Back in stock: Leftfield

Review: Three years after delivering a stunning debut album that cemented their position as this century's finest fusionists of Middle Eastern music and analogue electronic music, Acid Arab return with a sophomore set that's every bit as impressive. The basic ingredients remain the same - think Arabic vocals, instrumentation and percussion mixed with heavy drum machine rhythms, raw electronics and mind-altering TB-303 motifs - though the resultant tracks arguably draw on a wider range of electronic music influences. So as well as nods towards acid house and techno, the album also contains throbbing, dancefloor-centric workouts informed by EBM, Italo-disco, new wave, synth-pop and industrial. It's a subtle switch-up, but one wholly in keeping with the French quartet's distinctive vision.

Review: Arv & Miljo's new album delves into radical environmental activism and draws from the Swedish Plogbill movement's early 90s actions alongside Earth First! and Earth Liberation Front. Mixing monologues, interviews, protest songs, and site recordings with raw kosmische synth music, the pair crafts a mesmerising audio collage. Chaotic yet harmonious, disorienting yet soothing, the album reflects dedication, passion, and the spirit of change. Originally a limited CDR release in 2021, it quickly became a highlight in Arv & Miljo's discography. Now on, Jorden Forst offers a multi-faceted journey through environmental activism and the human spirit's resilience.

Review: British experimental band Coil remain hardcore favourites for record collections of a certain age. They were on fire in the late eighties and early nineties and often switched it up from one album to another. Following on from the release of new editions of Love's Secret Domain and Musick To Play In The Dark 2 comes this trifold edition of The New Backwards, which was initially conceived in 2007. It is an extended edition that revisits a number of tracks that didn't fit with the band's first posthumous release Ape of Naples from 2005, and features plenty of chaotic rhythms and outrageous grooves that all have their own unique flow and atmosphere.

Review: Much loved doom monger emo kids Depeche Mode have always been ripe for remixing by new generations of electronic music artists and so it is that there 'My Favourite Stranger' gets a series of re-rubs here on Columbia. Tech house mainstay Boris Brejcha remixes first and elongates the grooves with mournful pads up top. The Ela Minus remix of the same tune brings some extra textured and darker moods and the best is saved till the last if you ask us. The Lond Island Sound remix is high speed and tinged with electro synth work as the moody vocals echo about the mix to trippy effect.

Review: Einsturzende Neubauten's description by label Potomoak - as a band that constantly evolves - is accurate enough. Over forty years on from their debut album Kollaps in 1981, Rampen appears as the latest and most unruly incarnation of their sound yet. Here, Blixa Bargeld, N. U. Unruh, Alexander Hacke, Jochen Arbeit, Rudolph Moser and Felix Gebhard present their least predictable and conventional sides: APM is described as alien pop music; the songs therein have been specially crafted not only for our universe but for every adjacent parallel universe to ours, with every slight multiversal variation in humanity's collective tastes held firmly in mind. The album fully lives up to its billing as anti-pop as alien pop, its challenging twists and turns fully sating the difficult whims of society's outcasts and cosmic punks.

Review: Industrial music formed amidst the concrete decay of post-war Berlin, Einsturzende Neubauten emerged as pioneers of genre. Their sonic alchemy fuses unconventional instruments crafted from scrap metal and construction tools with traditional ones, creating a raw and unsettling symphony. Their new double album "Rampen (APM: Alien Pop Music)" showcases their sonic prowess. Despite the abrasiveness of their sound, the group's music is imbued with a sense of theatricality. Blixa Bargeld's stoic vocals narrate surreal tales of urban decay and existential unease, while the band's live performances evoke industrial rituals. Over the years, the band's music has evolved, incorporating elements of ambient and even pop into their sound. Yet, their core ethos remains intact: to challenge musical boundaries and create a sonic tapestry that reflects the harsh realities of the modern world. This album still helps cement the band moving forward but still respecting their past.

