Juno Recommends Leftfield September 2021

Review: After doing the rounds for years as a bootleg CD, Depeche Mode's Live in Basel 1984 is finally getting a release on vinyl. For fans of the legendary Essex band, or merely those with an in interest in early new-wave synth-pop, the album should be an essential purchase. The quality of the recording itself is rather good (something of a surprise given its age and the fact that it would have most likely been recorded to tape), while the band's performance is superb. It's basically a celebration of the Mode at their early synth-sporting best, teasing and titillating an enthusiastic Swiss crowd. Musically, we get a mix of cult favourites, early album tracks and now iconic singles such as 'New Life' and 'Just Can't Get Enough'. Ace.

Review: Of Wave Variations, British producer Dennis Huddleston aka 36 has said that ocean tides inspired his latest album for Indianapolis-based Past Inside The Present. Recalling the sense of longing and wonder when standing on a beach, while staring past the waves and into the endless horizon, he feels the album is one of the most minimal records he has ever made, as he had far less sound sources at his disposal. Huddleston intentionally created the tracks around the three minute mark, as he feels that a lot of ambient creations are unnecessarily long (we agree!) and as the label most succinctly put it 'take you straight to Elysium and then dissolve into the ether.' The moods throughout the album are quite varied, moving from sanguine, melodic affairs, into intoxicating shoegaze-ish soundscapes, haunting and introspective drones and film score-like cues.

Review: REPRESS: Given the respective outputs of committed ambient explorers and sound designers Zake (best known for releasing no less than five fine albums in 2019) and 36 (most recently seen on A Strangely Isolated Place with the superb album "Fade To Grey"), you'd expect this trip into aural deep space to be rather good. It is of course, with the four tracks mixing echoing sonic tones and drifting sound effects with slow-burn electronic melodies and the kind of immersive, sustained chords that were once the preserve of German maestro Pete Namlook. The third track in the suite, appropriately titled "Stage 3", is little less than stunning, in part because of its grandiose, almost classical intent.

Review: Founding member of Depeche Mode and celebrated singer songwriter in his own right, Martin Gore's The Third Chimpanzee EP is up there with some of the best solo work he has ever put out, with a particularly unique type of dance-synth vibe that you can't escape from no matter how hard you try. Now we have the remixes, which have a lot to live up to but come with plenty of promise.

After all, the chosen producers involved are all heavyweights in their own right, and were certainly ready to step up to the mantle here. Opening with a pair of tracks made different by two of Brazil's most revered techno heads - ANNA and Wehbba - from there we get Berghain bass experimentalist Barker, the fury of Rrose, and percussive wonder of JLin, and that's before we come to the likes of Chris Liebing and Kangding Ray.

Review: Poetic Hovering Synth Tinkerer.

Review: Dennis Huddleston's most recent album as 36, Wave Variations, promptly sold out in double-quick time upon its release in the summer of 2020. Because of this, The Past Inside The Present has decided to reissue it. If you missed out first time round, we'd recommend giving it a listen. It's a tighter and more focused album than some of Huddleston's sprawling epics, with most of the heavily melodic tracks clocking in around three minutes. He also composed them in sequence to guarantee a gently unfurling and flowing album, while his decision to rely on a relatively small palette of synthesizer sounds adds an extra layer of coherence. Basically, it's a wonderfully evocative, emotive and quietly tuneful set that we'd consider one of the best ambient works of recent years.

Review: If you've seen Scott Pilgrim Vs The World two things will likely be clear already. Firstly, they really don't make many high school-cum-coming-of-age movies like they used to. And, secondly, no matter what you thought of the narrative or performances, the soundtrack absolutely bangs and is worth owning in its own right. Something many movies from the glory days of teen angst on screen rarely managed.

Then again, when you enlist Nigel Godrich to take control of the score you should have pretty high hopes. The English rock producer, arguably best known for Radiohead's output from OK Computer to now, really does know what works well. And so here we are, hand-delivered a heady mixture of punk, alternative rock, glam and barroom guitar business from the likes of The Bluetones, T-Rex, Sex Bom Omb and Black Lips.

Review: This year's Record Store Day is a big one for fans of the one and only Elvis Presley. LMLR France have put together a full reissue of Elvis' original soundtrack from the 1961 movie G.I. Blues aka Cafe Europa En Uniforme in France. This is a double album packed with alternative versions of tunes that have mostly never been on vinyl before. Only 1500 have been pressed and the new takes on the well known classics like 'Blue Suede Shoes' and 'What's She Really Like' have never sounded better.

