Back in stock: Experimental/Electronic

Review: Cate Brooks continues her elegant exploration of imagined geographies with a suite of glacial, slow-blooming compositions that feel suspended between reality and dream. Built by the British musician primarily on Synclavier, Prophet and 808, these pieces evoke the hush and expanse of a far northern landscape with uncanny clarity-despite Brooks never having visited the region that inspired it. Tracks like 'Like Breathing Statues' and 'Aspect from the Window' suggest weather systems forming in slow motion, their textures layered and precise but never clinical. 'In the Blue Hour' moves with a quiet internal rhythm, almost ecclesiastical in tone, while 'Polar Night' closes the journey in dusk-lit stillness. There's something deeply solitary about the whole record-each sound shaped and weighted, but never forced. Brooks's background in synthesis lends a tactile, handmade feel to every element, creating something less like a travelogue and more like a lucid dream of place.

Review: Some four years after Swims brought the work of Dan Snaith to the attention of a whole new audience, the London-based Canadian artist returns with a sixth Caribou album entitled Our Love. Staunch followers of Caribou will know that Snaith tends to adopt different sonic approaches with every long player (compare the psychedelia of Up In Flames with the more spaced out Andorra) but this latest album feels like a natural development of the club influenced sounds of Swims. City Slang call it Snaith's most soulful set yet, and that's certainly helped by the presence of compatriot Jessy Lanza, and like all Caribou albums there is something new that appeals with every listen.

Review: Canadian artist Caribou's much-adored album 'Our Love' hears a reissue, harkening back to a time still occupying vaguely recent memory in which festival summers from the mid-to-late 2010s were dominated by Dan Snaith's band-backed productions and innocent croons. Explosive at the time of its release, hits such as 'Can't Do Without U', 'All I Ever Need' and 'Dive' are now veritably etched into the public consciousness, and it all comes down to Snaith's spelt-out use of soul vocal samples and cleverly warm house production.

Review: Suzanne Ciani's pioneering Buchla synthesiser performances, now available on vinyl from Finders Keepers Records, represent a monumental collective moment in music history. Captured at a New York art gallery 50 years ago, this release finally brings Ciani's groundbreaking work to a global audience. As an archival project of 'art music', it redefines musical history and challenges our understanding of music technology. Ciani's Buchla Concert records aren't just gamechangers; they symbolise a musical revolution and an artistic revelation. They serve as a benchmark in the evolution of synthesiser music and highlight Ciani's role as a pioneering force in a male-dominated field. This sonic installation, along with her WBAI/Phill Niblock 1975 sessions, marks a triumphant moment in the synthesiser space race, showcasing the untold story of the first woman to explore these new musical frontiers. The album captures a genuine live act experimenting with the Buchla, a fully performable music instrument, during a time when such performances were groundbreaking. Had these recordings been released alongside those of Morton Subotnick, Walter Carlos, or Tomita, Ciani's influence would have already been recognised for its radical impact on the shape and sound of electronic music. With this release, Finders Keepers illuminates Ciani's legacy, celebrating a visionary artist whose work has remained in the shadows for too long.

Review: This clear vinyl edition offers a new window into Coil's final evolutionary phaseibased in Weston-super-Mare during the early 2000s, their output here feels tighter and more tactile than ever. What began as a limited CD-R release during the 2004 "Even an Evil Fatigue" live series was ultimately completed in 2006 by Peter Christopherson and Danny Hyde after Jhonn Balance's death, turning what was once described as an "album-in-progress" into a posthumous masterwork. Unlike Coil's early abstract work, this material pulses with live-band energy and digital precision. 'Sex With Sun Ra (Part One - Saturnalia)' slinks through throbbing synths and sci-fi mysticism, while its sequel, 'Part Two - Sigillaricia', filters York's pipes through glitching software landscapes. Thighpaulsandra's signature synthesis courses through 'The Wraiths And Strays Of Paris', now reborn from live tapes, while 'Teenage Lightning (10th Birthday Version)' spins its ritualistic rhythm into something surprisingly euphoric. The clear pressing suits this materialitransparent, crackling with ghosts, and shimmering with light. It's Coil at their most direct and perhaps most emotionally affecting: a group confronting mortality and rebirth through sound, retooling their vision with software, breath, and loss.

Review: More than four decades after he first appeared in smudged eyeliner and a mop of jet-black hair, Robert Smith is still finding new ways to pull his music apart and stitch it back together. This new remix collection i assembled and curated by Smith himself i feels less like a victory lap and more like a restless dissection of a legacy he's still actively shaping. The collaborators here are hardly incidental: Four Tet, Orbital, Ame, Chino Moreno, Mura Masa, Trentemoller, Mogwai. It reads like a list built by someone still hungrily tuned into the present, not stuck in the past. And true to form, the results are all over the place i a feature, not a flaw. Some tracks lean into grandeur: Paul Oakenfold's take on 'I Can Never Say Goodbye' opens with all the sweeping melodrama you'd expect, while Daybreakers stretch 'WarSong' into widescreen synthwork. Elsewhere, Shanti Celeste and Ex-Easter Island Head bring a strange intimacy to 'Alone', teasing out its ache with a different kind of spaciousness. At times, you wonder if Smith enjoys seeing how far his work can be bent before it breaks. But it never does i even filtered through others' hands, his sense of tension, drama and deep emotional unease holds everything together.

