Squarepusher - Dostrotime
Whether composing Music For Robots with 78 fingers, performing with Shobaleader One, or exacting the drum and bass carnage his three decade career is prized for, Tom Jenkinson presents exhilarating experiments in a stoic yet playful manner. But as with any album bearing the “Made In Lockdown” tag, it's hard not to attribute emotionality to the latest Squarepusher offering, Dostrotime. Free from the schedule of his cancelled Be Up A Hello tour and the squall of human activity, Jenkinson spent the following 2020 in the studio brewing up some of his most intense material yet.
Monolake - Studio
The studio can be a site for many things: peace, chaos, intense focus, spur of the moment improvisation, experimentation, surprise. Techno visionary Robert Henke returns to his Monolake alias and Imbalance Computer Music label after four years with his creative space in mind, distilling all it contains into an absolute masterclass in mind bending, world building, cinematic sound design and electronica.
Iglooghost - Tidal Memory Exo
No one builds a world like Iglooghost. Tapping into the history of UK raves and pirate radio stations, his third full length album Tidal Memory Exo conjures the image of a free party held in grimy overcast shoals populated by fossilised false gods. Moving on from the entity-summoning laptop folk of Lei Line Eon, Iglooghost assumes the form of an MC broadcasting illegal tunes from a rusted oil rig, stepping ever so confidently into grimy rap and alluvial flows in these seafaring pirate transmissions.
Still House Plants - If I don't make it, I love u
After a decade of friendship, and finally writing music in the same room together, Still House Plants are completely locked in on their third album If I don’t make it, I love u. It’s as if they’re cerebrally connected, never faltering through accelerating stop start rhythms and decelerating molten, elastic tempos. That level of synergy is the result of years spent honing and rehearsing their performances: following the band's earlier tapes on Scottish label GLARC, Long Play stretched its limbs as the trio felt out the LP format, before breaking all of its rules with the innovative Fast Edit.
Jlin - Akoma
Seven years since her last full length, Bleep’s 2017 album of the year Black Origami, Jlin is back to melt minds with her latest batch of dextrous compositions. That fateful ‘Erotic Heat’ drop on Bangs & Works Vol. 2 set up over a decade of innovation in the name of footwork, followed by a score for Wayne McGregor’s Autobiography, AI collaborations with Holly Herndon, and Pulitzer shortlisted compositions for Third Coast Percussion, but on her third album Akoma, Jlin pushes far beyond genre with her most significantly evolved and staggeringly impressive work to date.
Kim Gordon - The Collective
Kim Gordon has watched very closely where the spirit of punk has moved over the decades since first harnessing it in the 80s with Sonic Youth, and has morphed accordingly on her second solo album The Collective, folding bass-worshipping trap rhythms into her overdriven guitar palettes. Rock and hip hop have a historic relationship, all the way back to the early days of Run-DMC, and as Sonic Youth collaborated with the likes of Cypress Hill and Chuck D of Public Enemy, it seems an almost blindingly obvious decision for Kim Gordon to bring hip hop's modern sounds back into her foray thirty year later.
KMRU, Kevin Richard Martin - Disconnect
Both ever prolific and having skirted each other’s realms of ambience, drone, and heavily textured sound design, Kevin Richard Martin and Joseph Kamaru seem like the perfect pair. Their first collaborative work and first release for both in 2024, Disconnect synthesises their abilities in “a powerful study of dread, hope, and profound sonics” stretched across three “core moments”. Martin’s dark dub-infused soundscapes and eroded textures meet Kamaru’s penchant for creating liminal space from field recordings and sonic experimentation, with Kamaru’s own voice awash in the dense soundscapes.
Hainbach - Breve
Hainbach has dedicated much of his career to exploring rare and hard to find instruments, synthesisers and electronic equipment - bringing them back to the forefront of modern electronic production. After repurposing disused nuclear research equipment, and the early 60s Syn-Ket synthesiser in 2023, he turns his sights to an even earlier feat of engineering. His eighth release for Seil Records, Breve focuses on the Ondioline, a proto-synthesiser instrument created by Georges Jenny in 1939 and continuously developed until his death in 1975, and it's a marvellous merging of electronic eras.
Nala Sinephro - Endlessness
Endlessness is a deep dive into the cycle of existence. The 45-minute album delicately spans 10 tracks with a continuous arpeggio playing throughout, creating an expansive, mesmerizing celebration of life cycles and rebirth. Following Nala Sinephro’s critically acclaimed debut album Space 1.8, Endlessness further elevates Sinephro as a transcendent and multi-dimensional composer, beautifully morphing jazz, orchestral, and electronic music.
Sophia - SOPHIE
Six years after her landmark debut album Oil Of Every Pearl's Un-Insides, and three years after her tragic passing, SOPHIE's triumphant legacy is crystallised in her surprise self-titled second album. It's far from an exaggeration to say SOPHIE's inimitable approach to sound design and constructing dance pop smash hits has revolutionised modern music, and with this album close to completion before her passing, we get an exciting glimpse of evolution from an artist who revitalised the electronic landscape.
