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Tom Jenkinson returns to the vintage hardware used in his early '90s works on ‘Be Up A Hello’ – his first project as Squarepusher following a 5-year hiatus. – Warp Records 

At the record’s best, tracks pelt off the starting blocks and hit top speed without ever looking back. Lead single Vortrack’s eerie, submerged acid is all blots and splatter like octopus ink, fathoms deep. Susurrous hi-hats slowly creep, disguising the imminent jetstream of drum breaks, cymbal crashes and screaming synths. There’s the thrilling toxicity of freaky acid cut Speedcrank, while Nervelevers, a glitch and breaks romp that never stops rolling with the punches, proves an album highlight. The opening tunes’ hooky melodics feel almost uncomfortably reminiscent of chiptune, and elsewhere there are pretty but unmemorable beatless passages, stretching the stylistic range of the record. Ultimately Be Up a Hello is a fun albeit bumpy ride through future-retroism, best felt in the moment itself. – The Guardian

Like many electronic artists, Ryan Lee West aka Rival Consoles spent his early years experimenting with IDM, glitch and dance, but one consistent element in his musical journey has been his desire to create a more organic, humanised sound.

Through these experimentations he has found a process of producing electronic music that feels close to this urge. West engages his hands directly with instruments and is very selective about what he then records into the computer. He reduces musical parts even further, leaving enough space around the sound for it to breath. Odyssey is a reflection of West’s quest to create atmosphere and space from minimal arrangements. ‘I don’t like music to sound overly laboured, so I restrict how much is going on. I’m kind of obsessed with the idea of reduction.’ This 5-track EP was mastered by Naweed.

Mere months after dropping Higgins Ultra Low Track Glue Funk Hits 1972-2006 on Planet \xB5, Aaron Funk strikes again with this little slice of audio lobotomy. Released under the moniker Vsnares, 2370894 is, in many ways, an homage to the prevailing sounds of British experimental electronic music (which could mean a whole shitload of things, really-- I'm thinking Skam, v/vm, Rephlex, etc). The album is comprised of tracks both unreleased and left over from the sessions for other Venetian Snares releases, and is a slight detour from Aaron's usual speedbreaks assault. The dark atmospherics and menace of Printf or Doll Doll Doll has been traded for a more playful, loose vibe, but despite this being an odds-and-sods sort of album, it's amazingly cohesive, and far from your standard tossed-off amalgam of half-baked leftovers. - Pitchfork

In early 2008, age 18, Space Dimension Controller (R&S, Clone, Royal Oak) made his first album in his bedroom in Belfast, now set for a release on 27th May 2016 via Ninja Tune. Crunchy, tattered and enjoyably odd - “Orange Melamine” is a lovingly produced and deeply personal album that laces supernatural sounds and translucent synths with a sense of overflowing harmony. Washed in reverb and draped in hiss, the album draws influence from the old VHS tapes handed down to Space Dimension Controller from his older brother and cousins, as well as artists like Boards of Canada, Brian Eno and William Basinski.

The album is also steeped in audio and visual references from 80’s and 90’s sci-fi films and animations; from The Guyver, Short Circuit, The Gobots, and Ghostbusters through to The Fifth Element, Escape from New York and Power Rangers - also reflected in the album's visual identity created by Jacob Chabeaux. - Bandcamp

As mellow, warm, and welcoming as the day they patented the Ultramarine sound, the duo of Ian Cooper and Paul Hammond return after a long 15 years off with This Time Last Year, an album filled with enough high-grade, home-listening electronica to rival their beloved debut, 1992's Every Man and Woman Is a Star. The difference here is that big, hooky, Blue Room numbers like "Saratoga" and "Honey" have given way to smaller, more meditative music that reflects the indie, post-Boards of Canada world outside, but it's still sweater weather out there, and if Ultramarine have lost their "cute," they've certainly filled that space with grace and sophistication. Soft, broken beat gems like "Technique" are more complicated and artistically rewarding than the average Every Man cut, as that opening number suggests that Tangerine Dream's synths, Carl Craig's sequencers, and Prince's drum machines have all surrendered to Ultramarine's control. "Find My Way" anchors the album with some hazy, '70s-flavored vocals that represent the duo's equal love of the acoustic and the electronic, while all the analog moments give the album a nostalgic, wistful spin, as if these electronica spacemen have embraced home after years of orbiting Earth. The drifting here is all slowly downstream and not the weightless, otherworldly kind an astronaut experiences, so fans who always thought of them as a transitory, Orb-like, pre-club group should turn the car around and head toward the couch. It's best to trade those dancing shoes for comfy slippers, because This Time Last Year is the mature, delicious, and filling sound of the elder Ultramarine. - All Music

