It’s a Brit-heavy selection this month, purely because of the way the dice fell. But even within that, there’s wild variation: Flying-dream electro, trippy-camp disco, eccentric gallops, dubwise jungle, floating islands and, errrr… bruk gqom (no, really!) are all in the mix. And just to stop it from getting too parochial, there’s some Italian deep house, Greek hardcore and, to start us off, some spectacularly innovative footworking funk from Paraguay…
Qetsy
LaYeguaDeLaTesis
We always like a tune that delivers a “WTF???” moment, but it’s not often you get a release that has 24 of them. Paraguayan producer Qetsy clearly has a lot of love for Chicago: Their tracks are built on the classic, jacking sample chopping and limber drum programming of classic house, juke, and footworking. But from within those rhythmic assemblages are teased no end of surprises—laugh-out-loud ludicrous switch-ups, references to jungle, funk carioca, and many other upbeat styles, as well as Latin and indigenous percussion sounds and patterns. It shoots by at such a clip, you won’t have time to clock them as anything other than two dozen new kinds of funk.
Gull Grey Eyes x Kev Metta
“Cyyano”
Is it electro? Is it techno? Is it rarefied drum & bass? Does it matter? The almost 13-minute-long “Cyyano” is like a flying dream or a Studio Ghibli film sequence: subtle bass tones and sheets of strings whisking past you like mountaintops and wisps of clouds. Incredibly, it’s not a second too long—such is the joy of the experience of somersaulting in its cool, crisp, rarefied air. A 16-minute “Ambient Mix” only prolongs the pleasure…although this take on the material is more like drifting into a gigantic cavern lit by fireflies.
Mr. Beatnick
Île Flottante
Vinyl LP
The Uruguay-founded, Ibiza-based International Feel label has, for almost two decades, been a key maintainer of the nebulous “Balearic aesthetic,” with a catalog of woozy sophistication to die for. London master craftsman Mr. Beatnick has clearly taken the opportunity to work with them very seriously; despite only visiting Ibiza for the first time recently, he’s immersed himself deep in its various influences, from street soul to chasmic kosmische, minimalist composition to perky electropop. Over eight perfectly realized tracks, he captures the elusive bittersweet bliss of Balearic as a feeling without directly imitating the past.
PIGMNT
“Jumbo“
As South African amapiano and gqom continue to soundtrack Black and multicultural British dance scenes (often under the wider banner of “Afrohouse”), these two vibrant genres keep throwing out new hybrids—with neo-soul, UK funky, and, in the work of the exciting producer PIGMNT, with broken beat (or “bruk”). This track is a proper roller, that turbocharges broken beat’s sophisticated funk with the metallic heft and “panting cyborg” atmospherics of gqom to super-invigorating effect. Along with his previous tracks, it suggests that “bruk gqom” could easily be A Thing—though try asking a DJ for that after a couple of drinks without sounding like a crazed hen.
Remoteworker
Interregnum
In the late ’90s and early ’00s, Kharis O’Connell released drum & bass and other experimental sounds on labels alongside the likes of Modeselektor, Apparat, and the greatest legends of the drum & bass scene. Now—after a long hiatus and a relocation to the Mojave Desert—he’s making some of his most finely crafted sounds yet, built on techno, dancehall, and the rhythmic frameworks of Artificial Intelligence-era electronica, with state-of-the-art futurist sound-sculpting. You maybe wouldn’t need to be told about the context; the wide open spaces and micro detail of this music speak of isolation, empty landscapes, and hallucinatory heat and cold. It’s by turn on edge, tranquil, thrilling, and very beautiful, and really rewards deep and repeated listening.
Red Rack’em
“Italo Disco Banger” b/w “Hotline”
Vinyl LP
Daniel “Red Rack’em” Berman hit paydirt in 2016 with “Wonky Bassline Disco Banger,” and now, stone the crows, he’s done it again, with a similarly titled—but surprisingly fresh follow-up. “IDB” does contain a little tribute to “WBDB” in the bass tones that burst in unceremoniously every so often; but its way more balanced than its predecessor—gliding along on a warm breeze of interlocking melodies, riffs, and licks that make it a thing of pure delight. The B-Side, “Hotline” isn’t as blissful, but it is significantly funkier, cartwheeling along through filter tweaks and snappy backwards edits in pursuit of mischief.
The Mechanical Man
Original Vibes
Paul Wise has golden ears. Since 1990, his DJ sets (and, latterly, his signings to the label We’re Going Deep) have always showcased the most finely crafted house and techno out there. That remains the case with these four tracks from Italian producer Nicola Altieri. They’re deep house through and through, channeling all the classics like Larry Heard and Satoshi Tomiie, ebbing and flowing with the beat absolutely incessant throughout—the polar opposite of EDM build-and-drop fireworks. And they really come to life on a big, crisp system. The sonic sculpture of every hi-hat, every subsonic kick, every chime melody is designed to be heard up close and personal.
