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Ilario Alicante And Alejandro Mosso: Cocoon Ibiza
Cocoon is the Law & Order of techno. Reliable, slightly predictable but if it’s on, you won’t turn it off.
Even if one of the discs on here is a new signing Alejandro Mosso’s mix of his productions and remixes, it’s not like when (the then) relatively…
Mayer Hawthorne: Where Does This Door Go
If you liked Mayer Hawthorne’s last album, How Do You Do (2011), you’re definitely in for something different on his latest full-length effort.
Gone are the days of homages to the great Motown classics and the retro-soul sound of the ‘60s – it’s in with the ‘70s…
Jay Z: Magna Carta…Holy Grail
If you can forget the irony of Kurt Cobain’s lyrics being used in an album released as a Samsung app, you might enjoy listening to this album. With a host of big names on Magna Carta…Holy Grail, Jay Z teams up with Justin Timberlake on the opening track Holy Grail…
Thundercat: Apocalypse
Stephen ‘Thundercat’ Bruner’s version of funk is Bootsy Collins and Stevie Wonder jamming in the Enterprise at Warp Drive. His space age funk is more nuanced on his second album, Apocalypse, which sees him evolve as a songwriter with gorgeous tracks such as Heartbreaks & Setbacks and Without You. The…
Gildas Kitsune & Jerry Bouthier
At the tail end of last decade, two labels were briefly the coolest imprints on the planet: Pedro Winter’s heavy disco of Ed Banger, with Justice as it shining disco ball, and fellow Parisian label Kitsune, run by Gildas Kitsune, who like Winter once worked with Daft Punk. Ed Banger…
Pet Shop Boys: Electric
Pet Shop Boys have returned with another cyber exploding album called Electric. In typical Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe fashion, the album is fast paced and sounds like a mid-‘80s throwback when their songs dominated the dance scene. This album is pure dancefloor and the stand out tracks to listen…
Vydamo: Becoming Human
It’s with little surprise after seeing Art Vs Science at Southbound 2010, where they basically played until they melted their faces off, that high-energy vocalist Jim Finn would eventually burn out. Following antics on a US tour, Finn ended up on dialysis following a kidney transplant in 2012. Turning a…
Maya Jane Coles: Comfort
London native and current darling of the deep beats realm, Maya Jane Coles has just dropped her first studio album Comfort – a textural blend of tech, deep house and also some slower moments, all linked by a ribbon of silky, stripped-back femininity. There’s a lot to like here, with…
Darkbeat: 10th Anniversary 3CD Collection
Prior to getting my filthy mitts on this album I’d never heard of Darkbeat. Now I must say it is a label I will keep my eyes open for because this album of 43 tracks is nothing short of the business. Spanning a spectrum of styles within the four-beat realm,…
Empire Of The Sun: Ice On The Dune
Who would believe it’s been five years since Empire Of The Sun delivered Walking On A Dream – the debut album from Luke Steele and Nick Littlemore which went double platinum here at home and gold in the UK. For those who don’t like surprises, in essence Ice On The…
Doorly: Southern Fried And Tested 4
An all-label mix of greatest hits and exclusive joints can be an interesting experiment if the label is an electronic music institution such as Underground Resistance, Warp or Kompakt. But do we really need a fourth all-label installment of Norman Cook’s (AKA Fatboy Slim) Southern Fried Records? When you listen…
YelaWolf Interview
Wolves are so hot right now, from the direwolves in Game Of Thrones to motifs in fashion. Alabama MC YelaWolf, AKA Michael Atha, has noticed. “Honestly, yeah, I can see some influences in a lot of culture,” he says. “I don’t think it’s necessarily people are biting, but I can…
Kanye West Yeezus
While much of West’s back catalogue centres on his egomania, Yeezus rewrites the definition, stepping over Patrick Bateman as the newly-evolved ‘American Psycho’. Considering West has collaborated with nearly everyone relevant in modern music since 2010’s near-perfect My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and has joined the world’s most vapid family,…
Jon Hopkins: Immunity
Intriguingly, the older Jon Hopkins gets the more dancefloor friendly his albums seem to be. Not that Immunity is a four-to-the-floor call to clubbing arms; rather the first half of the album is an upbeat slap to the face before it finishes with an impressive ambient rub down. The Brian…
Mobilee: Back To Back Volume Seven Presented By Rodriguez Jr
This fine-ass, double disc compilation of deep-fathomed techhouse reminds me of one night when a bunch of us took double-dips at a party. A clique of us ended up in the garage, on a beat-up lounge, which became an intergalactic transporter. Our journey through the psychedelic realm was led by…
Midnight Juggernauts: Uncanny Valley
Sadly, like 2007’s Dystopia and 2010’s The Crystal Axis before it, Uncanny Valley shines only in places for the Midnight Juggernauts, with the album’s majority at times becoming a swirling, convoluted daydream. Following the intro that wants so badly to be a song, HCL, the Juggernauts drop their two biggest weapons,…
Bliss N Eso: Circus In The Sky
With the release of Circus In The Sky, it’s now a fact that Bliss N Eso go way beyond merely being some of the most talented artists in Oz hip hop – the Sydney trio are officially among the best musicians that Australia has to offer in general. Even Nas…
My Favourite Robot Crossing Wires 001
With their debut album getting prepped for No.19 Music, the Canadian trio (James Teej, Jared Simms and Voytek Karab) bust out a mix on their own imprint, which showcases their brand of slow burning dub techno and dark house. While straying into areas such as gloomy disco and atmospheric electro,…
Allday: Loners Are Cool
Allday returns with his EP Loners Are Cool, which is a polished, easy-going melodic look at contemporary Australian hip hop.
Breathe Slow sets up the tuneful and pleasant vibe of the album, which deals with some hard-hitting themes such as substance abuse and unhealthy relationships. Allday’s collaboration with Brady James…
Disclosure: Settle
You wouldn’t believe it at first listen – nor second, nor third – but the production duo behind much-hyped dance newcomers Disclosure are brothers Guy and Howard Lawrence, aged just 19 and 22. Equally as unbelievable is that their full-length album Settle is the pair’s debut. In Australia they’re clearly…
Radio Slave: Balance 023
On paper, Balance 023 looks like it could be the compilation of the year with a club mix on Disc One (White Skies) and an experimental mix on the flip (Maestros & Memories) but bizarrely, Radio Slave (AKA Matt Edwards) doesn’t deliver many knock-out punches with his double-disc mix. The…
Robert Babicz: The Owl And The Butterfly
Owls are awesome. If you’ve ever been lucky enough to see one in the wild, you were no doubt filled with a sense of being fortunate enough to be in the presence of something with an aura of magic about it. If you were hot-boxing a car parked on a…
Daft Punk: Random Access Memories
Forget Get Lucky (currently being thrashed to death by commercial radio), because if we step back from the standard accessibility of Daft Punk’s superb, but inevitably trivialised through over-saturation singles, what remains (as always) is music of a very high calibre. What truly stands out about RAM
Emika: DVA
English-born/Berlin-based artist Emika returns with her second full-length album and the timing couldn’t be more perfect as our winter approaches. DVA (meaning ‘two’ in Czech, appropriately) teeters the line between melancholy and just plain sinister most of the time, comprising of delicate violins, cellos and piano thrown in together with…
Shapeshifter: Delta
It’s no secret that when it comes to our part of the world – Australia and New Zealand, that is – Shapeshifter are pretty much at the pinnacle of the D&B genre, having platinum albums under their collective belts as well as successful, sold-out tours around the rest of the…