Review: Two artists split a double-A single, exploring both sounds and their structure in their own unique ways. 'Manifolds' sees Jessica Ekomane dive so far into polyphonic writing processes she reaches 'multiphonic', with different sonic voices, sources and timbres no longer on parallel trajectories, but eventually splicing into something closer to a human chant than most ritualistic tunes we're heard in a while. The effect is staggering. Laurel Halo then presents 'Octavia', which is best described as a kind of collage of beautiful harmonisation, a series of melodic motifs and textures that form small wholes, dissipate, reappear, merge, are all aurally connected but never combined. Highly technical stuff on the part of both producers, the coherency between the two is impossible to miss, making for a unique but coherent ambient-drone gem.

Review: Without a doubt, one of the most anticipated reissue compilations of the year is this collection of Future Sound of London side projects. In 2007 this was a CD-only compilation of early 90s tracks as well as unreleased ones from the same age. As the lore of FSOL continues to grow over the past 30+ years, their side projects have gotten more and more attention from the people who love those early rave sounds. Now for the first time, a vinyl version of it with no less than a 3x12 to harness all this early 90s techno goodness. All the tracks are by Dougans and Cobain and the aliases are the same. This 2007 album however has a wealth of new material from the same time period as Earthbeat. It is amazing that one release like this by two producers can be such a prime example of the UK sound that changed dance music forever. If you want the 90s UK rave reissue of the year, here it is!

Review: How do you capture the vibrant chaos and excitement of a carnival parade in the austere setting of the white box gallery space? That's the challenge Arto Lindsay took on with a sound installation he placed in the University of Arts and Design in Lausanne, Switzerland in 2022. With a team of researchers and a rigorous methodology, Lindsay created an immersive, three-dimensional piece spread across 27 channels, which has been remixed into a stereo version for you to experience in the comfort of your own home.

Review: The eternally mystical Muslimgauze was as experimental as they come. They turned out a wealth of now cult albums that still sound like very little else out there'd there has been a rather extensive reissue project in the world over the last few years. The next of their albums to get put put in remastered form across various formats is Khan Younis from back in 1993. All fused into the competing tracks that make it up are sounds from the worlds of experimental, ambient, acid house and dub to make for a truly unique listen.

Review: There are few borders to NTHNG's sounds. His debut album 'It Never Ends' made a big impression back in 2017 as it mixed up dub, deepness and techno and he has since impressed with plenty of lo-fi sounds and ambient bliss-outs on labels like Lobster Theremin and Lobster Sleep Sequence as well as dropping his more raw techno Delsin. Here he is in soundscaping mode again but also drops some slick electro, downbeat and Balearic sound on There Is A Place For Me on Transatlantic. It is a cosmic work of widescreen design and immersive effect.

Review: Multi-award winning composer and viola maestro Astrid Sonne is an artist you won't forget in a hurry. Freewheeling between the somewhat regimented, or at least highly intentional world of electronic music production and the looser, more open-ended possibilities of experimental contemporary classical, melding both together in a place which is deceptively close to pop, she runs on improvised sections and meticulously crafted arrangements alike, in ways that feel truly natural. Following her acclaimed 2021 long form, 'Outside of Your Lifetime', with another beauty on Escho, one of many standout alternative imprints active in her native Denmark, Great Doubt is perhaps her most radio-playable effort to date, and yet musically it also embraces some of the most varied influences. From loop-based hip-hop to surreal court music, patient string-focused ambient, to leftfield drum machine pop.

Review: The NID Tapes is a collection of early Indian electronic music uncovered at the archives of the National Institute of Design (NID) in Ahmedabad, India. The compilation includes works by Gita Sarabhai, I.S. Mathur, Atul Desai, S.C. Shama and Jinraj Joshipura, who worked at India's first electronic music studio founded at the NID in 1969, with support from the New York composer David Tudor. A throwback to the early days of analog composition, the compilation escapes the usual tendency towards Eurocentrism in championing this field, and showcases the collective's experiments with Moog synthesizer, tape collage, vocal techniques and field recordings - creating a unique fusion of Western and Indian avant-garde traditions.