#2434 Yung Bae - Bae2

Brassy, sunny, funloving vaporwave/nu-disco that reaches right past the 80's into the 70's without a lick of shame. It's all ladies singing over popping bass, relentless beats, splatters of horns and a dash of day-glo sample-confetti. The detuned fuckery's a bit of a drag, and it lacks the personal touch of say a Skylar Spence, but it's still good times for summer days//nights 4/5

#2433 Alex - Blood Club

Alex figured out that if you slightly detune the 80's revival / synthwave sound you can make it feel pretty menacing, injecting a John Carpenter dread into nightdrive chugging. It works ok here, bringing that vampire nightclub slink, but this is all pretty familiar, and it gets tiresome, even over the course of the 26 minute EP. The scattered horror samples are a misstep too, heavy-handed moves that break up the atmosphere 2.5/5

#2432 Xylouris White - Black Peak

Waves of Greek moaning / lute set to rumbling, rock-adjacent drums. The sound churns and turns around itself, and when it keeps momentum it's mysterious, exciting, and damn near dancable.

But when Xylouris White turns to post-rock drone-dump, they're borderline unlistenable. The muttering and meandering offers nothing that transcends language and the non-Greek-speaker's left in the cold. Greek-speakers, your mileage may vary 2.5/5

#2431 Neil Young - Trans

I'm way down with all the Kraftwerkey, new-wavey, vocordered out, stiff nonsense. Young's always been wracked with future-fear, and willing to grasp onto whatever new wave was rising - this is just the biggest, first, most striking example. I dig it. He seems like the right man to guide us into the horrorshow of all the dumb shit we're drowning in, now, more than ever, the icy plodding lines up well with his historically bold patience in letting a groove simmer.

The problem's with the lack of commitment, the Traveling Wilburys-sounding, flat pop of Little Thing Called Love and Hold onto Your Love - is this a future-fucked fever-dream or not? Make the weirdass record you set out to make already. It's all-in in long enough stretches to be worth hearing, but man, if you're going to strike out, strike the fuck out 3.5/5

#2430 Yngwie Malmsteen - Rising Force

Yngwie was super fucking down with classical music, and it shows. That rock beat, that guitar, trappings aside -- the actual song and structure is all Lisztian rollick, all shock and awe at the speed and intricacy. All the vocals are half-baked, but the actual fireworks, the actual fret-searing blitzkrieg, it's tough to argue with. This is some Wild Stallions bullshit. A justifiably influential metal-lite virtuosity onslaught 4/5

#2429 Visible Cloaks - Reassemblage

Fussy, fidgety experimental electronic skittering, full of snippets and samples and buzzes and chimes and drones, Oneohtrix gone frantic, a corrupted Books .wav. There's flashes of innovation, all sounding admirably alien, but nobody's put in the work to make this into songs, it's a clusterfuck of ideas with no theme, flow, or throughline 3/5

#2428 Heel and Arrow - Heel and Arrow

Listen / buy here!

Met Brian at the local wateringhole. He's a character. Closet nihilist, believing least of all in the idea that I gave a sincere shit about his music. Well, here's a full-listen review of your album fuckface!

<3

If I'm being honest, for the most part, it's not for me. A metal/hardcord/emo hybrid, in the spirit of Dillinger Escape Plan, full of frustrated shouting and whiplash between straightforward//proggy guitar lines. The real problem's the vocals, reaching outside their range into a reach for metal toughness but ending up kinda hurrrrgggGGGHHHH straining, not finding power, but not embracing weakness.

I'm glad I stuck with it though, because the best moments are the softest and strangest, the Lost Letter suite is a crystaline, unpredictable, affecting journey though chiming post-rock and truly threatening samples and textures - more of that inventiveness, of tipping outside of the expected and these guys might be onto something.

I'm reminded of pet favorite Wetheads Come Running - an album that pulled off that balance, partially because Single Frame was willing to veer off into the weeds at a moment's notice, to make strange instrument choices, to do something that was adventurous in sweeping terms, beyond a fucked up time signature, to go way afield to find something that connected.

