Juno Recommends Leftfield July 2018

Review: Markus Guentner's story continues where his last album, 'Theia' left off with another set of epic atmospheres and brave new worlds. This time Markus enlists the skills of harpist; Tom Moth, cellist; Julia Kent and fellow ambient storyteller; bvdub to complete the journey.

From fiery remnants, a universal rhythm emerged.
An ebb and flow of force and fate,
creating worlds within worlds,
forever connected by an infinite empire.

Markus Guentner's 2015 album, 'Theia' took us back to the mythological impact that birthed the Earth's moon. The creation of the galaxy as we know it today was being born and more specifically, the eventual rise of the human species followed. This is where Empire takes its cue, continuing the story and portraying the connection and many interactions between the Earth, the Universe and the mystifying forces amongst them.

Be it physical, scientific or mythological, Empire draws on the ebb and flow relationship the Earth has with the deeper, unknown space around us. Markus dives into sometimes sinister, but always majestic territories with his unique manipulation of looping drones, textures and gradual atmospheres. The album and its planned progression, combine back-and-forth chapters between Markus' own productions and collaborations, representing the different perspectives between the unknown worlds.

Beginning 'Offworld', in a dark and distant, swirling ambient chasm, Empire then moves into manipulating shards of light, with Canadian cellist Julia Kent adding a stirring yet poignant element to the growing void.

Icelandic for "hiding", 'Fura' finds us back in the emptiness, but this time with a sense of hope as fluorescent molecules - future stars - gather and birth new worlds. A return to terra firma, and slow-motion grass moves all around you - a future mirage depicting a new vision of beauty that's yet to be formed, brought to you alongside fellow master of emotive ambient, bvdub.

The dream is cut short and you then find yourself in the void of 'Nun' - the God of Egyptian Mythology - as echoes of man and cities once alive, are drowned out by an ever-present mysterious force and a subtle, alien static. All is not dark however, as harpist Tom Moth (Florence and the Machine) brings a shimmering, angelic shine, as you witness the growing energy and birth of the sun - the leader, life, and power amongst the Empire.

Its birth; the 'New World Order', closing with a slow churning, atmospheric piece that is both complex and elemental, gracious and sinister, dark, yet in many ways hopeful for all that remains.This is the Empire as we know it today.

Empire will be available on marbled transparent orange and black vinyl (including digital download) and digital formats on June 11th 2018.

Review: Contort Yourself continue to widen their scope of operations with this, their first dedicated reissue, and they've come in strong. Eschewing the grotty industrial tones of many earlier releases, the label have turned their attention to Dutch curio Muziekkamer, who self-released a small clutch of cassettes at some undisclosed point in the past. The unthinking experimentation contained within these tape jams is shockingly prescient - jagged rhythms, surreal sampling, techno atmospheres and more from a period well before such tropes became common tools for electronic expression. Take a trip into the vivid, imaginative and utterly unpredictable world of Muziekkamer.

Review: Since the release of Jon Hassell's last album in 2009, there's been an upsurge in interest in the "Fourth World" style he pioneered alongside Brian Eno way back in 1980. It seems rather fitting, then, that the 81 year-old trumpeter turned experimentalist has returned to show the pretenders how it should be done. Listening To Pictures (Pentimento Volume 1) is every bit as alluring as you'd expect, with Hassell delivering thrilling new soundscapes that pull the Fourth World template (think combinations of American minimalism, ethnic styles from around the world, advanced electronics and manipulated trumpet sounds) in a variety of directions. It's in turns trippy, hypnotic, beautiful, poignant and otherworldly, with each ambient composition being accompanied by another where Hassell draws influence from contemporary IDM or drowsy experimental jazz.

Review: The seventh instalment in the Schleissen series welcomes another two intriguing and smartly selected propositions in the Emotional Response sublabel's continued exploration of the depth and breadth of ambient music. New York wild cards Georgia present five different musings on richly melodic electronica ranging from the delicate to the delightfully bonkers (one of the duo's strong points). The curveball addition of A Man Called Adam is a smart one - Sally Rodgers and Steve Jones surprise everyone with five engrossing and diverse "Sketches" that leap from scatty sample manipulation to spacious drone and back again.

Review: The DISKANT crew is back in full motion with this new batch of releases, and we're uber glad to see them back on our charts with their improbable technoid infusions. This time, however, the Durian Brothers take a side step and leave the podium to Marsesura, Uwalmassa and Wahono, three enigmatic figures who all make tripped-out percussive badness for all sorts of electornic aficionados. There's an Eastern tint about each of these 4 tracks, each of them spiraling into a reverie with the help of intricate drum folds, cavernous atmospherics, and the hypnotic glow that belongs to pretty much every Diskant bullet. Excellent.

