Back catalogue: All genres

Review: It's incredible to think Blush is PVA's debut album. The South London band sound like they've been doing aggy, abrasive and regularly oddly beautiful cold synth wave stuff since it was invented, bringing their own edge and energy, influences and ideas to a table that - much as we love it - can often feel like it has become set in its ways. Then again, perhaps their breaking from some traditions is exactly what exposes their freshness.

Across 11 incredible sonic assaults we're dragged from pillar to post in the best way. 'Untethered' sounds like an alarm going off and panic setting in, opening the album without apology. 'Hero Man' takes things into a more rolling, wavy place, albeit wasp-in-jar keyboard lines underpin things. 'The Individual' slows us down and ups the nasty; spoken word style lyrics and grungy, grimy atmosphere making it a stand out. Meanwhile, 'Seven' drops just ahead of the finale for blissful, twisted but honest romance.

Review: Vienna by way of Manchester talent Salute has very much mastered the art of crafting high impact and emotive house bangers. They are never throwaway though, but instead distill the purest elements of musical joy, melancholy and beauty into snappy groves and effective melodic hooks. Some are harder than others, some come with garage swing, all of them get you on your toes and ready to go. Now he is back with another album full of such sounds on his home label Ninja Tune. It is another triumphant record full of irresistible sounds and great collabs with the likes of Disclosure, Empress Of, Karma Kid, Sam Gellaitry, piri, Lea Sen, LEILAH and Nakamura Minami.

Review: Austrian-born but now UK-based salute has made an art of crafting the perfect house banger. His deceptively simple tracks often are built around a couple of simple ideas that just roll and roll, tweaked only slightly, brought in and out at the right time, and topped with a great melodic or vocal hook. Now after several hit tunes, he debuts with a full-length on Ninja Tune that finds him serving up his most complete body of work yet. It is full of effective, emotive, heartfelt house cuts that bring style and class as well as plenty of good times.

Review: Glaswegian producer Hector Barbour is nothing if not divisive: he's had more fun than anyone in recent years by dropping curveballs, baiting social media with troll tracks and generally not giving a tinker's damn. There's nothing throwaway about his new EP on Ninja Tune, though, which launches with nimble synth cut "In-Narito" which we wish was much longer. "Gas Whillis (While I Paint My Nails)" gets down to some gritty, wall rattling warehouse techno, while "ForTee" is much harder to define; a collision of kicks, warped synths and beautiful chords that ping off one another at random. Elsewhere there's more peak time club tackle, scintillating melodic house and bravely experimental fair like " Dan (wll SOME day KNOW How Special He Makes Me Feel)". Certainly, this is an EP that keeps you guessing as his famously unpredictable sets do.

Review: Leon Vynehall long again made the transition from decent tune maker to revered and unpredictable electronic artist. Now he proves why he holds that status one again with a follow up to his critically acclaimed debut long player Nothing Is Still. This time out he distils everything he has done so far in to a record with few comparisons. It is ready for dance floor deployment but never just functional. There are cavernous ambient pieces next to grainy, heavy, dubby rhythms with grand but lo-fi synth architecture as well as moments of intriguing experimentalism.

Review: Yeule (Nat Cmiel) is something of a sonic scrapyard varmint, scouring the lost wastes for augmentable audio parts perhaps useable in their madcap experiments. An avant-garde spin doctor of ash-faced, death-ray-desert-bomb glitch-pop, they've kept their place at the knife-edge of innovation, blending genres and non-genres at the violent vanguard where sounds remain in constant, slipped flux. In the lineage of Machine Girl, ecolagbohrsac2021 or Hakushi Hasegawa, 2022's Glitch Princess laid nutritious ground for Cmiel's now evermore fractious work, Evangelic Girl Is A Gun, which hears the somewhat alter-egoic Yeule now delve into the complexity of a fragmented identity, embracing the duality of light and shadow while echoing surreal animes, such as Serial Experiments Lain and Angel Egg. The LP reimagines Yeule as a haunting figure, exploring ego deaths and transformations in partnership with visual artist Vasso Vu.