This doesn't get there. It's an album by a band that doesn't know its limits and doesn't know its strengths. It's a young sound, not without potential, but not there yet. And I think, Brian, if he's out there, deep down, might agree 2.5/5

#2427 Sir Bald Diddley and His Wig-Outs - Drive Like an Italian

Splits the difference between surf rock and garage rock revival, sounding straight out of the 60's, belied by the hindsight to traveling-salesman across the map of its most bare-bones styles. Also splits the difference between underwhelming imitation (Sir Diddley's voice just doesn't quite get there -- a hair too thin) and, well, getting there, hypnotizing you into a headbob and a toetap, totally transported.

The guitars are sweeter than they need to be, and that get's it over the top into worth hearing, but I'm not sure that this buys you more than a run through Nuggets and [bargain bin surf rock compilation]. Perfectly good risk-free, charming fun 3.5/5

#2426 King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - Flying Microtonal Banana

As much as I love King Gizzard at their highs, their rocking opuses, their 7-man live raveups - they're actually a pretty uneven band, prone to wandering, chiming psych-lite jams. The microtonal instrument gimmick aside, this falls into that category, more Paper Mache Dream Balloon/Oddments than Nonagon Infinity/12 Bar Bruise. It's still a trip, dizzyingly so at times, and better than most such nonsense - but it's unevenly paced, made up of increasingly familiar parts, and never quite clawing into the better half of the band's rapidly-growing dicography.

Word is the band's got a whole salvo of releases planned for this year. Here's hoping they've got some new tricks up their sleeve - they're starting to sound like they're going in circles 3.5/5

#2425 Primal Scream - XTRMNTR

For my money, this is the actual Primal Scream payoff, the point where they found something beyond the electronic/rock formula, where some cream finally rose for skimming.

This came out when I was in college, during that burgeoning era of filesharing where Napster->Soulseek would let you dig up individual songs, but full-album grabs were uphill both ways. And I heard this buzz around Primal Scream and ended up with a bunch of shit off their first few albums and didn't know what to make of it. Their songs, individually didn't make sense to me because I was a know-nothing dumbshit, sure -- but I'd say put all together, absent curation, even now, their output's a muddy pastiche.

But together, these songs make sense. They pulse and flow, link arms, make an army, make a voice, make a scene and a menace. That 90's bass got left in the 90's, there's hardedges on it now, everything's sanded to sharpness /- anger garrotes, dissent razors/ having a vague good time by addition is out the window -- this is a focusing, certainly at least their best album besides Screamadelica.

Though, woof. That rapping on Pills is...fucking rough. And late-sequence Chemical Brothers meanderers like Keep Your Dreams are almost as embarrassing. In the flow they almost get away with it, almost, but that insidious British 90's _uncoolness_, it creeps back in.

Primal Scream just couldn't commit to the punk thing, some hopeful grasp at hope crept back in and undercut this album. But it's a success despite itself, keeping up the bristling front often enough to keep you on the back foot 4/5

#2424 Primal Scream - Vanishing Point

There's something about that specific bass that screams 90's, that triphop vibe, that Death in Vegas dub-adjacent roll/ Bass, that uniter of dance and rock, here rolling in that very British way, over those unfortunate British vocals that pigeonhole this into that Oasishold that has aged so badly. There's a groove here, inventive in flashes, generally unfettered, simmering and slinking, but something about it hasn't aged well, an itchy uncoolness busting up the buzz 3/5

#2423 Rozwell Kid - Good Graphics

Guitars, why fuck around. Big slabs of guitars, just chugged with full arms, churning at yah, Weezer after a couple hours of malt liquor, Thin Lizzy against the bricks in the backalleys, Los Campesinos with a liquid courage to come out with skinny arms swinging, Surfer Blood and Jeff the Brotherhood sharing beers after a fairfought fistfight. So dumb and pure and slight and delightful and straight to the heart of what makes you beat 4/5

#2422 Dame - Charm School

Listen / buy here!