Review: Lyon's Julien Viallet, only recently baptised under the HLM38 moniker, lands with his debut EP for France's KUMP label, making it the imprint's second EP to date. Representative of the cultural shift that has taken France over nowadays, "Illicite Song" is a wonderfully dextrous blend of Eastern chimes and slow, meandering beat music that only subtly references techno or house. "French Dudu" is a little more tech-friendly, albeit grounded in the same form of percussive experimentation, while "Exit" references the sounds of bands like Throbbing Gristle, spewing industrial oddities from every orifice. Remixes come from Front De Cadeaux and Kris Baha, respectively, dropping yet more additive rhythms to the collection. Recommended!

Review: Klaus Schulze and Peter Namlook's The Dark Side Of The Moog series receives a timely update on vinyl, having only been reissued a handful of times since its first release in the early to mid 90s. Much like the second volume, which should be bought in conjuction with this opener, you'll be stuck to find any better sources of ambient or drone on these charts. Yes, the modern kids might verge further into the heart of the rave, but this music has a way of lifting the soul that's rarely matched. Led by images of time and space, the legendary duo's music is truly capable of tele-transporting you into a higher state of consciousness; the best thing about it is how rich and fresh it sounds upon each new listen. Highly recommended.

Review: Chancha Via Circuito, AKA Argentine producer Pedro Canale, has a reputation for doing things differently. This often manifests itself in eccentric but thrillingly forward-thinking productions that join the dots between traditional South American rhythms and instrumentation, dub, hip-hop and contemporary bass music. On his latest full-length adventure - his first for nearly three years - Canale pushes the envelope further, serving up a mixture of breezy, sun-kissed takes on traditional Colombian tropes, dusty, bass-heavy hip-hop instrumentals, mind-altering South American electronica, hazy ambient interludes and life-affirming tropical pop. The result is a joyful and vibrant set that could be the producer's strongest work to date.

Review: The latest one from Edinburgh's Firecracker is by Steven Legget, who over the years has recorded under the aliases Four Hands, Artwhore and Gamma; with releases on a variety of labels from Signals and even Claremont 56 eight years ago. Starting life as a performance in the Turkish Baths located in Newcastle upon Tyne's City Pool (one of the last remaining civil saunas in the country), this soon evolved into a stunning full-length album of ambient/neo-classical compositions. Pieces from the original performances were layered with field recordings collected on the islands of South Crete, and later accompanied by cello and electronics. All profits from the sales of this LP will be donated to the charity Waves for Water, which helps developing nations gain access to sanitised drinking water.

Review: Pete Nalook and Klaus Schulze's The Dark Side Of The Moog project almost single-handedly crystalised the term 'ambient' to describe a genre of music where listeners could float carefree into a world of endless sonic possibilities, and free from the constraints of formats relying on dance needs. The second edition of the series first came through in 1995, and has remained as innovative in 2018, which truly marks these two as having been at the cutting-edge of music since they first came through. The latter, Schulze, is a legend in his own right, but Namlook's heritage is now a serious contender within the looser end of the electronic world. The twelve parts of "A Saucerful Of Ambience" are the deepest, most touching moments of beatless music that we have on our shelves, and we would recommend picking a copy up before it's too late. So much dreaminess onto two slabs of wax.

Review: There are plenty out there - the team behind Dark Entries Records included - who will happily tell you that that Time Actor is one of the finest and most overlooked albums of the 1970s. It was the debut full-length of Richard Wahnfried, an alter ego of pioneering German ambient don and electronic experimentalist Klaus Schulze preserved for collaborative projects. In the case of Time Actor, that collaborator was Arthur Brown (he of "The Crazy World Of..." fame), whose half spoken, half-sung vocals provide a focal point throughout. Musically, the album is deliciously trippy and other-worldly, with Schulze delivering a swathe of fine electronic grooves and bubbly Berlin School soundscapes. This edition also boasts a brilliant bonus track: a 12-minute, 1983 "Afro-cosmic" revision of the title track by Italian Maurizio Delvecchio.

Review: In line with the timely reappraisal of all things R&S related, the resurgent Apollo have seen the opportunity to bring one of their most celebrated records back for another round. Aphex Twin's ambient recordings mature magnificently with age, sounding ever richer and more emotive as the rest of electronic music continues to play catch up all around. From the gentle breakbeats of "Xtal" to the aquatic techno lure of "Tha", the airy rave of "Pulsewidth" to the heartwrenching composition of "Ageispolis", every track is a perennial example of how far ambient techno could reach even back then. It's just that no-one quite had the arm-span of Richard D. James.

Review: The Geins't Nait trio continue to wreak havoc on our charts and disorder in our minds, coming through with a new LP for the excellent Offen Music, home to the likes of Rex Ilusivii, Toresch and Ivan Smagghe's collaboration with Rupert Cross. Make Dogs Sing is an album of euphoria and mystique, offering 13 tracks of ethereal beauty, ranging from the very moody to the unscrupulously wide-eyed. There is a gentle movement amid the drones, however, with scrappy analogue beats weaving their way into a cauldron of cavernous dread, such as "Ciseaux Daddy", a fine piece of electronic tweaking that flows beautifully into the likes of "China" and "Discord", all equally mesmerizing pools of beats and sonic performed with nothing but heart and soul. This is a stand-out for us, and it will surely be an album that stands the test of time. TIP!