Review: 25 years on from its original 1996 release, Neil Ollivierra's debut album as the Detroit Escalator Company gets a reissue. Emerging like a phoenix from Detroit's early dance music scene, 'Soundtrack [313]' deals in the rawer end of atmospheric, arpreggiated techno, each track taking on a different facet of the same shapeshifting platonic form. Enthusiastic panning and crystalline plucks adorn each mix here, re-evoking the same refractive, ascendant image we had of this album in 1996.

Review: Portraits GRM offer a split release between Beatrice Dillon and Hideki Umezawa, riffing on 'basho' and Baschet respectively. Dillon's 'Basho' is shaped on the mortar of a Japanese philosophical concept: conceived by Japanese philosopher Kitaro Nishida, basho describes a post-physical plane in which experiences and thoughts interconnect, dissolving subject-object distinctions. Dillon and Umezawa's music both resist fixity, reactivating the listener's attention by way electronic sounds stripped of origin. Umezawa's 'Still Forms', however, contrasts Dillon's firm-footed techno curtails with an entirely beatless piece, exploring the sonic potential of Baschet sound structures: experimental instruments developed in the 1950s by Bernard and Francois Baschet. Electroacoustic cognitions branch out like newly grown synapses on this fresh 12".

Review: Piscolabis II continues the sonic journey of its predecessor, Piscolabis I, by blending organic and robotic elements with Golden Bug's signature experimental style. The ten new tracks on this volume are even more adventurous and offer heavy rhythms with razor-sharp guitars from Lionel and distorted grooves driven by drum machines. Opener 'Paradis' is an epic choral track that sets the tone for the slow, raw, and hypnotic sounds that follow. Highlights include 'Red Wolf' featuring Phoebe Coco, the stiff rhythmic mechanics of 'Ricochet' and the psychedelic 'Hi No Tori' with Japanese guest Vega Voga. This is an album rich in sensory sounds that leave you listening in awe.

Review: Veteran Swiss born producer Kay Zee (Patrick Hollenstein) and the EP The Whole Shebang is released on Zurich based label Phantom Island. If you are looking for unique electronic music, then look no further than this little slice of wax that is limited to 20 copies. We really like the unique sound in 'Le Reve' with the experimental rhythm that combines dub and electro into a odd but slamming frenzy. Not to be outdone is the quirky electro of 'Strange Side Effects' or the catchy downtempo strangeness that is 'Inglisch'. 'Razor Sharp Boogie' covers the entire B-side with a cool, retro sounding jam. All and all, you have a very special 12" that sounds unlike anything out there. In this day in age, that is very special indeed.

Review: Muslimgauze's Intifaxa has previously only been released on CD and is one of a series of four double albums on the cult Australian label Extreme Music. It's another sublime example of the late experimental artist's ability to blend electronic beats and Middle Eastern influences into a unique fusion of sound that is part underground house and part psychedelic trance music. Released posthumously, the album transports listeners into a world of hypnotic rhythms, intricate percussion, and haunting melodies. The tracks are awash with modulated field recordings and tribal grooves that make for a transcendental and immersive listen all while showcasing Muslimgauze's vision and innovative approach to production.

Review: Huffin' Rag Blues by Nurse With Wound is a highly unique the Steven Stapleton discography, and that really is saying something since it really can be quite hard to stand out if you're an album shaped by his hand. Originally released as a three-sided LP, this expanded edition now features all four audio sides for the first time; a chaotic fusion of exotica, lounge, blues, jazz, and more, created by Stapleton with collaborator Andrew Liles, this one verges on the lighter side of eerie, confusing elements of Dadaism and narrative waltz, and echoing variety entertainments of the 40s and 50s. Longtime friends Colin Potter and Matt Waldron add to the surreality, resulting in a delightful mess of surreal, dynamic tension full of humorous asides and suggestive epithets. Setting itself apart with more live instrumentation and vocals than typical NWW releases, Huffin' Rag Blues is a world of comparative eccentricity; it might happily alienate those avant-garde purists who prefer things dimmed a little more dark ambient.

Review: Constellation Tatsu has been mad busy of late with a great series of tapes dropping at the start of 2023. Next up is Strategy aka Portlander Paul Dickow with his new album Graffiti In Space, which is perfectly titled. If finds him making a widescreen and wide-eyed exploration of dub techno's outermost galaxies. He foments a unique style all his own with the empty iciness of 'Remote Dub', the frosted-over darkness of 'Fountain Of Youth' and watery liquid dub of 'Daydream Space Graffiti'. Things get psychedelic on 'Message From Ouroboros', more playful and bubbly on 'In Space No One Can See You Your Screen' and uplifting on 'Surface Worlds.' A fine record.