New releases last four weeks: All genres

Review: Digital Imagination first dropped their The Essence of Thought back in the nineties and now the cult favourite gets a nice reissue in time for summer when it will be perfect post-rave comedown tackle. It is a sci-fi inspired mixture of house, transcend trip hop of the era with lots of analogue action and dusty drum breaks, smart little samples that add a cinematic edge and some lovely basslines. It was produced by a young Ted Heinz and originally release by Concept Records. OGs are hard to come by so don't sleep on the one which has been restored from the original DAT tape.

Review: Lol Hammond is a former member of Spiral Tribe and early live techno act The Drum Club who now makes music on his own as Wah Wah Planet. Back in 1990 is when he penned this fantastic five track Balearic house EP alongside Russell Crone and with female vocal contributions from Lucy Sian. It very much lay out an early blueprint for UK street soul and the opener on the A-side 'Jewel' explores a romantic theme with hooky pop lyrics. Things get more left of centre on the 'Love FXU' with three trips into a smoother sound world perfect for sun kissed island dancing and with influences ranging from early breakbeat and trip hop to elements of dancehall music.

Review: A sublime five-track EP that opens with 'Magik,' a nice loose and fluid downtempo sound with lush and wispy melodies. Elsewhere 'Reboot' brings some sleek metallic lines and cosmic keys, 'Reality 2.0' has funkier drums, 'RSVP' is a late-night electro-tinged reverie and 'Keep Livin' closes as a ten-minute zoned-out opus.

Review: Dominick Martin is best known as stone-cold drum & bass don Calibre, a prolific producer with a masterfully deep and smoky sound. He has also made tech house under his own name, but lesser known is this album
Valentia which was originally released in 2013 and has now been remastered and repressed on 180 gram vinyl with a sleeve containing the lyrics. It was written on the amazing Valentia Island, joined to the west coast of Co Kerry in Ireland by a bridge t and battered by strong winds. Says Martin, "I took my computer and mic with me not knowing what to expect when I got there. In one of the rooms sat a piano, and as my fingers touched the keys I knew there was a story there waiting to be told."

Review: This is a second new and standalone 7" that is taken from Incense Music for Bed Room, a new compilation series from Incense Music that was curated by Toru Hashimoto and legendary Japanese downtempo and Balearic master Calm. On the A-side, we delve into Haruka Nakamura's beautiful tribute to Bill Evans' timeless piece 'Soiree'. On the flip, 'Valsa de Euridice' is a rendition of Vinicius de Moraes' classic from Etepalma, the inaugural 2006 album by Nobuyuki Nakajima. Renowned as a composer and pianist, Nakajima presents a captivating interpretation that captures the essence of the original piece. Together, these tracks offer a harmonious blend of homage and reinterpretation.

Review: This new one from El Triangulo Records is the debut single from North Satellite's 2023 album, Past Life Half-Lived. It features several different and equally good versions including the original LP vision by the legendary Metro Area man Darshan Jesrani and alternate versions by Eugene Tambourine and Conrad McDonnell of Idjut Boys fame. The 12" is limited to 300 copies and for our money features some of the best cosmic disco and analogue drum grooves we've heard in a while. Of all the highlights, the opening Cosmic Freestyle is the one we love most.

Review: NT is Nail aka Neil Holliday, one half of Bent and a master of UK tech house. But here he shows a different side across six majestically Balearic groovers. That draw on everything he has done before to send you out to sea on gentle waves of shining synth goodness, downtempo bliss and dreamy, chubby, soft focus drums. 'Beside Boa Linn' is a soothing summer sound to kick off then 'Going Out To Feel It' is a spiritual house cut for sundown, and 'Don't Hide Away' is slow motion disco brilliance. The trip continues with the star-gazing 'Evening Fixture', Eddie C style guitar licks of 'Walk In Romance' and romantic lullaby 'Dreams On Hold.'

Review: Fabiana Palladino's long-awaited debut album brings plenty of smooth and high gloss sound back to the fore. Following the end of a significant relationship, Palladino uses the album to delve into themes of love, loneliness, and relationship norms and in the process crafts a ten-track album that superbly blends r&b, soul, pop, and disco influences from the 80s and 90s with a contemporary twist. Self-produced and featuring collaborations with notable musicians like Jai Paul, Pino Palladino, Rocco Palladino, Steve Ferrone, and Rob Moose, the album is a classy journey through shapeshifting sonics and intimate introspection, marking a significant milestone in Palladino's musical journey.