There's something in the air in Boston, a ripple of rock bands that know that a good, hard-edged synth wash can knock you out of the ordinary - neo-New Order, Cars gone wrong. Dame's a standout example - propulsive, aerodynamic, dangerous, headlong into a wall. The production's brilliant: guitars/sneering, aggresive vocals/bass/that synth, all in perfect balance, bouncing off of new wave and simmering punk, never stopping. Exciting shit 4.5/5

#2421 Craig Taborn - Light Made Lighter

knownothingaboutjazzbut

while you're here

this is all about the way Taborn paces his runs up and down the piano, the flow of his chord origami, and the way the band pushes and pulls alongside him on strong tethers. It's not quite human, that breathing, slow-faster-slower-fast-slow. It's not quite natural, no predictable ebb and flow. It's some combination of mechanical and organic -- a cog of a man turning a crank on a large machine, finding the strength to pull through one more revolution, before working up the strength for one more, the effort pushed through a mechanical system that results in the mass production of carefully clustered piano notes at a surging pace.

There's little emotion, not a lot of time to contemplate, just that restless, relentless, tide of notes, restless even in the way its restless, challenging you to backtrace the gravities of its spirograph orbits 3.5/5

#2420 Baio - The Names

Warm vocals, warm synths, electronic // rock in the lineage of New Order via Hot Chip, all those buzzy synths and bass cuddled together in a cozy corner of the mix, covering eachother again and again, till you're dancing in your dreams 4/5

#2419 Skylar Spence - Prom King

What could sum this up better than that set of images on the cover art?

Falling, windsurfing, fireworks, stylish dancing - all slightly uncanny.

The nee-Saint-Pepsi nu-disco wizard's made one of the most fun albums I've heard in years, with Daft Punk's disco revivalism, 80's revivalism's hazy weirdness, Max Tundra's lap-pop weirdness gone dancing, dance music gone down the Avalanche, blurred blurred, club lights smeared across drunken lolling. It's utterly sunny and totally laser-lit all at once, delightfully free, packed with bold swoops and nervous details. And god Fiona Coyne's a glorious slice of day/night basking. It makes me so happy I can't even work to it anymore 4.5/5

#2418 Lush - Gala

This 3-EPs-style debut/compilation puts the initial releases in reverse order, newest-to-oldest. It's an odd choice, but shoegaze was the new hotness - maybe leading off with Sweetness and Light's (well-named!) shimmering cooing was the right marketing move, frontloading the record with its most relevant stuff.

But those're the tracks that have aged the worst, sounding cookie-cutter by now. Mad Love's scathing guitars and shiny physicality are much more immediate and compelling, and by the time we get the Scar-based second half things have gotten downright ragged, gossamer feathers dropping off the skin.

Grudgingly, it's actually a lot more compelling as a listen this way.

Whatever order you put them in, the songs make strange bedfellows. There's a fullthroated commitment to pure-jangle-etherial-mewing, and then there's not, just an angrier skeleton of the sound.

As a bridge between the old and new guards of all-the-guitars smokescreens, this's essential for students of the early 90's rock, but a little too scattershot and too-familiar for extended modern listening 3.5/5

#2417 Ought - Sun Coming Down

Post-punk // art-rock revival, full of David Byrne moaning and wry observation; heck, bringing along imitations of every other Talking Head for good measure, packing every song with chiming guitars and compound start-stops and angular distractions.

And like Talking Heads, this is a band's band, frequently coming across as listener-indifferent, making exceptionally few concessions to expectation or enjoyment, rattling off songs jammed with as many interesting moves as possible, the kind of songs that only amuse the people in the band, or other people in other bands, or people who wish they were in a band.