Jungle Neck
8 Coffins
2 x Vinyl LP
This is a curio, but it’s a massively absorbing one. Obviously, the jungle explosion of early ‘90s Britain took endless inspiration from reggae, but there was also a very small subset of specifically reggae producers who brought jungle’s hyperspeed breaks back into their practice. Thus Dougie Wardrop and Nigel Lake, aka Jungle Neck. On these eight tracks—remastered and rereleased by the Swiss imprint Musique Pour Le Danse—they apply proper dubwise live mixing desk techniques to the sounds of jungle, creating something uncanny and disconcerting. Sounds leap forward in the mix unexpectedly; organic instruments and voices blur into the digitally-processed breaks, and the whole thing feels alive and strangely out of time.
M-zine & Atmospherix
Axis
Drum & bass hasn’t had many grand eruptions of new sounds lately—it exists more in a state of steady evolution and cross-fertilization. One strand that’s consistently compelling is the minimalist style that characterizes the releases on Doc Scott’s 31 Recordings. Belgians M-zine & Atmospherix demonstrate it perfectly here: The high-tech production glides along like the finest techno, or DJ-Stingray-style electro; it moves as if it’s on rails, the separate parts circling an invisible center, constantly shifting in relation to each other, but the mix is so precise that they never actually touch.
A Taut Line
Restoration
It’s been nearly 20 years since Diskotopia began as events in Osaka and Tokyo, and 13 since its British and American founders Matt Lyne and Brian Durr turned it into a label. In that time, it’s become a watchword for uncategorizable and visionary music that dissolves the walls between the club and the outside world. And that’s exactly what Lyne’s sixth solo album does. He has an unerring instinct for creating four-dimensional scenes with instruments, electronics, and field recordings perfectly intertwining with one another ’til they each become another piece in his miniature dioramas. Both wistful and welcoming, each of these tracks feels instantly familiar, but is full of so much strange detail that you’ll want to keep coming back and back and back to re-examine them. Everything gently thrums with a numinous glow. It’s an incredibly beautiful set of spaces to inhabit.
Ruthers & Jupiter
Ruthers & Jupiter
Mark Ruthers and Horton Jupiter are both eccentrics of some renown, existing on the fringes of the UK club scene. Ruthers was formerly part of the off-kilter techno duo Kodiak; Jupiter is a hard-gigging, genre-mangling DJ, and long ago was a founder of the band They Came From The Stars We Saw Them. Together they’ve created four tracks and a remix that gallop through psychedelic hinterlands and thronging dancefloors in pursuit of peak experiences—and, on finding them, explode into cascades of rainbows and mirror shards. All are broadly built on a chassis of chugging disco-rock rhythm, sometimes with guitars, sometimes with techno synths, always with unexpected noises pinging around—and with all sorts of curveballs, the ecstatic movie strings of “Andromeda” being the most spectacular, but not the weirdest.
ΠΕΡΑ ΣΤΑ ΟΡΗ
kontra gobbledygook
7" Vinyl, Compact Disc (CD)
These two tracks from Greece are, in some senses, very straightforward rave music, looking back to circa 1992–93 for their sweaty energy. They’re anything but retro in their production, but they manage not to be gentrifying either—which is quite the balancing act. “Strech broca’s” is what they used to call “jungle tekno,” breakbeats very much at the forefront, with Angelo Badalamanti-ish chords creating dark shadowy spaces behind. The title track is much tauter, with Amen breaks kept as flourishes over sped up organ house and deep subs. But both use modernist production on the familiar structures to create whole new sci-fi visions, without losing touch with the dancefloor.
The Emperor Machine
Remixes (Hardway Bros & Tigerbalm)
Vinyl LP
Andrew “The Emperor Machine” Meecham has been at it for a very long time, but he still manages to find new variations on trippy disco and acid house. Here, he’s joined by fellow troupers Sean Johnston—aka Hardway Bros—and Rose Robinson—aka Tigerbalm. The former whips up two versions of “Wanna Pop With You” that make a thick soup of dub effects around the groove, to very different effect: One with a spanking ‘80s Euro groove, the other more reggae-fied house. Both are nice and peculiar. Tigerbalm, meanwhile, spins the glitterball extra fast on the French disco of “La Cassette.” But it’s a new cover, of Fox’s 1976 “S-S-Single Bed,” that is the giddiest thrill of all, thanks to the way Michelle Bee’s wild vocal swoops are matched by the analogue synths swishing and whooping, pushing the whole thing to the edge of hysteria.
