CD Album Recommendations March 2016

Review: While he may now be best known for his dusty deep house excursions, Scott "Thatmanmonkz" Moncrief was once primarily known as a maker of off-kilter modern soul under the Small Arms Fiya alias. Interestingly, this debut album for Delusions of Grandeur smoothly combines both of these musical threads with other soulful and jazzy influences, resulting in a set of dancefloor soul that bristles with laidback authenticity. The Sheffield producer is clearly talented, and barely puts a foot wrong throughout Columbising. Whether paying tribute to George Benson style jazz-funk ("Boogie Down"), A Tribe Called Quest ("A Fly New Tune"), disco ("Another Night Under The Glitterball"), and bumpin' jazz-house ("For Bae"), Moncrief always hits the spot.

Review: Prins Thomas doesn't do things by halves. Having recently released another triple-disc mix album - the rather fine Paradise Ghoulash - he's decided to make his latest album a quadruple-vinyl set. Intriguingly, it also sees him set aside "all conventional drums and drum machines" in order to create a series of epic, evocative, slowly evolving ambient pieces. These were seemingly equally as inspired by classic ambient house - think the Orb/Robert Fripp collaboration FFWD, early System 7, and so on - as IDM tracks of the 1990s. Whatever the exact inspiration, each of the 9 tracks is utterly beguiling, and hugely suited to horizontal home listening.

Review: While Moomin may have been one of Smallville's most consistent artists, he's not released that much for the Hamburg imprint in recent times. A Minor Thought is his second full-length, and first since acclaimed 2011 debut The Story About You. Fans of that album will be pleased to discover A Minor Thought picks up where it's predecessor left off, with the producer laying down a series of opaque deep house jams rich with live instrumentation, jazzy samples, delicious musical touches and interesting ideas. Highlights are plentiful, from the loose-limbed grooves, dreamy pads and snaking clarinet lines of "Morning Groove" and effortlessly whimsical "Alone", to the tech-tinged loveliness of "Chemistry" and jazz-flecked bliss of "You Neva Know".

Review: Since making his debut on Nu Urban Music Records way back in 2007, Mikal has established himself as one of drum & bass's most well regarded talents. Hopes are naturally high, then, for this belated debut album. Predictably, it hits hard from the start, with the London-based Swede impressing with the depth, variety and armour-clad toughness of his immaculately programmed rhythms. He expertly combines these punchy breaks with twisted samples, clandestine textures, surging sub-bass and pitched-down ragga vocal samples, in the process delivering a range of tracks that sit somewhere between tech-step, sub-heavy darkness, experimental D&B, and classic Metalheadz material.

Review: In interviews, Alessio Natalazia has freely stated his next album would be "very different" and "very intense". That album, his first for Powell's Diagonal stable, has finally arrived, and it's as ballsy, robust and full-throttle as he promised. While it contains nods to the woozy, shoegaze and ambient influenced soundscapes that have been a feature of his previous full-length excursions, these are well hidden behind clandestine fusions of techno and industrial, surging EBM-influenced workouts, post punk-goes-post rock explorations and atmospheric analogue electronics. For those well versed in his back catalogue, Animals makes for arresting listening. As for newcomers, they'll also find much to enjoy throughout.

Review: Given the number of projects he's been involved with in recent years - the Asphodells, The Woodleigh Research Facility, acting as programmer to various music festivals - it's not that surprising to find that this is Andrew Weatherall's first solo album since the deliciously fuzzy A Pox On The Pioneers in 2009. According to the accompanying PR blurb, it's the sound of Lord Sabre "looking back at the clutter of a life thoroughly lived and realizing it's too late to tidy it up in any meaningful way". Musically speaking, that effectively means an intoxicating blend of post-punk grooves, shoe-gaze style songs, dubbed-out horn lines, drowsy vocals and the kind of druggy electronica explored so successfully on his A Love From Outer Space collaboration with Sean Johnston.

