Sometimes, dancing can feel like a privilege. And so it should! The horrors of the world persist, but so do we, and while we can still appreciate the fundamental human pleasures of moving to vibrations in the air and marvel at people’s abilities to wring out new variants of those vibrations, let’s never take them for granted. Old forces of violence and division, and the new forces of commodification and information-blizzard homogenization can destroy these pleasures in an instant. So appreciate them while you can.
Kelela
“Contact (Karen Nyame KG Remix)”
A strong contender for track of the year here. Kelela‘s alt-R&B has reached new levels of maturity and songwriting strength lately, and it proves the perfect melodic core for the brilliant Karen Nyame KG to add her Afro-house rhythms to. The log drums of amapiano bump and jump between Nyame’s typically rich and complex percussion, and layers upon layers of vocal processing and reverb create a kind of sci-fi shoegaze soul haze into which you’ll just want to float away. It’s the proverbial iron fist in a velvet glove: deliciously smooth but absolutely loaded with emotional heft.
Five Possible Worlds
A Minute Amount of Faith
From small-town Germany via Berlin squats and the East London rave scene, Ingrid Roth specializes in improvised noise—and it shows: These five tracks are dense and fierce. But they also groove like mothers, packed with a krautrock-kosmische sense of deranged repetition, and understanding that noise can be rhythm and vice-versa. It’s appropriate that this should be the first release for the FIBS label founded by cultier-than-cult DJ Jaye Ward, who has long championed dancefloor strobe sounds that exist way outside of genre while also tapping into the long deep flow of the eternal underground.
Lila Tirando a Violeta & Sin Maldita
Accela
It’s something of a mystery why Lila Tirando a Violeta isn’t considered a megastar in leftfield circles. Perhaps it’s her outsider status as an Uruguayan, or perhaps her extreme prolificness baffles people into not knowing where to start. But it’s not right: She is the equal of anyone working in the deconstructed/experimental club music sphere. Maybe this link-up with the mighty Hyperdub and Berlin-based industrial/weird pop artist Sin Maldita will help raise her profile. This release is as intense—and as densely packed with beyond-trippy sound—as anything in her catalogue. Inject it straight into your amygdala.
Dylan Beale
Adamantium Rage
The story of how Dylan Beale—then a budding jungle producer working in the games industry—inadvertently presaged grime in the track “Tri Fusion” from his soundtrack for the 1994 Super Nintendo game Adamantium Rage, is now quite well known. But it remains absolutely extraordinary how much great—and oddly timeless—music there is on the rest of the soundtrack, which has been remastered for vinyl and digital release. Yes, the sounds are ultra lo-fi thanks to the constraints of the 16-bit consoles. But Beale has managed to bring rave stabs and bleeps, electro funk rhythms, and above all outrageously snappy drum sounds out of those digital limitations.
Various Artists
Future Bounce Club Series Vol. 2
UK DJ and radio presenter Jamz Supernova has carved out distinctive territory for her label Future Bounce. It can reach into deep soul and jazz on one side and the most furious of club bangers on the other. But it always maintains a distinct, internationalist identity. These 11 tracks—as you’ll guess from the title—lean to the “banger” side of the equation. But even here there’s all kinds of moods and tempos. It kicks off with slamming Afro-techno from Busy Twist and quest?onmarc, but elsewhere there’s dreamy, strange amapiano (Scratcha DVA and friends); mellow, synth-y jazz-funk broken beat (Poison Zcora), and on it goes. The quality is relentless, the moods are compelling, and the consistency is deeply impressive.
Richard Norris
Oracle Sound Volume One
He’s been in electronic music for well over three decades, yet somehow Richard Norris is making the music of his life right now. On this LP, he brings to bear the dreamy atmospheres he pioneered in his extensive series of ultra-minimalist dub reggae Music for Healing. Sometimes, it’s stripped to pure rhythm; sometimes there are insistent melodies and vocal snippets; sometimes, it’s close to techno, other times it lives in a weird Cure/New Order space. But all of it is smooth, completely enveloping and utterly hypnotic, with sounds and textures you just want to reach out and touch.
DMX Krew
“Night Creatures”
Edward Upton, aka Ed DMX, aka DMX Krew, has tapped into the wellspring of classic dance styles—especially electro and early house—for many, many years now, but there’s no sign of his inspirations running dry. Here, with Detroit vocalist Blak Tony, he turns the title track into the kind of elegant sci-fi that Juan Atkins pioneered going way back into the early ‘80s. “Bounce Your Body” sounds a bit more New York, with the kind of atonal riff that would feed into UK rave at the start of the ’90s via Frankie Bones and Todd Terry; “Dynamic Jit” is the kind of zippy electrofunk DJ Stingray keeps fresh to this day. Every track is more than the sum of its influences, though—crisp, fresh, and danceable.
