Bass charts

Review: Yaleesa Hall wastes no time setting the tone on this Timedance release, delivering a weighty fusion of UKG, electro and sub-heavy pressure. Opener 'Halfway Gone' lurches forward with a heady mix of swung percussion and cavernous bass, its tension building like a slow-motion collision. 'Light Headed' dials up the energy, its restless breakbeat patterns and distorted low-end hitting with unrelenting force. On the flip, 'Voices' leans into dubbed-out textures, letting ghostly vocal snippets drift through the haze as tightly coiled rhythms keep the pulse locked. Closer 'Still Here' brings the release full circle, with fractured beats and rumbling sub-bass weaving together in a hypnotic finale. It's a bold statement from Yaleesa Hallione that feels tailor-made for dancefloors that thrive on weight and space in equal measure.

Review: The Bait label headed up by Beatrice M looks to Conzi for a fresh new 12" that builds on the label's superb early momentum. It delves deep into timeless 140 bpm sounds with opener 'AU2' layering up the percussion over fathom-deep beats and aquatic dub pads. It's a heady one for late night rolling and 'Drakar' then brings more bright melodies but similar icy beats and organic perc. An N:in remix of 'AU2' makes things more skittish and kinetic and broken, then and Ambit remix sets down with low-end pressure. These are fresh sounds that bring new direction to classic dubstep.

Review: In characteristically fast and loose fashion, the June 2024 split release between Burial and Kode9 finally hears a 12" version only the following November, which also compounds the London label's habit of timing new Burial releases with misty year-end Brumaires. 'Phoneglow' and 'Eyes Go Blank' are complementary cracklestep and aggro jungle-juke numbers; both get at the wistful chills and phantom pocket vibrations endemic to the modern urban lifestyle, these being sensations that mask much deeper, dare-not-go-there collective emotions. Burial's A-sider is as tender as ever, typically stilted between neurotic beat-switches and fizzing breakdowns. But this time, the more beat-driven moments dart between haunted, charity shop haul Christmas compilation garage vibes, and hollowly hallowed, filtered Eurorave, continuing Burial's recent penchant for sweetness below the sonic silt. Kode9's is a much tankier yet tricksier tune, traversing glossolalic masc vocals, warring tuned Reeses, and gamey ringtone clatters.

Review: Upsammy's ever mutating, morphing sound seems to melt before your very ears on this new body of work. A distinct beaty twang, and even drum & bass, comes into the mix as the Dutch maverick takes us on a unique trip. Highlights of her navigations include the deconstructed d&b of 'Relict' and the hypnotising chimes and shimmers of the title track which feels like a trip to a temple in Tibet while cruising the back pocket of an automaton. Powerfully mesmerising; minimal in dynamic, maximum in feels. Don't sleep on this one.

Review: With this latest hyper-abstract club release, Italian-born, London-based producer Big Hands straddles an impressive range from chthonic sound design to readily lock-innable grooves. Named after the Roman equivalent of Dionysus, the god of fervour, celebration, and debauchery among other vices, 'Bacchanalia I' and its three inversions touch on furrows dug between dub techno, dubstep and brutalist techno no man's lands and they grow in intensity with each passing track. By the time of our tricky and energetic favourite, 'Bachannalia III', us bacchanals find ourselves raising a blood-filled chalice, haemoglobin spilling about the place.

Review: Inspired by "slow and quiet life on the southern coasts of England", the debut from CVOIA - a new collaboration between producers and Captured Visions label founders Adam O'Hara and Tom Parker - offers gorgeously lolloping, lazy beats and expansive, cinematic orchestration. There's the brittle, slow motion breakbeats and woozy instrumentation of the duo's original, then remixes from four of their favourite acts: Awakened Souls, Inhmost, Jack Lever and Synkro. All the tracks are about as strenuous as an afternoon on the beach, and equally nourishing, with Synkro's rich, synth-soaked near-ambient mix a dramatic, undisputed highlight. Jack Lever's Northern Mix, meanwhile, wouldn't sound out of place nestled somewhere in Mo'Wax's first dozen or so releases. High praise indeed, but much deserved.