Look, I have the occasional soft spot for arty shit. That's not a problem in and of itself. But this is too familiar, bordering on pastiche, and it ends up not really working as pop or art 2.5/5

#2416 Seefeel - Quique

Chiming, pretty near-ambient tones with cooing over top - Quique sounds suspiciously like Aphex Twin (Xtal) and Orbital (Halcyon and On and On) at times. But it's saved by that rhythm section. That rolling, dubby bass, those elliptical drums; they lend a loping, sleepy trip-hop lull that blurs the lines between rock and electronic and sublines besides.

IDM tamed // post-rock domesticated, a hybrid that's hypnotic, pretty, and ready to make you bob your head in the subtlest way possible 3.5/5

#2415 Mind Over Mirrors - The Voice Calling

Slow-shifting electronic woolliness - each song built on the back of a chiming little loop that shifts slowly if at all, while the occasional vocalization or silvery leads makes its way across the top. It is geese in the distance, a middle-speed video of the light changing in a forest, or across a windowsill.

Which almost sounds like an endorsement. And the core loops _are_ nice, packed with fuzzy texture that's worth rolling around in your hands. But there's not enough here. It's all icily busy, with no real sense of place or emotion or motion, and all the songs stick too closely to the same blueprint (the final track's swings at Krauty apocalypse are too little too late) 2.5/5

#2414 Iggy Pop - Post Pop Depression

Pop's in a holding pattern.

After 20's spent like he didn't care to see 30, fast forward 30 years and he's still here, putting out an album called Ready to Die, and by all accounts meaning it. And here he is, still again, still lurching along, outlasting not just Sid Vicious and Marc Bolan, but Lou Reed and Bowie, putting out an album that sounds designed to be his parting shot, his Blackstar, his You Want it Darker.

And that weariness is on his latest. But so is a restless, mechanical, unstoppable, strutting slither forward, into one night after another. Pop's cavernous, rounded late-era moan's as powerful as ever, pairing perfectly with Josh Homme's lithe production, that bass a taut muscle over visible bones.

For long stretches the album just puts one foot in front of the other, and risks getting boring and bored. But at the midway point, Sunday's soaring outro pours in sunlight, and the stark opener and delightfully unhinged closer make for perfect bookends.

Paraguay, in particular, man. We couldn't have had a few more of those on here? As it is, it sticks out -- a man trying to keep his cool cracking at the last second, giving you a parting glimpse of all the fire that was under that black coat all along 4/5

#2413 Fudge - Lady Parts

When I first heard about fantasy football, I assumed it would be this cool simulation of the players, their interactions, passes and catches and all that. When I found out it was like, X points for Y achievement, add em all up independently, see who has the most, I was super disappointed. It seemed like a missed opportunity.

When I first started listening to hip hop, maybe 8 or so years ago, I remember being disappointed. Coming at it from a rock background, I felt like there was all this potential for pathos and melody, but it was all so skeletal, so much of the mainstream stuff was so superficial. It was naive, in a lot of ways, but I spin through this all to say -- in a lot of ways -- this is the album I wanted hip hop to be.

It's loose, clever, endearing, hooksome, warm, strange, intriguing, effortless, enjoyable. Prefuse is a natural fit for (local Bostonite) Michael Christmas, with their organic, languid, loping styles interlocking and offsetting alternately in soft focus. The feel's druggy, in a pastel pleasant way. Christmas brings a Chance-like wild-eyed optimism, and it floats over pillowey, melodic backing. Prefuse is back in form here, showing all those detuned samplefuckers how to do it right, how to actually keep the sound intact, so that it's actually fucking nice to listen to.