Review: The tide of (hyper)pop has ebbed into increasingly emo and indie directions and the frothiest edge of this fluid movement is perhaps best represented by the latest album from Yeule (Nat Cmiel). Softscars follows up Yeule's 2022 album Glitch Princess and continues the trend of ultra-glossy, CD-reflective, knife-edge sounds packed into the blueprint of downtempo dream pop, in which said gloss reflects Cmiel's own personal experience of healing from trauma. The likes of 'ghost', 'dazies' and 'sulky baby' are giving glitchy alternate-reality Green Day in their Boulevard Of Broken Dreams era, with a dash of ejector-jewel-cased lyrics and a sprinkling of George Clinton-esque production flavour.

Review: Non-binary performance artist Nat Cmiel from Singapore, often also known as yeule, continues to push the boundaries of glitch-pop and alt-electronica with their latest release. After solidifying their reputation as a trailblazer with their sophomore album Glitch Princess and its follow-up softscars, Cmiel takes a more daring, raw approach here. It's a cathartic exploration of self-destruction, trapped identities and the dark undercurrents of post-modernity, where Cmiel's ethereal vocals intertwine with dissonant beats, creating a paradox of beauty and tension.The sprawling atmospherics of 'Tequila Coma' and '1967' unfurl into a liquid haze, giving way to the razor-edged urgency of 'VV' and 'Dudu', which channel a palpable, jittery rhythm that commands attention. Collaborating with the likes of A.G. Cook and Mura Masa, the album navigates between haunting introspection and electrifying energy. It's a striking nod to Cmiel's ability to balance vulnerability and sonic experimentation, presenting a portrait of the artist struggling with the very image they've built.

Review: With their Mercury-winning 2014 debut 'Dead', Edinburgh trio Young Fathers set the bar high for themselves, which they met with 2015's follow-up 'White Men Are Black Men Too', and continue to do so with new album 'Cocoa Sugar'. Their third record isn't as brash and in-your-face as their previous two, but that's not to say that this any less impactful, instead 'Cocoa Sugar' is a stripped back, concentrated The group have a unique ability in that they can draw elements from a range of genres, with an outcome sounding in a class of its own and tantalisingly hard to define. Also, in their use off-kilter loops, gospel-esque vocals, haunting samples and breakneck speed verses, Young Fathers create dualities and contrasts that playfully subvert. Tracks like 'See How', 'In My View' and 'Lord' appear to tread into joyous and cathartic pop territory, before being pinned down by unnerving scraping samples and dissonant synthesis. It's these intelligently executed sonics and structures that make 'Cocoa Sugar' an addictive, thrilling and beguiling listen.

Review: Five years on since their last, Young Fathers are finally back with their fourth album (if you don't include their introductory mixtapes Tape One and Tape Two). Heavy Heavy finds the trio of Alloysious Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole and G. Hastings embracing a back to basics approach formed around working in their own basement studio, keeping the equipment turned on and allowing the ideas to flow freely. Cherry picking the most fruitful moments from these extended sessions has resulted in a striking, invigorating album which bursts forth with the opening salvo of 'Rice' and 'I Saw', clutching you tight and not letting go for the duration of the album. It's been worth the wait.

Review: Swedish-Japanese vocalist Yukimi Nagano (best known as the lead singer of the post-punk and electronica group Little Dragon) shares her debut album on Ninja Tune, embodying the best of her charms as a solo artist whose space away from the band allows her ample time to reflect on her own emotions. Born of the first production 'Sad Makeup' - a song about the inevitably, always-botched attempt to suppress and sweep sad feelings under the rug, and the ways this backfires when around close friends - the entire album in fact threads a narrative yarn centring on the overcoming of "darkest nights", externalised in the repeated mention in the lyrics of Sweden's long, dark and shivery winters. Taking cues from everyone to filmmaker Ingmar Bergman to collaborator Lianne La Havas, Nagano wears her vulnerability on her sleeve.