Juno Recommends Leftfield March 2019

Review: Don't let the "Coldwave" tag fool you: this EP from Dutch archival imprint Music From Memory is every bit as glassy-eyed and loved-up as the rest of their left-of-centre, Balearic-minded catalogue. German drummer and composer Curt Cress first released "Dschung Tek" in 1992, layering his own dense tribal drums across a tropical, ambient house and dream house influenced backing track on the brilliant "Long Version", before stripping it back to a loved-up, Ibiza-friendly house cut on the "No Live Drums" version. Both mixes can be found on this reissue, alongside a trio of similarly percussive, tropical-minded cuts from the artist's 1983 LP, "Avanti". All three are ace and almost as good as the more floor-focused title track.

Review: Karen O and Danger Mouse are both serial collaborators, so when this joint album was announced we weren't all that surprised. Even so, we never thought the resultant set would be quite as good as this. Atmospheric, rich and full of songs that variously touch on sweeping cinematic soundtracks, driving Motown soul, fuzzy funk-rock, vintage trip-hop and hazy electronica, "Lux Prima" manages to showcase the best of both artists' talents while refusing to settle on one neatly defined sound. The set's dizzying highs - particularly the near 10-minute title track - are almost breathtakingly good, and there's enough jaunty moments to offset the heart-aching melancholy and emotional pain that's barely concealed throughout.

Review: Few records could sound better suited to Emotional Rescue's reissue remit than soft rock / synth pop artists turned sound healers Chris Spheeris and Paul Voudouris. "Passage" was a commission by a company doing biofeedback therapy who wanted a soundtrack for their clients' treatment, resulting in a gem of early American ambient music. Originally released in 1982 and now lovingly restored, artwork and all, Spheeris and Voudouris' three lengthy compositions are as soothing as the remit demanded. Whatever your internal ails, there's restorative qualities in these pieces that can't help but do good, even as a pure pleasure trip to let yourself melt into.

Review: Many should already know Codek's "Tam Tam" (sometimes known as "Tim Toum"), a peerless Afro-cosmic classic from 1981 that fused minimalist tribal drums with spaced-out female vocals and sparse, intergalactic electronics. Here it gets the remix treatment for the very first time. Fittingly, it's cosmic disco stalwarts Daniele Baldelli and Marco Dionigi who kick things off with two tasty interpretations: a percussive and hypnotic take that successfully throws some acid-funk guitars into the mix ("Remix A"), and a more spacey, synth-laden affair rich in analogue electronics ("Remix B"). Over on side B, New York duo Whatever/Whatever re-imagine it as a fuzzy slab of coldwave/house fusion, before offering up an extended, club-ready re-edit of the original version.

Review: Given the rise in popularity in new school jazz in recent years, it seems a fitting time to welcome back Ninja Tune stalwarts The Cinematic Orchestra. "To Believe" is not only their first album in some seven years, but also one of their strongest releases to date. Opening with the poignant neo-classical/soul fusion "To Believe", the set sees Jason Swinscoe and company attractively saunter between jazz-electronica fusion (Roots Manuva collaboration ("A Caged Bird/Imitations Of Life"), pastoral jazz epics (the sunset ready epic that is "Lessons"), gentle downtempo songs ("Wait For Now/Leave The World"), ambient jazz ("The Workers Of Art") and slowly unfurling dancefloor workouts (killer closing cut "A Promise"). In a word: stunning.

Review: Five years ago, Portishead front woman Beth Gibbons joined forces with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra to perform Henryk Gorecki's "Symphony Number 3 (Symphony Of Sorrowful Songs)" at the National Opera Grand Theatre in Warsaw. Here, the recording of the concert is finally given a release. It's a stunning suite of classical pieces, with the orchestra making short work of Gorecki's swelling movements and deeply melancholic musical motifs. Gibbons is in particularly fine form, transforming herself into an operatic artist and accurately delivers the stunning, Polish-language pieces. It's an astonishing performance and nothing like we've ever heard from her before. The 24-minute opening track is, in particular, breathtaking.

Review: Gravity Graffiti present more mesmerising sounds from far-flung reaches, this time showcasing the music of debutant Thai producer Anurak Boonliang. According to the label, Boonliang is steeped in classical Thai music training, and now applies his background to drum computers and synthesisers. The results are astounding, characterized by nimble melodic and percussive programming that moves between regimented rhythmic shapes and more free-flowing patterns with grace and elegance. "Reality" brings Boonliang's roots into focus with a field recording of what we assume is a traditional Pi Phat musical ensemble. If you're in the mood for fresh electronics unbound by the familiar structures embedded in Western culture, look no further.

Review: After marking International Women's Day 2018 with a self-released charity compilation featuring tracks from female artists, producers and musicians, NTS Radio DJ Kristina McCormick has teamed up with JD Twitch's Optimo Music to put out a follow-up. As with its predecessor, all profits from sales of "Weaponise Your Sound" will go to equitable housing charity Focus E15. Happily, highlights are plentiful throughout, from the bubbly cold wave hypnotism of Fantastic Twins' "Frozen Dreams In Candy Paradise" and the lo-fi Middle Eastern electro-exoticism of Maral's "Ey Nazanin", to the ghostly ambient of Penelope Trappes, the horror chug of Marika Underspreche and the music concrete madness of Odete's "Folklore Collage".