It's packed with flow, with strange angles eased into easily, a breezy minor masterpiece, everything I could hope for 4.5/5

#2412 Cluster - Cluster '71

A Pollockian sprawl of synth experiments; 2001's trip to Jupiter without the visuals or the context; a scattershot blast of look-what-I-made-this-gizmo do, collaged into only the loosest sense of tension and flow. Historically useful, interesting in flashes, but pretty miserable to listen to -- a scrapbook of ideas in need of an album 3/5

#2411 Agitation Free - 2nd

The experimental interludes, proggy rhythms, and general Krauty artiness are all background - the star's the rambling, soaring Grateful guitar, solo dance, disappear, back again. Guitar solos galore. Blazing guitar solos that you appreciate all the more because of the spare, strange connective tissue that keeps you from getting worn out. There's a stagey pacing to it: scenery, lighting, entrances, exits, interludes, all in a hypnotic cadence. A peaceful, exciting listen that only gets better with time 4.5/5

#2410 Beat Happening - You Turn Me On

I wasn't all that moved by Jamboree, Beat Happening's masterpiece, finding it a little listless, a little hookless, too dominated by Calvin Johnson's cavernous voice. But on revisiting it, I was struck by how familiar the songs felt, how readily they've woven themselves into my fabrics. It's grown on me.

--

So here we are again. At risk of falling into the same trap: I'm unmoved again. The songs are so repetitive, so muddy, so unhurried; I kept getting that feeling that I'd accidentally set the song to loop and had been listening to it for 20 minutes. But no, it's just minute 3 of a go-nowhere song. This might have been pretty clever in '92, but it hasn't held up well, with countless others finding ways to sound equally disinterested without being so damned boring about it 2.5/5

#2409 Le Car - Auto-Reverse

Bare-bones synthwork that just works, in the spirit of Kraftwerk. True grooves from the basic building blocks of electronic music. IDM if it had deigned to groove instead of trying to, like, reinvent sound. This compilation goes on and on, never catching fire, but lulling you into the grid, subconscious flashes of laser motorways and start-stop lightcycle traffic 3.5/5

#2408 Run the Jewels - Run the Jewels 3

I'm sure El-P and Killer Mike are sincere, truly angry, truly desiring to inspire.

But its tough not to hear their songs as designed to make white kids bump at shows, this album in particular: packed with singalong encouragement, noddable grooves, and murder rap power fantasies non-offset with topping-from-the-bottom recreational revolutionary Rage-isms ( the return of Zach de la Rocha doesn't help ). It's a good groove, but it undercuts it's own seriousness.

And as the world's gotten more serious, is it wrong to want more? To want a real shock to the system revolutionary message to come through? To rise beyond Rage-level vagueness? Again, it's good fun, but RtJ seems to want to be more, and they don't get there, either through a lack of commitment or a lack of execution.

Exception: look to RtJ2 standout Early, where the details become sharp and personal. And at the last second, RtJ3 finds a glimpse of that magic, enough so that it kinda elevates the whole album.

Thursday in the Danger Room is heartbreaking and weak after 12 tracks of righteous fist-swinging, an admission that all that swagger only gets you so far. And fuckin, godbless Kamasi for bringing the sax back. And it tees up the final track where that powerless pivots into real stakes, and sparks the anger. Here's wishing they could have tapped into that relatable, desperate, dangerous vein sooner, even at the cost of some bangin' festival highlights 3.5/5

#2407 Japanese Motors - Japanese Motors

It was tempting to dismiss this after a first listen - a bit familiar, a bit garage/Velvets revival-revival via Pavement via the Strokes, all soaked in surfy sunlight.

And the Motors had one foot in the past, a little behind the comeback wave by 2008. But fuckit, understated and familiar as it is, this album's packed with great little moments, overflowing with easy hooks, bursting with little guitar hair-tosses that draw slow-burn double-takes -- I mean, who can argue with the surf-Kinks groove of Better Trends? Those vocals deadpan on and on, but they're backed by wry wit and a band that's ready to go bouncy to buzzing to baked and back around again without a seam. Perfect pacing, slithery flow, possible sleeper classic of the 00's 4/5

#2406 Quarterbacks - Quarterbacks

I went to Coachella one time, and as I waited in line to get in, 3 kids just went for it -- they'd waited for a moment of inattention and just charged ticketless across a no-man's land beyond the ticket booths into the heart of the festival. Two of them disappeared into the masses, but one kid, he didn't make it.

