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1988 is the follow up to Knxwledge’s official debut album Hud Dreems (Stones Throw, 2015). The same year Hud Dreems was released Knx worked with Kendrick Lamar on To Pimp a Butterfly, earning the producer his first Grammy. A duo with Anderson .Paak called NxWorries was formed around the same time. Their single “Suede” became a viral hit, vaulting the singer to R&B stardom, and their album Yes Lawd! followed through on that song’s immense promise. Knx and Paak have quietly continued collaborating, and some of the new work is heard on 1988. A prolific artist in the extreme sense of the word, Knxwledge continues to redefine instrumental hip-hop almost in real-time with a stream of beat tapes numbering in the hundreds on Bandcamp, and video remixes on Instagram.

This prolific output began early. 1988 takes its name from the fact that much of the new record was created that very year, when Knx was an infant. As the story is told, little baby Knx was left alone by his mother for just a few moments and crawled to a family member’s vintage SP–12 sampler. When his mother returned he had already produced his first beats and nearly mastered the machine. These tracks, all produced before nap time while rocking a Nike diaper, were stored over the years on floppy discs, then brought to his studio in recent months where they were finished up, mixed, and mastered. – Stones Throw

Ishmael Butler and Tendai “Baba” Maraire of Shabazz Palaces have always been proud iconoclasts, consistently breaking ground in spaces once thought incompatible with hip-hop. They were among the few rap acts signed to Sub Pop; they were pretty much the only rap artists to ever perform at the avant-garde Big Ears festival in Knoxville. This adventurous spirit continues down the Butler family line with Ishmael’s son Jazz, aka Lil Tracy. It seems that Jazz’s work has had a profound effect on his father’s project; in recent interviews, Butler cites his own son as an influence.

As one of the original members of the GothBoiClique, Tracy is an important figure in the development of “emo rap,” and what’s fascinating about Shabazz’s new album The Don of Diamond Dreams is the degree to which Ish seems to be learning from the new generation. Like polarizing label mates clipping., Shabazz’s brand of “alternative” hip-hop is not so much opposed to the mainstream as it is reflective of it, absorbing tangents of influence from trap, Auto-Tuned R&B, chopped and screwed, and other variants. Their lyrics are often shaped by the hip-hop hegemony too, playing off Rap Caviar tropes and taunting the Top 40 with a tongue-in-cheek braggadociousness, the kind that lets you know that Butler is still the same MC who told us he was cool like that all those years ago.– Pitchfork

Singer, songwriter and heartbreaker Keaton Henson is releasing his electronic side-project Behaving on vinyl for the very first time. Entirely self-made and recorded in the dark with lyrics laid down off the cuff, Behaving is an unsettling, introverted exploration of love, ego and the creative process.Conceived in the shadow of his yet untitled follow-up to 2013’s Birthdays, Behaving has previously only been released digitally and follows vinyl editions of Henson’s Dear, Birthdays and Romantic Works.

Released in an edition of 1000, each copy comes with an exclusive art print that has been hand-signed and numbered by Henson, with five very special copies also including a hand-written missive. – The Vinyl Factory

Tehran-via-London artist Ashkan Kooshanejad works by breaking down samples into unrecognizable blips of sound, and then layering them up into thickets of melody and rhythm.

I AKA I is Kooshanejad's second album under his Ash Koosha alias, following last year's GUUD. He's a multimedia artist, dabbling in film as well as expressing an interest in virtual reality. "At some point in my life I thought it was good to specialize, but now I think it’s good to build a bigger product than just music," he told Philip Sherburne last year; he's diversified, in other words. But I AKA I is a complex sonic statement, one where sound qua sound is the order of the day. Kooshanejad works by breaking down samples into unrecognizable blips of sound, and then layering them up into thickets of melody and rhythm. There is the sense that any individual noise could be one locus on a larger waveform, any melodic line or rhythmic figure a patchwork of them. - Pitchfork

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

Born in Assam, Gauhati, in Northeast India, but currently based in New York’s storied borough of Brooklyn, jitwam spent his formative years in New Zealand and Australia, before living in monasteries in Thailand, orphanages in South Africa, and washed out apartments in London. Of everywhere and nowhere, his music draws influence from a litany of iconoclasts including, but not limited to RD Burman, Moondog, The Velvet Underground, Yayoi Kusama, Jay Electronica, Jay Dilla, Moodymann, Leon Thomas, Madlib and Asha Bhosle.

Across the album he utilises knowledge acquired through years spent digging through dusty crates, and talents honed as a multi-instrumentalist, producer, and vocalist. A series of stumbling, jazz/soul-rooted beat sculptures, each buried beneath a haze of fuzzy psychedelia, broken microphone blues, and articulated through a freestyled process he describes as “first thought, best thought”, ज़ितम सिहँ solidifies jitwam's spot as a major emerging talent.

Recalling the fourth world dreamscapes explored by oddball songwriters like Connan Mockasin, Clarence Clarity, Jai Paul, Silicon, and Unknown Mortal Orchestra, it represents a time of transition and remembrance for jitwam, while still fulfilling the core qualities he looks for in song. In his words, “Music is a refuge. A shelter from the storm. A place you can go to close your eyes.” – Jitwam | Bandcamp

Claude Speeed returns to Planet Mu, two years after the 'Sun Czar Temple' EP, with his second album 'Infinity Ultra'. He describes the record he's been creating since he started making computer music as one "conceiving an interior territory: an abstract space to process the oppression, confusion and insanity of the contemporary age; and to formulate an honest emotional and artistic response - a psychic jumping off point into an uncertain future." 

