Today Only: Bass sale vinyl

Review: Besides a very limited edition version at the time, Flore's beguiling second album finally sees a full vinyl outing almost 18 months after its release. Forever weaving between the dots, French visionary Flore has always had a knack of mapping out whole musical universes ever since she emerged in the leftfield fringes of the breaks scene 20 years ago and Rituals is the best example of her widescreen vision so far. Eight tracks, eight explorations into the exciting hinterland between lofi, techno, beats and experimentalism, at points we're down in the gutter, slinking along to filthy distorted basslines ('Evidence'), the next we're spiralling away into the cosmos on a rocket fuelled by Weatherall ('You Were Here'), the next we're being slamdunked by rough, wonky techno ('Numen'), the next we're reloading and playing the whole darned thing again. And again. And again. Ritually.

Review: The first release on SOS Gunver Ryberg's own imprint, Arterial Recordings, is a great example of how wrong assumptions and presumptions can be when based on labels. And no, we don't mean record labels. Ryberg is an award-winning sound artist, but what do we mean when we say things like that? Is it the dense theoretical and conceptual sonics designed solely as installations within the institutions of art itself, or something more tangibly recognisable as 'music' itself? Maybe it's neither. It can definitely be both. Spine proves that last point wonderfully. Yes, this is electronic music at the bleeding edge, strange aural worlds crafted from noises and gadgets that could be the controls of a space craft from the future for all the average person might know. But the tracks here are definite and deliberately designed to be heard as tracks, whether that's the serene, floating-past-the-cosmos ambience of 'Sensuous Sky', or the frantic breakbeat tension of the title track.