Back catalogue: Coldwave/Synth

Review: Remastered and reissued with new a new album cover via the Clone West Coast Series, Adult's 'New Phonies' EP first appeared in 2000 as the duo moniker of Nicola Kuperus and Adam Lee Miller, two legit electro stalwarts. This is a proper snappy electro EP - of the least sympathetic and most coldly calculating kind - evoking the fright of becoming trapped inside an inescapable subliminal-sonic cybernetic feedback loop, with all human faculties thrown to the wayside. 'Hand To Phone', for example, locks us into a communicative-cybernetic stasis, with spitty acid 16ths betraying the mood of becoming affective chasers of electromagnetic signals, unwittingly carrying out the bidding of our new techno-evangelist overlords. The A-sider 'New Object', meanwhile, with its sizzling 808s, transitional fluctuations and hip-hop vocal refrain - "I need you to accommodate my comunication needs" - touches on several layers of objectification at once: sexual, commodification, loss of the ability to speak. Adult truly dealt with adult themes and embraced their recapture into the machine - now you too can own their New Object.

Review: The Advanced Cookbook Of Mr Selig And Kanzler Z was a short-lived experimental jazz act also known as Cookbook. They put out one EP and two albums, with this 12" being taken from the debut. It came in 1989 and German label the Zoo In You initially and has the vocals of Mr Selig on the A-side, and guitar by Wolfgang Bokelmann and words by Dieter Pougin on the flip. An original will cost you more than a night at the pub and even finding samples online can be hard. Rest assured it is future jazz that still sounds futuristic today.

Review: Barcelona's 22Recordings takes a break from the usual electro fare with an intriguing fusion of minimal tech and electro - dare we say, 'minimal mech' - from DJ and producer Anah, the '22247005' EP. Far from a Sophie Ellis-Bextor flip, opener 'Murder On The Dancefloor' narrativises the act of contriving a hitman for hire, with a sinister voice urging as to clarify whether they can indeed be of assistance to the listener. This character accompanies us throughout the four-track journey, which is otherwise constituted of parping yet dark electro-disco sonics and consistently techy 4x4 draws, among which 'Fatality' is the most enticing.

Review: San Francisco's Dark Entries label does a good line in reissuing obscure, long-forgotten, left-of-centre gems (their excellent collection of Patrick Cowley's little-known soundtrack work for gay porn films, School Daze, was arguably one of the compilations of 2013). Here, they've unearthed another overlooked gem - Art Fine's previously rare-as-hen's-teeth dark Italo-disco gem 'Dark Silence'. It's pretty much a straight copy of the New Wave-inclined original, with the sparser, looser 'Long Version' joining the dense 'Art Fine Version'.

Review: Los Angeles-based ASHRR are back with a new cut which comes from their forthcoming Sunshine Low album which they have re-interpreted as their ASHRR Soundsystem alter ego, while System Olympia also steps up with a remix on this fine new package from 20/20 Vision. In the hands of the latter, 'What's Been Turning You' is a remix with plenty of hi-fidelity cosmic details over mid-tempo deep nu-disco drums. The version from ASHRR is a chugging and Italo-tinged classic with loose-limbed and jumbled drum funk and plenty of bright, shiny arps. A great collection then.