Review: Exiles might be one of the most powerful and beautiful albums you'll hear all month, or maybe throughout 2021. It's Max Richter doing what he does best, channeling feelings from instruments and conjuring a kaleidoscope of vivid images in the process. In this case he's helped along no end by conductor Kristjan Jarvi and the Baltic Sea Philharmonic, with the finished product recorded in Tallinn, Estonia, and a contemporary classical masterpiece worthy of any record collection.

Richter's die hard fans will recognise some of his early works here, re-read and re-treated by the full orchestra. But then part of this album is also the soundtrack to Sol Leon & Paul Lightfoot's ballet, 'Singuliere Odyssee', a particularly mesmerising score that stands up with or without the associated performance. Dive in, then, and prepare to be overwhelmed.

Review: Moritz Von Oswald has always chosen his collaborators carefully, regularly changing the line-up of his "Trio" - a live performance-focused attempt to blur the boundaries between jazz and his trademark brand of deep, spaced out and hypnotic electronic music. On Dissent, the first MVO Trio album since 2015, the German veteran has been joined by Lauren Halo (an acclaimed electronic artist in her own right of course) and jazz drummer Heinrich. Musically, it's a typically hazy and immersive affair, with meandering electric piano motifs, echoing electronic textures and uneasy synthesizer chords rising above weighty, sub-heavy grooves that add a dash of jazz and Latin swing to Von Oswald's trademark dub techno sound.

Review: With the literal translation of this album title being Retiring to the Forest, the third stage of the Varnashrama system of Hinduism, you should probably be able to guess where Alex Smalley - AKA Olan Mill, AKA Ilm - is coming from. It feels almost like you step into Vanaprastha in the same way you would a world unto itself. Through the wormhole, down the rabbit hole we go. Fear not, though, what's waiting for us is really rather nice.

Understatement of the century, this is ambient at its organic and most endearing, painting textured tapestries of sound that float on a soft and inviting mood. It's hard not to feel yourself sinking ever-deeper into the refrains, which themselves are pure melodic bliss without necessarily presenting themselves as such in any obvious way.

Review: According to the artist himself, zake's first solo album of 2020 was recorded and produced during "a four-day excursion in several secluded areas" in South Carolina. As a result, listeners can expect to hear babbling brooks, birdsong and the gentle rustling of leaves beneath Zake's alluring mixture of enveloping ambient chords, unearthly drone tones, opaque electronics and slowly-shifting, heavily processed neo-classical movements. The results are hugely immersive and undeniably enjoyable, with each of the four tracks delivering a head-in-the-clouds journey that ripples with becalmed, atmospheric intent. In other words, it's the kind of ambient music you can get lost in. More please!

Review: Kraftwerk has made many terrific albums over the years, but we'd argue few better than 1981's Computerwelt (or, as we'd say in English, Computer World). Hugely influential on the emerging hip-hop scene in New York City - many now standard electro rhythms are based on those found on the album - and Detroit's techno pioneers, the album offers the right balance of far-sighted futurism, melodic brilliance and synth-pop style accessibility. It's an album that should be in everyone's collection, with this translucent yellow vinyl edition being particularly alluring. It boasts warm, heavy remastered sound and is presented in the original German form rather than the more familiar international edition with English lyrics.

Review: Tomoko Sauvage and Francesco Cavaliere's new collaborative album Viridescens is as aquatic and luminous as ambient music gets. It is packed with hypnotic and mesmerising alchemical sounds made from porcelain bowls, water sounds and an array of hydrophones. Despite its quiet, contemplative nature it is hugely absorbing. Otherworldly yet very real and organic, the drawn-out arrangements carefully and slowly unfold with real narrative and allow the design and craft of each sound to really resonate. The 9 minute 'Twin Emerald Dolphins' is a real highlight.

Review: Nickodemus' 2005 debut album Endangered Species makes it not to vinyl for the first time ever here thanks to Wonderwheel Recordings. The album is rooted in the New York hip hop sound of 2005 with plenty of mad turntable skills of the sort that the DJ would showcase at parties on the Hudson. The music serves as a great snapshot of what was going on in the scnee back then, 16 years ago, and features a big list of great guests including the likes of Jay Rodriguez and Jonathan Maron of the Groove Collective, plus Carol C of Si Se, Will Holland aka Quantic) and Stimulus of The Real Live Show amongst many more.

Review: Den Osynliga Manteln is Swedish for The Invisible Cloak, an item of clothing that neither conceals the wearer from others nor can be seen itself. Perhaps a Nordic take on The Emperor's New Clothes, it's also rooted in science fiction and fantasy, as much part of folklore as it is dreams of future technology. And it's a fitting name for this project, born from the embers of the band KLANG.

