New album: Sarah Jones and Anthony Silvester’s debut brings experimental electro-pop, new wave, R&B, disco and more, from brilliant bangers to the oddball and bizarre, and influences from West Coast 60s synthesis movement to late 70s and early 80s Cabaret Voltaire with little dash of Yello
Read moreMaps: Counter Melodies
New album: A mesmeric fifth electronica LP by the English musician and producer James Chapman filled with clever, catchy melodies, interweaving, shifting textures and classic sounds from the clubby to echoes of Kraftwerk
Read moreOrbital: Optical Delusion
New album: Electronica dance veterans Phil and Paul Hartnoll’s 10th studio album is musically varied and dynamic, and powerfully examines the self-deceiving chaos of the last few years with a variety of guest vocalists
Read moreLiv.e: Girl In The Half Pearl
New album: A dizzyingly indefinable and innovative debut by the Dallas-born singer-songwriter Olivia Williams, mixing experimental R&B, gospel, neo-soul, spoken word, electronica, cosmic jazz, and pop
Read moreThe Go! Team: Get Up Sequences Part Two
New album: Ian Parton’s Brighton band return, in their follow-up to 2021’s Part One, with a truly joyous, upbeat and vibrantly colourful, wham-bam wonder tour of worldwide cultural vocals and samples ranging from Benin to Japan, France, India, Texas and Detroit
Read moreYoung Fathers: Heavy Heavy
New album: There’s nothing quite like them. Joyous energy and endless invention, the Edinburgh trio’s fourth LP is filled with soulful, emotional vocals, fabulous oddball, dynamic beats and sound textures, and already an album of the year contender
Read moreBiig Piig: Bubblegum
Debut album: Slick, clever, catchy and quirky, this electro-pop mixtape by the Irish artist Jessica Smyth, who has also released songs in Spanish, brims with breathy pomp and superbly tight production
Read moreLeftfield: This Is What We Do
New album: A clever banger of a mesmeric LP, just the fourth in three decades return from the highly influential dance electronica maestro Neil Barnes including guest appearances by Grian Chatten from Fontaines DC and poet Lemn Sissay
Read moreAcid Klaus - Step On My Travelator: The Imagined Career Trajectory of Superstar DJ and Dance Pop Producer, Melvin Harris
New album: Acieeed! Packed with cleverly crafted bangers and a mischievously daft long title, wonderfully retro, yet fresh and chemically inspiring dance electronica in this project by Sheffield’s Adrian Flanagan and Dean Honer, known also for International Teachers Of Pop, Moonlandingz and Eccentronic Research Council
Read morePlaid - Feorm Falorx
New album: A joyously nostalgic, beautiful and uplifting 11th album by the London cult electronica and dance duo of Andy Turner and Ed Handley based on a theme of a fictitious festival, Feorm, “an intergalactic shindig held on the planet Falorx”
Read moreSpecial Interest: Endure
New album: A third LP of unstoppably energetic fierce, camp, queer, intelligent glam and post-punk by the New Orleans band fronted by Alli Logout following 2018’s Spiralling and 2020’s The Passion Of, a hot potent cauldron of art, sex, drugs and politics
Read moreCakes da Killa: Svengali
New album: Slick, skilful, inventive second full LP, after a slew of EPs and past releases, by the New Jersey LGTBQ+ rapper Rashard Bradshaw, whose album captures a story arc of flirting, sex, relationship and breakup through superbly agile verbal delivery mixed with house and electronica
Read moreVarious (ΠϢΑϪЄ) - The Psychedelic World Of Witchcraft
New album: This magical Halloween compilation release from the radio station and collective ΠϢΑϪЄ is a mesmeric blend of Eastern psych, ancient trance and more, themed around “Magick and the Occult” is packed with dancey grooves and dark allure
Read moreTSHA: Capricorn Sun
Debut album: After a series of strong singles and her EP, Dawn, a cleverly crafted, and at times elegant dance music debut by the Tottenham-based DJ and producer Teisha Matthews, fusing 80s and 90s era styles with soul, steel band, orchestral and much more
Read moreHot Chip: Freakout/Release
New album: This eighth LP by the London synth-pop band of Alexis Taylor, Joe Goddard and co is filled packed with Prince-inspired funk, and catchy melodies, and though not as wild as the title suggests, is still a slick, liquidly fun release that ticks the Hot Chip boxes
Read moreHudson Mohawke: Cry Sugar
New album: A vibrantly energised otherworld, an innovative concoction of experimental electronica, trash-pop to classical, gospel, 70s soul, house and more by the prolific LA-based Glaswegian DJ and producer Ross Birchard in his fourth LP and first for seven years
Read moreJennifer Vanilla: Castle In The Sky
New album: Wonderfully inventive, eccentric new LP of talky electronica, dance, funk, jazz and pop by gender fluid persona of Becca Kauffman, the performance artist, vocalist, and voice over artist based in New York City
Read moreBeyoncé: Renaissance
New album: The American superstar’s first full solo album since 2016’s Lemonade a ful- throttle 16-tracker filled with taut, sexy, hedonistic disco, soul, hip hop, Afrobeats, gqom, house and other club styles and even a surprisingly effective sampling of Right Said Fred
Read moreStealing Sheep: Wow Machine
New album: The Liverpool trio of Emily Lansley, Rebecca Hawley, Luciana Mercer’s wonderfully experimental 10-song album springs from a specially commissioned project with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, taking inspiration from the female pioneers of electronic music
Read moreMoonchild Sanelly: Phases
New album: Stylish, charismatic, sexy, with a unique mix of South African dance music – gqom, amapiano, hip-hop, jazz and electronica, with a persona somewhere between Eartha Kitt, Nicki Minaj or Doja Cat, the starry, blue-haired Port Elizabeth-born rapper, model and designer’s fabulous second and double LP is all about ‘baddies’ and personal empowerment
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