After pursuing security took him down, he grinned sheepishly, the epitome of "ok, ok, you got me, you got me", disarmingly surrendered, aw shucksing it in the direction they directed. And in that very next half-moment of inattention, he took off again, pell-mell into the sunlight.

I honestly don't even remember if he made it, maybe I never even saw. But I was so struck by that moment, by the way that he seemed like he was just having _fun_ trying to get away with it, like he didn't even really care either way if he ever got in, he just had too much energy to stop trying.

Quarterbacks got a bit of that.

They're aggressively coarse, unpracticed, unrefined - those yelpy vocals, those jangly guitars played half-right. But they just keep coming, never starting to even seem like they've got any sense of the stakes, blasting through Punch Line pacing to the tune of 19 songs in 22 minutes, offbeating headlong into the next dayglo hardcore doubletime Bee Thousand microhook just as you tackle the last one, until fuckit kids, you earned, run wild. Good for you, may we all learn a thing or two 4/5

#2405 Matt Martians - The Drum Chord Theory

I'm all about flow lately, and I'm finding a lot of goodflowin albums - causality uncertain.

Martians lays down buzzy, meandering gooves that never snap you out of your moment, except for the gentlest, friendliest, druggiest asides. Drum Chord's a buddy you can night melt with, without the barest worry about anyone being bored: chilling and letting the world waft is firmly baselined as just fine. Washes and croons slurpy bass and vagrant horns laid all about on scattered pillows; stay a while, and listen 4/5

#2404 Dennis Wilson - Pacific Ocean Blue

There's something in common in the spirit of George Harrison, David Crosby, Dennis Wilson, some underlying warmth -- some notion that there's something simpler, purer, lying just under the surface of their work in bigger bands, some _thing_ they can finally found now that they're on their own, something in the music that smells and breathes of that mining.

The richness, lushness, the slow push-pull of Wilson's sole solo album is understated and overwhelming, shades of the Beach Boys, sure, those mavericks listed, but also of those with a pulse of the dark side of the west, your Warren Zevons, your Harry Nilssons, of transcribing a pulse read through the shimmer of heat on distant streetlights, simmering, overflowing, draining.

It keeps the world at arms-length, wrapping it in perfect, nuanced, crisp production, layered like a flaky pastry, buttery and cracking. A deeply satisfying album, despite itself, letting you in through back doors, Wilson's croak, faultlines in the drywall 4/5

#2403 Johnny Thunders and The Heartbreakers - L.A.M.F. (the '77 mixes)

Much controversy about mixes. I've lost the thread.

Whatever they ended up with here is fucking perfect though, a blazing swath of defiant guitars, proto-NYD, shades of The Exploding Hearts.

god. the parallels, the single album status, is too much to even..

there's a spraypaint gluesniff fuckthis if only i could muster the energy to say fuckit, awwwwww man

kinda

energy

lack of, maybe

born to lose, it's not enough, let go, all by myself, etc

punk as fuck circa then.

a harsh rockabilly blast of  FUCK   THIS that I wholly buy, just a staggering idiot stumble into a cop's bullshit face, ready for your backup 4.5/5

#2402 Hermann Szobel - Szobel

I say all this as a philistine, a know-nothing of jazz.


But goddamn, this is how jazz should be.

Alive with the energy of improvisation, alive with the power of following unseeable strutctures --= but not adversarial to the listener, not blowing down barriers for its own sake, just. .. alive, writhing of its own energy, unfettered and unstruggling.

Voices come in and go, shifts seem natural -- Zappa circa Hot Rats (peak Zappa imo) gets compared a lot, and no wonder I'm into it. There's just enough of rock's ebb and flow here, its deigning to engage with feeling, with tension and release, with chaos and structure in turn, a slice through the adventurous spirit of art and the populist notion of the joy of listening.