'Infinity Ultra' takes inspiration from sleep paralysis, monumental artworks, children’s anime, abandoned places, ghostly rave pasts and terrifying silicon valley futures, and the limitless anger of the digital present. These influences have been channelled into an impressionistic burst of varied creativity: Shimmering VSTs; monolithic noise; euphoric blocks of colourful sound; trance stabs and the citrus rush of hardcore; towering drones, and skynet math rock – all rendered against cold, sinister space and nostalgic synth melodies.
 
The album reveals the artist’s Scottish roots, viewed at a hazy distance from his Berlin home - a series of memories of Glasgow’s experimental psychedelic underground, its DIY rock scene and defiant club hedonism. These genre relationships are blurred and at times they contrast with audible brutality; the result is a hybrid, sculptured way of rendering music – minimal specifics, maximum emotions.

Brute is the second studio album of Kuwait musician Fatima Al Qadiri. A protest album inspired by events such as the 2015 Baltimore protests and the Ferguson unrest, the album regards the authoritarian power of law enforcement in the United States and the illusion of democracy existing in the western part of the world. Its cover art by Josh Kline, Babok Radboy, and Joerg Lohse is a photograph of one of the "police teletubbies" found in Kline's art piece "Freedom," which was intended to present how civil rights were being destroyed in the 21st century. Brute features samples of the Ferguson protest, an MSNBC report of Occupy Wall Street by Lawrence O'Donnell, and an interview with a former member of the LAPD regarding the power of the police. - Wiki

Released by Hyperdub in March 2016, Brute garnered significant media coverage for its unique political message and was listed in the "Top Ten Protest Albums Of 2016" by Shadowproof, where Kevin Gosztola described it as "the kind of album that will carry even more resonance in the era of President Donald Trump."

Dark Entries and Honey Soundsystem Records have teamed up again to release another volume of gay porn soundtracks by San Francisco-based musician and producer, Patrick Cowley. Perhaps one of the most revolutionary and influential people in the cannon of disco music, Cowley created his own brand of Hi-NRG dance music coined "The San Francisco Sound." Born in Buffalo, NY on October 19, 1950, Patrick moved to San Francisco at the age of 21. He studied at the City College of San Francisco where he founded the Electronic Music Lab. During this time Patrick, along with his classmates Maurice Tani and Art Adcock, would create radio jingles and electronic pieces using the school's equipment, first a Putney, then an E-MU System and finally a Serge synthesizer. He would make experimental instrumental songs by blending various types of music and adapting them to the synthesizer. – Bandcamp

Mount Kimbie present an exclusive live session recorded for WXAXRXP, featuring some of their best loved tracks and a guest appearance from Mica Levi. 

“Disco Not Disco is a compilation album from the Disco Not Disco series released by Strut Records in 2000. The album is a probe to experimental side of disco and punk genres and underground music scene in general. The first volume is more rock and funk oriented and features three experimental studio projects by Arthur Russell, namely Dinosaur, Indian Ocean and Loose Joints, British new wave musician Ian Dury, and even musicians like Yoko Ono, Steve Miller Band or jazz trumpeter Don Cherry. It was compiled by Joey Negro, a British DJ and producer. Some songs included on this album did well on the Billboard Club chart. The song "Cavern" by Liquid Liquid was also used in Grandmaster Flash song called "White Lines (Don't Do It)".” – Wiki

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“"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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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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A suite of electronic laments, tone structures and dreamtime rhythms, with a conceptual arc taking in death, life, sleep and religion.

Right from Hazyville, Actress’s music has been deeply marked by London’s rave music heritage. But after the angular dynamics of Splazsh, R.I.P heads out into deep space. The rhythms and pulses are smudged or blurred, or are hinted at by their absence. 2-step garage is collided into gamelan, and freeform interludes explore microtonal spaces and imagined string instruments.

R.I.P underlines Actress’s reputation as one of the most eloquent voices to emerge from the sub-bass nexus of London dance music. His intuitive and original grasp of beats, textures and rhythm puts him on a parallel path to dance music innovators such as Basic Channel, Burial and Aphex Twin. But the way he engages with electronic sound from first principles, realising his own self-contained sonic worlds, hints at less obvious kinships outside the dance music fraternity, with pioneers of homebrewed sound experiments such as Cabaret Voltaire, Pan Sonic and Oval. It moves the body but the sounds also tap into to something more intangible inside you; you dance, but also ‘slip/drift into another realm, probably without even realising.’ – Honest Jon’s Records

“Darren Cunningham is a dance producer who references extroverted, populist music to create a meditative, introverted, immersive experience.…It's not the sound that makes the music, though, but the structure of it. R.I.P. is a deliberately uncoordinated album. Rhythms, basslines, and melodies slip in and out of line with each other. Comparatively straightforward, house-oriented tracks like "Shadow From Tartarus" are situated next to murk and ambience like "Tree of Knowledge". The emphasis here, though, is on "comparative": Even R.I.P.'s steady 4/4 tracks sound grimy and deconstructed. But there's something almost flirtatious in the way he lets the sounds worm around in the dark, looking to hook up with something firm. When they do, it's both mechanical and mystical, like watching a sculpture cut from raw stone.” – Pitchfork

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