sound you know the latest from the Canadian is going to be a special moment in pop. As if to accentuate our point, "Delete Forever", two tracks later, introduces acoustic guitar tips while still retaining deep timbre and utilising effects to hypnotic ends on those hummed vocal loops. "IDORU", which closes out the record, feels far more playful, simple keyboard and whispered choral lyricism introduced with a backing track of bird song, before broken club beats fall in. It might be most fitting to finish a write up on the aptly-titled "You'll Miss Me When I'm Not Around", its guttural bass guitars and EDM-leaning vocal stabs not the only things reminding us the world would be weaker without this one.

Review: In line with the timely reappraisal of all things R&S related, the resurgent Apollo have seen the opportunity to bring one of their most celebrated records back for another round on CD. Aphex Twin's ambient recordings mature magnificently with age, sounding ever richer and more emotive as the rest of electronic music continues to play catch up all around. From the gentle breakbeats of "Xtal" to the aquatic techno lure of "Tha", the airy rave of "Pulsewidth" to the heartwrenching composition of "Ageispolis", every track is a perennial example of how far ambient techno could reach even back then. It's just that no-one quite had the arm-span of Richard D. James.

Review: The latest artist to delve into Conrad Schnitzler's vast archive of synthesizer sounds and Con-Struct new tracks is Pole, AKA dub-tronica stalwart Stefan Betke. In the liner notes, Betke admits to never warming to Schnitzler's brand of synthesizer experimentalism, despite respecting the German pioneer's vast body of work. Yet despite these misgivings, Betke has produced an impressive set which melds some of Schnitzler's trademark electronics - woozy, evocative, out-there and occasionally hugely challenging - with his own glitch-heavy rhythms and dub techno inspired textures. The result is a collection of finely tuned tracks that effortlessly joins the dots between 1970s electronica, '90s IDM, and Betke's distinctly dub-wise production style.

Review: Since he first emerged on Diagonal a decade ago, Powell has been associated with abstract rhythms, hard-edged electronics, modular madness and fearsome experimentation. Piano Music 1-7, then, is something of a departure: a set that's as equally as inspired by piano jazz and neo-classical musical movements as fractured electronica and the Radiophonic Workshop. Of course, this is not piano music in the Nils Frahm sense - much of the actual piano motifs are delivered on lo-fi keyboards and synthesizers, while his fluid, attractive and ultra-melodic refrains come wrapped in studio effects and occasional electronic textures. A great example of this hybrid sound is 'Piano Music 4' - all alien electronics, woozy piano riffs and unsettling experimental intent, while the raw beauty of shimmering ambient number 'Piano Music 7' is simply sublime.

Review: Over the last couple of years, author Justin Hopper has joined folk musician Sharron Kraus and vintage synthesizer fetishists Belbury Poly on stage to narrate sections of his 2017 novel "Old Weird Albion" - a "poetical, autobiographical and psycho-geographical account" of his experiences at Chanctonbury Ring in West Sussex. This album is, in effect, an extended re-recording of those performances, with Hopper reading choice excerpts from his book over an inspired fusion of traditional folk tropes - think recorder, flute, and drifting female vocals - atmospheric field recordings and 1970s style electronic instrumentation. Given that these synths have largely been used to re-record tudor style Baroque tunes (think "Greensleeves" and you're close), the results are not only delightfully eccentric but also admirably unique.

Review: Back in 2016, Martin Jenkins unveiled the first instalment of a "loose trilogy" of vaguely conceptual albums for the Ghost Box label. Entangled Routes is the third and final part of this trilogy and lands two years after its predecessor, Hollow Earth. Though not expressly acknowledged within the music, Jenkins' inspiration this time round was apparently "mycorrhizal networks" - subterranean networks of funghi that transfer water, carbon and other minerals and nutrients to the roots of plants. Musically, what's on offer is intoxicating and far-sighted, with Jenkins mixing up trippy ambient psychedelia with modular-rich, melodious electronica, throbbing, arpeggio-driven dancefloor cuts and what would once have been called IDM. As usual, the album is full of great ideas, beautifully executed, and sequenced in such a way as to provide a genuine aural journey.

Review: Of all the artists past and present who claim to let their music do their talking for them, Burial is one of the elite band of whom this truly is the case. In fact, so reluctant is he to engage with the cult-of-personality hoopla that surrounds almost every modern producer and musician of merit, that he remains a genuine recluse; he has never appeared live, only one obliquely-angled publicity photograph is known to exist, and the number of interviews he has given can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Yet despite this, his music speaks loud and wide, and the world has been listening ever since his 'South London Boroughs' EP debut on Hyperdub in March 2005. His eponymous album, which began life as a low-key release in May 2006, is now widely regarded as the benchmark release of the ever-widening dubstep genre, picking up unanimous critical acclaim along the way, and ending the year heavily featured in many 'best of' polls. Now Burial returns with 'Untrue', a new record of weird soul music, which lovingly processes spectral female voices into vaporised R&B and smudged 2step garage. Vocal lines are blurred, smeared, pitched up pitched down and pitch bent until their content is cast adrift from their original context and they whisper their saccharin sweet nothings into the void. The album continues with the debut's crackle-drenched yearning and bustling syncopations, haunted by the ghosts of rave, but also reveals some new Burial treats with a more glowing, upbeat energy. Kicking off with the skittering 2step syncopations and vocal science of 'Archangel', 'Near Dark' and 'Ghost Hardware', before long it descends into a space of radiant divas and ambience. Where 'Burial' first was humid, suffocating and unrelentingly sad, 'Untrue' is less sunless. Many of the tracks are so sweet, they become toxic, underscored by the almost geological rumbles of growling basslines. Unlike the overpoweringly melancholic prevailing mood of before, Burial's sound is now better defined as a downcast euphoria typified by the epic, muted optimism of the album's last track 'Raver'. Forget central heating the radioactivity of this album is all that you'll need to keep you warm this winter. 'Untrue' is available as full 13 track digipack CD, including recent underground hit 'Ghost Hardware', and 9 track DJ friendly double vinyl set, from which some of the beatless pieces have been edited.

Review: Jason Barton is one man, London based experimental project BArTc. Insubstantial As Ghosts is his 14 track debut album and it comes on the label run by Colin Potter, who is well known for weird electronics thanks to his time as a member of Nurse With Wound. Barton has said that influences include Cabaret Voltaire co-founder Chris Watson and industrial legends such as Coil, Skinny Puppy and Einsturzende Neubauten. The music is built in many layers of synths, found sounds and environmental recordings. It results in organic and experimental sounds that are heavily distorted with various effects.

Review: Klamm is the new label dedicated to the artistic output of Saele Valese. After "Ivic", a collection of old and new materials published on Alva Noto's label (NOTON) at the beginning of the year, Saele Valese releases now his first real album "A White, White Day". Written and recorded between 2018 and 2021 the material of this work was sliced, glued and recreated several times, just like a filmmaker in the editing process, before finding its final form. Inspired indeed by the most poetic cinema, 'A White, White Day' represents, in the form of a non-linear and enigmatic narrative, a personal and psychological reflection on time, memory and dreams. Mastered by Rashad Becker.