The backstory, the impetuousness, the impermanence -- I won't do it justice here -- but it fits, a wild thrashing thing, perfect for an imperfect world, or vice versa, packed with difficult angles so easy you barely notice them until you dare to dig 4.5/5

#2401 Silicon Teens - Music for Parties

Synth covers of classic 50's/mid 60's rock and roll songs.

It is very from 1980.

Occasionally enjoyable, but falls in an awkward middle-ground: not deadpan enough // not energetic enough, no sincerity // no concept - it just...does what it says on the tin, right by the numbers, never getting past the barest possible execution of the concept 3/5

#2400 Rites of Spring - Rites of Spring

The only Rites of Spring album's fucking essential, blasting Bad-Brains-worthy DC hardcore heat alongside melodicism and laid-bare desperation that was way ahead of its time in 1985. It's impossible not to hear Fucked Up in there - that electric combination of big ideas, big feelings, and an urgency that blasts them out half-assembled, shotgunning head//heart shrapnel wrapped in satin shimmer. Immediately bracing, relentless and exhausting, rewind-click-play-ready from the first 4.5/5

#2399 Landlady - The World is a Loud Place

Pleasant enough just-retro indie, those proggy lilts and hitches, those chiming guitars, perfect peers of Tapes n' Tapes, Born Ruffians, Clap Your Hands, et al. But those inflected vocals, reverby wobbles, and overrepeated, intentionally-blunt sentiments just wear out their welcome - I was already a little tired of this sound 10 years ago, doubly so by now 3/5

#2398 The Menzingers - Rented World

Punks get old, try the embrace it / fight it trick, don't stick the landing. The vocals are too thin, the guitars too used-to-be, the lyrics reaching for Hold Steady grit, or at least Japandroids grasping, but never really getting there 2.5/5

#2397 Rozwell Kid - Too Shabby

Weezer-via-Surfer Blood's having a moment - the Kid brings those big fat riffs and propulsive energy, buzzing and chiming along, a grandkid of some distant fusing of Sabbath and Thin Lizzy, a kissing cousin of local standouts Vundabar. A damned good time, bringing enough wire and wit to rise above the tide 4/5

#2396 Mndsgn - Body Wash

That burbling, funk/jazz/electronic/hiphop vein of mysterious grooves keeps slithering through your mind fuzz. Mndsgn's too ghostly and shadow-draped to pin down, too funky and pulsing with vital force to ignore, packed with buzzy synth bass and crooning from just over a lightpocked horizon.

Is that a sensory deprivation tank or a coffin on the cover? This feels like music from the convolution, music for nights going nowhere and not minding 4/5

#2395 El Huervo - Vandereer

A remarkably cohesive, subtly fascinating album, moving between cratedigger atmospherics, full on dancable groovemaking, and dusty cinematic sweep. But it all flows, with big sky ambiance and the momentum of half-remembered roadtrip radio pulling you deeper into the desert. Pure tones, narrative snippets, and cracked-vinyl beats lay landscapes for all manner of sounds - between this and the Avalanches album, it's been a banner year for spare-parts sonic worldmaking 4.5/5

#2394 Surkin - USA

Between the radio-station snippets and the slow moves between house, techno and more, this'll take you on the road: KLF's Chill Out for the all-night mobile disco. The beats, tones, and traditions keep shifting, but it's all a seamless flow, all endlessly listenable, all impossibly dancable, packed with satisfying soundcraft and hookladen loops. A woolly, exciting, accessible tour of buzz and beats that'll keep you on your toes and on your feet 4.5/5

#2393 Delicate Steve - Positive Force

There's not a lot to differentiate this from Steve's first - those super-expressive, hyper-polished guitar sounds are still the star, over shuffly rolling beats from all over. It's a little slower, a bit more romantic, dabbling in vocals a bit, but if you shuffled this together with Wondervisions and called it a double album, nobody would blink. Still gorgeous, still hyper-listenable, but wanting for a bit more evolution 3.5/5