14 days

Review: J Rocc steps up for the second and final installment of his Minimal Wave Tapes Edits, once again appearing on weighty vinyl and offering solitude for those DJs out there whose attempts to drop the likes of Ohama and Deux are frustrated by the inherent lack of quantized drum programming. J Rocc's edit of Felix Kubin's "Japan Japan" is a case in point, originally featuring on the recent second volume of The Minimal Wave Tapes, the rolling 4x4 electro groove that filled the opening bars soon mutated rhythmically into bastard vocoder pop. J Rocc wisely extends this opening loop before switching into the madness and then smoothing back into that groove. From here, J Rocc adds some extra weight to the titular elements of Ohama's "The Drum", teases out the inner uneasy primal techno workings of "Who's Really Listening?" from Mark Lane and f*cks about with Deux's "Game & Performance" brilliantly.

Review: Larissa Iceglass and William Maybelline grace our charts, once again, with their painfully cool brand of synth experiments under the Lebanon Hanover alias - one of the few duos to provide us with a truly refreshing blend of cold waves, currently. They return on their favourite Fabrika Records, out of Greece, with Let Them Be Alien, a provocative and multi-skinned album that travels many corners of the electronic sphere. The sounds are proportionately dark and lonesome, but each track is built in its own entity, from the very loose and cerebral to the more percussive and rhythm-laden. The best thing about it the duo's blend of Germanic and British industrialism, making for some veritably post-post-modernist sounds. Wicked.

Review: You might know, or perhaps recognise Survive's music, form the recent, first series of Stranger Things on Netflix. The series was a success thanks to its wonderfully charming plot, but the music throughout its episodes and, particularly on its opening sequence, is what has caught our attention and that of other music fanatics, naturally. The band's style is drenched in an 80s nostalgia that still sounds fiercely new and compelling. Think John Carpenter meets Actress. This new album, RR7349, is everything you could possibly ask for from a synth score, where tracks like "Dirt" or "High Rise" give the genre a sleek and elegant touch. "Wardenclyffe" is another favourite of ours, a magnetic and hummable rhythm, while other, darker pieces like "Sorcerer" emanate a cold yet eye-opening landscape of sounds. This is very warmly recommended, and if you're a fan of peeps like Legowelt, Dopplereffekt, or Actress himself, then this'll undoubtedly suit you nicely.

Review: For those with an interest in the development of electronic music in the late '70s and early '80s, the sporadic synth-wave collections from New York-based Minimal Wave Records have always been essential listening. This latest missive, originally released on a limited vinyl pressing earlier this year, offers another treasure trove of little known and unreleased material from the period. Most pleasingly, it offers a truly global outlook, showcasing music from Japan, the US, UK and the former Yugoslavia. Predictably, there's much to enjoy, from the skewiff vocoder electro of Polaroid and low-end madness of Robert Lawrence to the synth-phonic doodlings of Reserve and new wave strut of Danton's Voice.