Review: Dogpatrol returns to Sneaker Social Club with four more tracks of gritty, genre-bending rave damage. Despite hailing from Offenbach in Germany, his sound blends UK influences like breakbeat hardcore, dubstep and garage and that results in a mutant style that's uniquely his own. '1200kcal' features jagged UKG drums and cosmic bass arps while 'Baby Flame 'channels warehouse electro with a heavy synth splat. 'Ya Playin Yaself' delivers a dubstep roller with playful keys and 'Offgenbach HBF Riddim' adds a breakbeat twist with echoes of The Blapps Posse. Dogpatrol's irreverent, misfit approach to rave shines again here.

Review: Skee Mask, who only recently was found out to be called Bryan Muller, comes through with his second LP to date, making a wonderful follow-up to 2016's Shred. Compro is, ironically, comprised of a much more explorative palette of sounds, with many corners of the album veering off into otherworldly ambient, often through a striking new-age sensibility. The most impressive element of this album is its flow and evolution across its 12 tracks, sounding a lot more like one single-minded thought rather than a collection of disparate dance-not-dance tunes. The quality of the recording is noticeable, too, with tracks like "Rev8617" or "Via Sub Mids" sounding professional, both in vision and style. Through an intricate collage of breaks, samples, polyphonies, and subtle electronic manipulations, Skee Mask has truly mastered his own art, and is giving a new direction to the wider 'UK rave' sound. BIG.

Review: Make Your Own Meaning continues to convey its unique techno message with a new statement of intent from label head Lurka. The artist has been busy of late and continues to be on a roll with another fascinating four tracker that genuinely serves up some original sounds and rhythms. 'Trip' gets things underway with organic percussive patterns stacked up over drilling bass to make for a prickly groove. 'Airlock' is similar but darker and heavier and 'Sick Flips' keeps the nimble feel going with dancing perc, rigid synths and scratchy sound effects all coalescing over broken drum patterns. Last of all is another dense, busy and multi-layered melange of tiny percussive sounds, synths and clipped rhythms that will make any floor move.

Review: Garage powerhouse Zed Bias is back with more old school garage brilliance with the new single 'Shell Them Again' featuring the vocals of Yung Saber and Brakeman. The original has plenty of retro signifiers from the low-end wobble to the withering synth effects, plus crisp hits and jostling drums. After the dub mix comes a remix from Zed himself alongside Safire which is much more dirty and raw. The beats are broken up so the track takes on a dubstep quality as the low-end oscillations bring the weight and drums hit with more force. Finally, the acappella closes out this fresh 12" on IFG.

Review: Get ready for a wholesome spread as Coco Bryce makes his debut on the cult BXL Underground and feeds us our supper this eve. First up a little liquid refreshment in the form of 'Bubble Tea'. Zesty, punchy and reviving; this 'Soca Tek' vibe is laced with a dizzy array percussion all hitting in harmony or counterpoint. Pure natural energy. Need to line your stomach? Chow down on the techno flavoured 'Tiger Bread'. Rich in all your favourite 4x4 vitamins, this one stamps so hard you might just lose your appetite.

Review: Originally released digitally in 2013, Pink collated a series of 12" releases from Kieran Hebden issued over an 18 month period on his Text label. Hebden and record club and subscription service Vinyl Me, Please have teamed up to give Pink a double vinyl release for any Four Tet fans that weren't quick enough to nab those 12"s at the time. There is plenty of classic Four Tet to be had here too. "Jupiters" experiments with swung garage beats in an unmistakably UK Bass style, while "128 Harps" is a whipcrack MPC workout given his light melodic touch and "Peace On Earth" is a beatless 11 minutes of analogue kosmische. But it's the centrepiece of Hebden's Fabriclive mix, the brilliantly moody "Pyramid", and the loose limbed jazz-house of "Pinnacles" that really set this album apart from his other long-playing efforts, two examples of timeless dance music which demonstrate why after nearly 15 years in the game Hebden is only improving with age.

Review: Having previously worked with SBTRKT, Kanye West, Drake, Jesse Ware and Frank Ocean, amongst others, Sampha is no newcomer. This, though, is the British singer, songwriter and producer's debut album, and it's something of an understated gem. One particularly enthusiastic reviewer called it "an R&B album for the ages"; while that may be pushing it a bit, there's no denying that Process is an impressive collection of tracks. The beats are inventive, the electronics crisp, the samples carefully chosen, and the musical touches pitched just right. At the centre of it all stands Sampha, delivering thoughtful, heartfelt and sometimes poignant lyrics in his wonderfully evocative voice.