“"Live shows and clubs and festivals, for me, have taken on an entirely different meaning the more the world has changed over the past 18 months," Matthew Barnes said around the time of his last album, Compassion. "It can feel a lot more like a shared and beautiful experience." A year later, the producer's DJ-Kicks mix also reflects obliquely on the power of live music experiences. It's inspired by DIY nights he went to when he was younger: events driven by the urge "just to share music between people", where "DJ etiquette" was ignored and artists instead seemed to be "cook[ing] up their personal mixtape in front of you."

Forest Swords' first licensed mix is his own personal mixtape. A patchwork of sounds and moods with a few of Barnes's own "voice note" field recordings thrown in, it's casually and playfully eclectic, hinting at influences and nodding to his peers. There's only one Forest Swords track, the scratch-itching exclusive "Crow." But with its sombre mystical mood, clever combos of acoustic and electronic sounds, and the odd bright shot of pop, the mix as a whole has many of the qualities that define Barnes's own music.” – Resident Advisor

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“Age Of, the tenth studio album from the electronic artist Daniel Lopatin, spills over many of the formal and conceptual boundaries set by previous OPN records. After working with Anohni on her debut solo album Hopelessness, Lopatin found himself drawn to the process of collaborating with other artists, a stark contrast to the cerebral solo labor that had driven his work to date. Instead of going it alone again, Lopatin looped in James Blake to co-produce and mix the album. Anohni and noise artist Dominick Fernow (aka Prurient) lent vocals to several tracks, while Eli Keszler supplied live drums and multi-instrumentalist Kelsey Lu played keyboards. Strikingly, Lopatin sings lead on four songs, threading his distorted voice through jagged electronics for the first time since 2010’s Returnal.” – Pitchfork

"Moments of heightened cacophony on “We’ll Take It” overwhelm as sampled voices crash into a fractured, slumbering beat and stilted keys. A slippery dynamic builds on “Still Stuff That Doesn’t Happen” as romantic keyboards offset a dragging jazz beat on the drums while multiple variations of Anohni crooning “release me” are layered on top of each other as a discordant plea with her operatic vibrato. The combination of these dissonant elements make for a truly haunting yet enveloping listen.” - Consequence of Sound

"Flitting through soundtrack-style pieces, pop songs and dense instrumentals spanning from post-kosmische to neo-baroque, it's a dizzying trip meant to shore up Lopatin's status as an avant-garde auteur while aiding his forays into mainstream pop culture. It'd be easy to see this album-as-prospectus approach as cynical. But whatever his motives, Lopatin has successfully broadened his scope. Age Of is the sound of an internet addict sifting through the digital ruins, part of a culture jamming legacy for future generations, should they exist." - Resident Advisor 

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Lapalux will release his third album, “Ruinism”, on Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder imprint, 30th June 2017. His previous LP, “Lustmore” was partially inspired by the concept of hypnagogia, a suspension of consciousness occurring between wakefulness and sleep. Throughout “Ruinism” the British producer takes this exploration further, journeying onward to the more ominous limbo space between life and death. In this liminal space where the finite and infinite intermingle, Lapalux sounds more at home than ever. 

Much of “Ruinism”’s inspiration was born out of a theatrical score Lapalux (aka Stuart Howard) wrote for the performance art piece “Depart” which was performed in an East London cemetery. The aptly named project served as genesis for a direction wrought with doom and melancholia. “Ruinism” is all sonic wreckage and rubble created using only hardware and real instruments. The sound simultaneously destroys and redeems itself across a tight and formidable forty-eight minutes. – Bandcamp

Though far less accessible than his previous material, Ruinism isn’t the clinical listen it could have turned into. Its performers are never spotlit and yet its textures never lack a human soul. It is the kind of album that tends to frustrate a fanbase while cementing its maker as an artist for that very willingness to alienate the faithful. You could say that Ruinism is Howard’s coming-out party as a composer, but even that incorrectly implies an adherence to tradition. With Ruinism, Howard sets out on a whole new path to conceiving his music. – Pitchfork

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