Review: Second time around for "Lady Maid", a sought after set of minimalist new wave experiments and eccentric electronic collages that was initially released in 1981 on Agi Yuzuru's DIY label Vanity Records. The album was the work of a trio Japanese DIY musicians who were apparently obsessed by speak-and-spell vocals - check the clonking, Kraftwerk-inspired weirdness of "You Are Busy, I am Easy" and smooth, hypnotic "MUSIC" - bubbly drum machine rhythms (the trippy "KE-300") and the kind of abstract weird-outs that recall the halcyon days of Music Concrete. The album's greatest calling card is epic flipside "Fragment", a near 20-minute minimalist synthesizer soundscape that's little less than stunning.

Review: Last year, Dark Entries reissued Lena Platonos' 1986 album "Lepidoptera", a beautiful, minimalistic set forged out of picturesque piano motifs and the composer's own surrealist Greek poetry. Now the lauded San Francisco label presents a quartet of new reworks of tracks from that album. There's a more dancefloor-centric feel throughout, with the standout revisions - in our eyes at least - coming from Anatolian Weapons, whose take on "Cyaniris" is a throbbing, dark synth-pop treat, and Pasiphae. Her version of "Araschnia Levana" brilliantly re-casts the track as a heavy, all-action dark electro workout tailor made for dark basements in The Hague.

Review: Since releasing their first EP on Type back in 2004, Deaf Center duo Erik K Skodvin and Otto A Totland have delivered some of the most mesmerizing and well thought-out ambient, IDM and electronica around. "Low Distance" - here presented in limited-edition form complete with a hand numbered insert - builds on the success of 2014 set "Recount", which cleverly combined clandestine neo-classical movements with the claustrophobic paranoia of dark ambient. There's perhaps a little more joy and pure beauty this time round - see the fluid pianos and whistling chords of "Entity Voice" and the becalmed "Undone" - but album still retains the same sense of loneliness and dread that marked out its predecessor.

Review: More split action from STROOM, a label that has delivered some killer reissues of late. Heading up this double-feature is Icelandic producer Isar Logi Arnarsson AKA Cold, who offers us another chance to savour his 1995 Berlin Love Parade anthem "Strobe Light Network" - a 15-minute deep techno epic that boasts a lengthy ambient introduction, hushed and hypnotic grooves, undulating electronic motifs, ghostly chords and glacial, rush-inducing lead lines. Over on the flip, James Bernard takes over. "Lapis Lazuli" first surfaced on his 1997 album "Symphony For A Biomechanical Breakdown" and 22 years on it has lost none of its ghostly, otherworldly charms. A chunk of ultra-deep ambient rich in creepy melodies and psychedelic acid lines, it makes a near perfect B-side to Arnarsson's peerless classic.

Review: Since it first appeared in 1998, Ryuichi Sakamoto's sparse and minimal "BTTB" album has been released a number of times, each with a slightly different track listing. This 20th anniversary edition aims to set the record straight, gathering together all 18 tracks that have appeared on the various versions out there on one superb "director's cut" style release. The majority of the set is built around Sakamoto's Erik Satie style solo piano compositions, but there are notable diversions in which his experimental past and present comes through loud and clear. These include the delay-laden mouth harp motifs of "Do Bacteria Sleep?", the spaced-out ambient of "Prelude", reverb-heavy metallic percussion of "Sonata", the music concrete of "Uetax" and a killer piano cover of his old Yellow Magic Orchestra cut "Tong Poo".

Review: The latest full-length excursion from William Basinski has its roots in a 2017 Berlin exhibition that the long-serving experimental composer was invited to contribute to. Basinski created music for two installations, making extensive use of recordings of two distant black holes captured using the interferometers of LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory). Of the two tracks on show, it's the epic title track that hits home hardest. It's a 40 minute ambient epic of intergalactic proportions, with Basinski offering up slowly-shifting, ice cold chords, crackling aural textures and occasional bursts of distant activity. The track that follows is a little warmer and undeniably drowsy, with Basinski utilizing manipulated neo-classical movements to create an intoxicating ambient mood.

Review: Orkney-born Erland Cooper is probably best known for his starring role in long running folk rock bands Erland and the Carnival and The Magnetic North. Solan Goose marks his debut as a solo artist and it's a little different to what you might expect. It combines contemporary, ambient style electronics and beguiling, Nils Frahm style piano figures with neo-classical style movements, epic, cinematic style compositions and pieces rich in operatic style female vocals. It sounds like the soundtrack to a particularly evocative film about the Orkney Islands, and that's no bad thing; certainly, it's a very impressive and immaculately produced piece of work.

Review: HVOB's fourth full length, "Rocco", is undoubtedly the Viennese duo's most expansive and ambitious work to date. It's a conceptual work, with the two LP set's 13 tracks being linked by "connected narratives" that explore "letting go, farewells and new beginnings". While there's a weightiness to the concept, the resultant music is surprisingly diverse, with the duo offering up both all-out dancefloor moments and more reflective home-listening fare that's in turn cheerily positive, introspectively melancholic and wholeheartedly poignant. Highlights include the piano-laden downtempo bliss of "2nd World", a swirling vocal number that increases in intensity as the track progresses - the breakbeat-driven, wall-of-sound sparkle of "Bloom" and the drowsy, heart-aching tech-house-pop of recent single "Panama".