Review: Portishead have been patient with their release rate over the years, and that's partly why Roseland NYC Live is able to stand out so much amongst their considers but accomplished catalogue. Arriving hot on the heels of their self-titled second album, it captures the band in the prime of their early career with a full orchestra, rendering their smouldering, noirish sound in stunning clarity while still feeling like a proper live session. There's no need to sell you on the tracks contained within - every single one is a classic, but the sessions is sounding better than ever thanks to this 25th anniversary commemorative freshen up.

Review: This is the third installment in the Local Sugar Diggers Series from Scruniversal in which old and rare records from the label head's friend's collections get reworked and edited. This one is a collab between ScruScru and an equally passionate digger from Cyprus known as Dwaal. Both tunes offer quite different looks but with great results. The first is the steamy and loose-limbed 'Destination? Funk!' with its squelchy bass and neat guitar riffs, while the flipside is a super deep and lush downtempo jam, 'Camelot Chill'. This one has romantic sax notes and gentle grooves with jazzy keys finishing it in style.

Review: At least one person has described Scythe's work as "expertly modulated space blues and isolationist architectures." First emerging from the ether (or at least that's how we like to think of it) through a series of clandestine cassette releases on Low Company in 2019 and 2020, Head X'Change almost feels like the culmination of all that has come before. A weird and truly wonderful place to spend time. A collaborative project between David West and R.A. Jones, elements of kosmische intermingle with a kind of earthy ambience, DIY electronics leading into white noise moments or new age melodies. At times it's so joyfully opiate you wonder if there's any way of getting back up off the pillow. In other moments, there's tension, eeriness, and uncertainty. Once you're in, it's a wild ride indeed.

Review: Unchained is the longstanding solo project of Nathaniel Davis. Gabbeh is his latest offering to the world, a suite of blissfully introspective tracks that envelop the soul in a blanket of soft, delicate moods, their sole purpose to comfort aching heads. Remarkably, dedicated fans will know you can trace the artist's lineage to noise mix tapes on CD-R, although more recent excursions into Bossa nova influenced tones perhaps help bridge the gap between then and now. Recorded at home over a three year period, from 2020 to 2023, Grenoble, Switzerland, played a big part in end results here. "I think certain songs reflect, in ways, Grenoble's natural surroundings. 'Drac' is named after the river that flows from the mountains down to the city - 'Dru' is the name of a well-known peak near Chamonix," Davis has explained. That as may be, nevertheless there's something more transportive than that here - songs feel as though they would be at home anywhere green, slow and thoughtful.

Review: Insense has put together a tidy 7" featuring a rendition of Pharoah Sanders' 'Moon Child' which was first specially crafted for the compilation album Incense Music for Bed Room. It is a lush and spiritual sound led by gorgeous wind instruments and fluttery melodies over gentle and persuasive rhythms. On the flip, Yoshiharu Takeda's 'Bliss Of Landing' is another escapist sound with more of the same. A lovely 45 rpm for those quiet moments.

Review: Delia Recordings is a new micro-label from Nottingham that launches into the world with this very tidy new album, Then Horizon Is On The Horizon. It's a various artists collection of absorbing works curated, mixed and produced by lifelong gear collector Matt Horobin and it comes on vinyl and CD and includes postcards. The tracks are all taken from three upcoming albums the label is working on by artists Brown Fang, Torn Sail and Shrinkwrap, and bridge the gap between the local evolving Balearic scene and Laurel Canyon escapism. Gentle grooves, downbeat dub and delicate drones all feature.

Review: Brothers in sounds (and lineage) Mark and Clive Ives deal with two of the biggest issues impacting music right now on one incredible record.WOO have a reputation for taking parts of archived sounds and formulating new things from those segments, and in this case the work is born from excerpts of four-track tape recordings made in the late-1980s. They then began reflecting on the "imminent nature of humanoid robots", and starting to create Xylophonics/Robot X. From artificial intelligence to reuse and sample politics and economics, these themes seem to guide the sounds themselves, which feel strangely nostalgic and futuristic, a vision of tomorrow that is inseprtable from the humans that made it - their understanding of the unfolding machine age through weird distorted jazz tech, deconstructed dub and psychedelic electronica. So, remembering all this is a reconfigured version of stuff made almost 35 years ago is truly mind-blowing.