Review: Veteran electronic experimentalist, producer and sound engineer Colin Potter began his career at the turn of the '80s, self-releasing cassettes on the ICR label. 'The Where House?', which here gets the Dark Entries reissue treatment, was one of his earliest releases, originally slipping out - unheralded, of course - in 1981. This first ever vinyl edition includes all 13 tracks from the original cassette release - think far-sighted proto-acid, bubbly electronic soundscapes, curiously strange ambient, backwards tape experiments and instrumental minimal wave throb-jobs - plus a quartet of hard-to-find contemporaneous productions that previously featured on various mid '80s tape releases. Like the original album tracks, they're deliciously out-there and thrillingly ahead of their time.

Review: Having spent much of the last decade fiddling around with Teutonic techno and quite clinical ambient sounds, Alex Paterson and Thomas Fehlmann have decided to go back to their roots with an album created in the same collaborative way as early classics Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld and U.F.Orb. For those raised on these early 90s gems, this is an enticing proposition (particularly since old mucker Youth features prominently throughout). There are far more vocal cuts than you might expect, but also plenty of sample-heavy workouts that effortlessly join the dots between dub, hip-hop and ambient. When all involved truly hit the mark - as on "Other Blue Worlds", a kind of sequel to "Blue Room" featuring Jah Wobble - No Sounds Out of Bounds really flies.

Review: The Black Dog kicked off all the way back in 1989, first coming through with their own Black Dog Productions, and later being snapped up by London's Warp Records. Nowadays, the quintet has reduced down to three, the combined forces of Ken Dowie, Martin Dust and Richard Dust. Dust Science, an infamous imprint out of Sheffield, and one which has seen the likes of Cabaret Voltaire all over its catalsogue, has taken it upon itself to release the trio's thirteenth album to date, Black Daisy Wheel. Much like you'd imagine, the LP is a Pandora's Box of sounds, vibes and movement. Through an intricate blend of spaced-out electronics, drone relics, and mild-mannered house chugging, these guys know how to construct and atmosphere, and are certainly well-equipped to form a narrative out of 10+ tracks. If you're on the scout for something deep, meaningful and long-lasting, The Black Dog are your go-to outfit.

Review: The next release on Dream Diary comes from VTR, a hotly-tipped South London duo who merge various strains of electronic music with soul and pop songwriting nous. This debut EP was reportedly co-produced by Afriqua, who have been previously spotted on R&S as well as Dream Diary. "Soul To Skin" opens the EP in a mellow fog of ambient synths and arresting vocals that sound reminiscent of Stevie Nicks. That echo is confirmed on track two, a sultry cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams" that will no doubt draw plenty of attention in the band's direction. "Whisper" taps up a little of James Blake's crooked blue-eyed soul, and watch out for long time tech house producer Inxec popping up to remix "Soul To Skin."

Review: Given the increasing number of shared releases by Jonny Nash and Suzanne Kraft, it was probably inevitable that the pair would eventually join forces in the studio. Predictably, this first collaborative album for Nash's Melody as Truth label is a woozy, intricate and evocative ambient treat. Largely built around plucked notes of Nash's guitar, blissful synthesizer lines and occasional heartfelt piano flourishes, it largely feels like a cross between 1970s ambient material and more contemporary beat-less electronica. In other words, it combines elements familiar from their separate solo project to present something that sums up both artists' approach to ambient composition.

Review: Cristian Subira aka Jasin Kolar/Venessa Milano/Nubian Deli is from Barcelona. As if he didn't work under enough aliases, he's also one and all members of Summer Recreation Camp. He has played in several bands (Coconot, Dead Man On Campus, Gargamel) and released through his label Discos Compulsivos - where throughout the mid noughties he presented experimental work as El Guincho or Teeth Mountain. His new LP entitled Modified Perspectives builds on his decades long experience creating new-age mediative textures and explores the shimmering/ghostly sonic aesthetics of FM synthesis throughout these dozen or so evocative tracks. Will appeal to fans of recent ambient by the likes of Suzanne Kraft and Jonny Nash.

Review: Though now famed as a top-drawer live performer with a string of acclaimed albums to her name, there was a time when Marie Davidson's music was less widely appreciated. In fact, when this eponymous EP first appeared on cassette in 2013, she was pretty much unknown. As you'd expect, it's perhaps a little more lo-fi than some of her more recent work, but that's what makes the EP so appealing. Check, for example, the sleazy vocals, distant drum hits and cascading melodies of creepy opener "Ma Vie Sans Moi", the unsettling lead lines, ricocheting cymbal hits and powerful drone bassline of "L'unique" and the dystopian, high-tempo minimal wave-goes-bleep techno trip that is "Le Lieu Ou Vous Voulez Vous Rendre"; all three remain amongst Davidson's most arresting cuts to date.