Ola Sandberg and Fredrik Gronvall are the survivors in question, and here offer a playful take on sounds that are at once quite old school downtempo - strong nods to the likes of His Name Is Alive, early-Cinematic Orchestra, and King of Woolworths - with one eye on the path less trodden that lies ahead. Tracks that take you with them on an instrumental journey as they unfold and unfurl, we challenge you to find someone who can't get onboard.

Review: Bass Cleff lists the likes of Butoh, Lone Swordsmen and Acid Rain, as an inspiration on this album. He also says it has "Tubby-esque trap-doors" but what it doesn't have is the saw raw drum energy as many of his most searing 12s. This is a more meditative album, a study in ambient sound design and slow and suggestive rhythm. Tracks like 'A Glow On A Foe' get you in a trance with their pixelated keys and rich layers of pads. 'For Arthur At The Kitchen' is a DIY dub with tin-pot percussion and starry-eyed keys. 'Scintillater' feels like an ancient ritual and a futuristic vision. It all adds up to a sensational record.

Review: Monolake's 'Gobi' is a cult classic that has never actually be available on vinyl before. It was first put out on CD only in 1999 but now Astral Industries present it on wax, licensed from Imbalance Computer Music.It features just two long pieces that are "set to the backdrop of the Gobi desert in eastern Asia." The music captures that milieu with synths skittering over the moonlit dunes, murmuring tectonic plates down low and vivid textures and masterful minimalism all taking your mind on a real trip.

Review: RECOMMENDED
"Music for watching waves; music infused sharply with crushed ants and Eucalyptus; like climbing into one of those gaping holes in a big Mountain Ash that a possum has inhabited with a collection of mid-century synths." So says the official write up for Angophora's Together, the Australian duo's second LP that takes a lead from the first and then steps out on a path of its own. These are positive moods, made for good days with great people, and no drama.

It's the sound of the spectacular accommodation you stumbled upon after a sweaty trek through tropical landscapes, the perfect refuge at just the right time. While ambient is the technical term, this is more an adventure in multi-instrumentation. Acoustic guitars, pianos, soft percussion and swooning synths make up the majority of what's here, but rather than look to focus on 'a vibe', the tracks are very much whole in the traditional sense of structure.

Review: When considering who should write the score for Minimata, his film about war photographer W. Eugene Smith, Andrew Levitas had one man in mind: Japanese great Ryuichi Sakamoto. Happily, Sakamoto said yes, and the subsequent soundtrack - presented here to coincide with the film's release - proves why Levitas was so keen on getting him involved. Ethereal, emotive and immersive, Sakamoto's compositions are little less than breath-taking. Comprising a mixture of gentle piano pieces, sweeping orchestrated movements, meditative ambient pieces and woozy, slow-burn epics, it's one of the most impressive soundtracks Sakomoto has composed in recent years. Simply stunning.

Review: Four years ago, Dark Entries successfully dipped into the back catalogue of late '80s experimentalists From Nursery to Misery, an Essex-based trio comprised of Basildon producer Lee Stevens and identical twins Gina and Tina Fear. Tree Spirits is the follow-up to that release and dives deeper into their mostly cassette-based catalogue to further explore the band's unique sound. There's much to admire throughout, from the sparse, throbbing industrial pop of 'Cry Me' and the crystalline new wave of 'Poison', to the sparkling electronic beauty of 'Gallop Along' and the deep space, sci-fi soundscapes of LP highlight 'Aeroplanes'.

Review: Somewhat surprisingly, Beliefsystems marks the first musical collaboration between Past Inside The Present co-founders Zake and Isaac Helsen. It's undeniably an album worth waiting for though, with the three meditative, enveloping tracks offering a perfect blend of the Zake's droning, densely layered "drone-scapes" and Helsen's glistening and fluid processed guitar sounds. For proof, check 19-minute opener 'Northern Cross', where starry, slow-burn electronics, distant guitars and yearning, unfurling melodies gently ebb and flow across the sound space, and the becalmed, field recording-sporting haziness of 'Knowledge Rooms Parts I & II'. In a word: sublime..

Review: Jade is sold as a response to Pan Daijing's previous outings - and by that they mean intense, tense movements that make you feel something is impending, but we're never quite sure what. Dark, surreal, and often unnerving sonic places that seem to be completely removed from time itself. Elements are clearly born from electronic techniques, but often the atmospheres involved feel archaic, born in ages when demons were not to be trifled with.

The artist has certainly put a lot into the recording, crafting tracks that do away with traditional structures and introduce layers of drone, vocals and strange percussive accents, the combination of which makes for an almost spiritual experience, the kind of work that conjures images of flames dancing off stone walls, strobe lights disorientating in the thick darkness, and alien messages. If that's not too abstract a list to content with.