Jurango
Isle of Crass
Bristol bass is as potent now as it’s ever been—especially in the area between techno, instrumental dancehall, dub, and UK rave that the Livity Sound axis keeps refreshing in new ways. Jurango is very much a part of that axis, and their second release on re:lax is full of classic Bristol sounds, albeit sped up. There’s generally a four-to-the-floor pulse here and big open dub spaces; but the velocity gives it a quivering, shimmering, heart-racing energy that’s entirely new and rather thrilling.
Zar
Unfurl
Londoner Zar’s first EP was an ambitious and absorbing 20-minute piece; for his second, he’s gone for straight bangers. These four tracks are all airborne dreamscapes influenced by classic ’90s electronica—think Global Communication and Future Sound Of London—but given big festival, modernist sonic oomph. Any of these, but especially the sparkling “Because You Are,” could send huge crowds into rapture the same way that Jon Hopkins and Four Tet do. They signal big things for this producer.
Disconscious
Hologram Plaza
It’s absolutely head-spinning that a style so predicated on warped nostalgia as vaporwave should be old already, but that just adds to the dissociative weirdness of the songs on this 10th anniversary reissue. This falls squarely into the “mallsoft” subgenre, and it absolutely fits the description: ‘80s pop and muzak echo through uncomfortable reverb, riddled with equal parts alienation and affection for the consumerist groove. Everything is off-key, distanced, eerie—yet somehow beautiful, as if stumbling on the remnants of the suburbs as a lost civilization.
Only Now
Fate Will
Over the years, Californian producer Kush Arora has been responsible for some of the first and best adaptations of British styles like dubstep and UK funky into U.S. electronica, weaving his South Asian heritage into the productions to boot. The music he makes under his alias Only Now takes that as a starting point and goes further, faster, deeper, darker, and more intense—never more so than on this six-track release. There are rhythms as terrifyingly off-kilter as the most martial footwork, ambience that sounds like black metal, and Hollywood-level sound design. Yet somehow, it all holds together.
Janek Hru
Not Even Close
Frankfurt singer-producer Janek Hru makes pop…but he makes it strange each time he approaches it. Each of the tracks on this album is based on some kind of club music—Afrobeats, tech-house, quite a bit of drum & bass—but with Hru’s vocal melodies often processed or vocodered, it becomes ultra synthetic, virtual-seeming, melancholic. The result feels like something designed to soundtrack lonely robots to staring into the darkness, lost in yearning .
ETDub
“He Isn’t Even From Round Here Part 1”
London producer ETDub has previously taken most of his inspiration from adapting U.S. club and hip-hop, but here he’s definitely being British. The sounds are deeply rooted in the squirming melodies and fidgety drum & bass rhythms of Squarepusher-style late ‘90s IDM. It’s absolutely packed with its own personality, though, sudden blurts of sound adding a certain funk to its rhythm, and an ambient coda taking it into a dreamy space after all the manic movement.
Jlin
Perspective
Jlin is the absolute model of how an artist can mature given opportunities. Her early work consisted of idiosyncratic twists on Chicago’s footwork rhythms, but as she’s grown—working with visual artists and dance companies—she’s found a space that’s completely her own. It still relies on ultra-crunchy drum sounds, deep bass, and cross-wired rhythms just as it ever did, but in her latest tracks you can hear Steve Reich minimalism, Brazilian carnivals, abstract expressionist art and way more—but most of all, you can hear Jlin’s own imaginative voice, clearer than ever.
Lusinda feat. The Ragga Twins
“The Don”
Radio and club DJ Lusinda is one of those connecting figures in UK underground culture, always there, always grafting, never looking for the limelight but intent on strengthening and deepening the cultural connections around her. For her new track, she’s dug back to the dawn of the ‘90s when the dense, noisy hip-hop of Public Enemy, NWA, and “Britcore” artists like Gunshot was being picked up by rave DJs and producers, but before it had sped up into what became hardcore. This beat is funky, chunky, noisy, and has sub bass tones just when you need them. It’s also been blessed by soundsystem, rave, jungle and dubstep kings The Ragga Twins with a vocal that shows why they’ve been rocking crowds for close to four decades.
Raj Pannu
Past Crimes
Northeast England DJ legend and Coldcut collaborator Raj Pannu has been around the block, but his releases are few and far between. This, though, on To Pikap records out of Thessaloniki, is super special. The tracks here manage to somehow bridge the early, funky output of Autechre and Aphex Twin and the most hi-fi, sci-fi deconstructed club textures of the last decade—but most importantly of all unfold according to their own narrative logic. It’s easy to see these working brilliantly for a dancefloor but they never succumb to obvious dynamics, taking you into unexpected places instead.