Review: Over the course of the last 15 years, Andy Vaz has long since proved his deep house credentials. Even so, it's still a surprise to find that House Warming, his first full-length for four years, is something of a cracker. More overtly soulful and organic sounding than many of his previous excursions, the album's ten tracks effortlessly blend live instrumentation, vintage analogue hardware, and slick vocals with occasional acid, electro and modern soul references. It's a blend that works wonderfully well, resulting in an album that bristles with attractive melodies, soft-focus dancefloor workouts, and an undeniably breezy vibe. It could well be his best album to date, and that's saying something.

Review: It would be fair to say that Magnus Sheehan has taken his time over Echo To Echo, his long-promised debut album for Full Pupp. Since debuting back in 2006 with the brilliant "Kosmetisk", the Oslo-based producer has delivered sporadic singles that hint at greatness. Echo To Echo is, thankfully, a largely impressive affair, with his trademark spacey, colourful synthesizers taking pride of place throughout. Stylistically, it's perhaps a little more varied than you might expect, frequently veering off his familiar Scandolearic nu-disco course to take in elements of dreamy deep house, tactile techno, IDM, electronica and an obviously icy take on new-wave. Throughout, it remains melodious and evocative, as with much of the best Norwegian electronic music.

Review: Nathan Jenkins has been making decidedly odd strains of music for almost a decade now, gracing the likes of R&S, Honest Jon's and Young Turks in this period. Loop The Loop represents the debut Bullion album proper, with 2011's You Drive Me To Plastic for Young Turks more of a collagist mixtape of musical goodness, and its his most confident statement to date. Stated influences like Can's Holger Czukay, Bebop Deluxe's Bill Nelson, Fred Frith, Devo, and Thomas Dolby are indeed apparent, but with Bullion they manifest themselves in the most subtle of fashions. It can be argued that contemporary music suffers from a blandness and lack of identity, but Loop to Loop shows Bullion has his own voice and style by the bucketloads.

Review: Curiously, Kalipo seems only to release albums. His 2014 debut full-length, Yaruto, appeared out of the blue, as has this confident follow-up. Like that set, Wanderer offers a picturesque, melodious take on electronic music, with Kalipo fusing floor-friendly, soft-focus tech-house rhythms with the home listening-friendly ideals of IDM and leftfield pop. While there are plenty of tracks that will sound weighty over club sound systems - see the tech-trance cheeriness of "Banana Garden", and the oh-so-deep bliss of "Institute of Cottonwool" - it's the album's woozy, meditative properties that most impress. Kalipo is a producer with the gift of melody, and he gleefully uses that to the full.

Review: Proudly pushing their music through Germany's Agogo imprint, the Hidden Jazz Quartett have always released stunning jazz music with a nod to the classics of the past, but with also an inherently modern twist to the sounds, arrangements, and mood. Their latest album, Raw & Cooked, is as smooth as silk, and instantly gets you in a soulful kind of mood with the sultry "High Heels", powered by the deep and luscious vocals of Omar. Tracks like "Tap On The Backdoor" are livelier, feature organs and push the jazz into funk territories, but then there's also plenty of downtempo via cuts such as the mighty "Kimberley Hotel", verging gracefully onto hip hop with the help of Anthony Joseph. All in all, this is the right kinda joint for those looking to get down, and zone out to some stone-cold future soul. Beautiful.

Review: It was way back in 1984 when Greg Broussard donned the now familiar Egyptian Lover alias and laid down his first album of intergalactic electro beats. This album - his first for a decade - sees him in celebratory mood, showcasing a dozen tracks of "off-the-chain" electro laden with exotic, North African and Middle Eastern melodies, booming 808 hits, hustling dancefloor rhythms and warped vocoder vocals. In other words, it's business as usual, which should be music to the ears of all those who appreciate his distinctive brand of throbbing electro futurism. In truth, few electro producers are capable of hitting the spot quite as consistently as Broussard, and 1984 merely emphasizes his legendary status.