Review: Given the hype that surrounded the release of the first Moderat set back in 2009, we can surely expect more of the same for this second outing from Apparat and Modeselektor. Those familiar with the first album's woozy blend of IDM, Thom Yorke indebted vocal dreaminess, porchlight techno and post-dubstep rhythms will immediately feel right at home. Online reviews have focused largely on II's atmospheric warmth, and the way in which the Berlin-based trio seems to have refined their sound. Both are valid critiques; certainly, there's a maturity and musical complexity to the album that betters much of their previous works. It's not much of a dancefloor set, but that's entirely the point; this is locked-in headphone listening for the wide-eyed generation.

Review: Well Street continue to offer up some of the most inventive gear on techno's multi-faceted outer limits, this time welcoming South London's Kincaid to the table. There's certainly a vaguely defined style around the label now, and Kincaid fits right in with a dexterous line in rhythmic programming and hi-def sound design, but like all the other artists he's got plenty of individual personality as well. 'OOO' quivers and surges with a braindance demeanour, while 'Nothing Is' deals in a swampy, dislocated kind of soundsystem music. This is dense, brilliantly rendered club music for those who require the freshest of the fresh ideas.

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: Munich based producer Bryan Mueller aka Skee Mask presents his latest album titled Pool, via local imprint Ilian Tape which follows up his LP Compro which came out three years ago. There's an extensive collection of sonic experiments on offer on this one, such as opening cut 'Nvivo' which goes down an IDM route, to the glassy eyed rave euphoria of 'LFO', the intelligent drum and bass reductions of 'Rio Dub' and UK influenced steppers like 'Crossection'.

Review: The best thing since Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful", Denmark and Norway's Aqua, to '90s R&B, Trance and '00s Dubstep combined is Sophie's Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides. With more meta-references than you can poke a brain at, the album and its hyper-array of sounds is set to light up the couture cosmo of New York City as much as it is a teenager's bedroom south of the border. In effect, Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides is one of the most colourful excursions through music you can have, striking off a plethora of pop music iterations, to rave, deep ambient and the most experimental of dance music. A seriously defining album by one of modern day music's greatest minds. Roll out the red carpet.

Review: First spotted online and in the boxes of some very lucky selectors last summer, then released digitally at the start of the year, Chunky's "Oun C" finally gets the vinyl justice it deserves. Rolling with deep space dynamics, there's a classic electro feel to the drums and a weirded out Crosstown flavour to the bubbling, mildly acidic bass. The result of this fusion is a foggy trap that allures the listeners and holds them captive in their own imagination. Flip for "Call Me, Let's Do Lunch". Here the beats are straight-up 4/4 and the nagging, heavily processed hook scream techno. Imagine a Drumcode release being played at -10 and you're on the right track. We're unsure what lunch Chunky has in mind; his name suggests an all-you-can-eat buffet but the sounds suggest something much leaner and chewy.

Review: Toupaz is a new name on our radar but he'll stay firmly on it after this release on forward-thinking London label, Well Street. The EP kick-starts with a fusion of techno, bass and club rhythms spliced with brilliantly bubbly toms & synths that fall down the face of broken beats. The flip side explores a new take on UK funky with whirring machines and fractured vocals, whilst the closer 'Maudlin Lakitu' features the most experimental and skeletal rhythms of the project.

Review: Pressure Dome's Yussh gets busy with her debut EP on Wisdom Teeth. Flexing fully across four tracks, her signature fusion of breakbeat, bass, jungle and club hits the spot in true Bristol brutalist fashion. 'Look Mum No Hands' eases us in with a dreamy, spacious halftime trip while the recent single 'Same Same' continues to keep the subtle sense of chill with its floating chords and slinky percussion. Elsewhere 'Close Fall' sounds like it could have come from the desk of Kid Drama and dBridge's Autonomic HQ while 'Self Conscious' closes on a deep space cosmic jungle/techno hybrid. No hands, no fear.

Review: Lurka ended the year on a high with a kick-ass new EP on his own new label Make Your Own Meaning. He is now set to start 2023 in an equally strong fashion with four more futuristic bass fusions. 'Wire' is a minimal stepper with bursts of bass and flitting percussive lines. 'Molten Drum' is another twitchy mix of malfunctioning computer sounds, refracted vocals and fizzing synths that keep you on edge then 'Machine' picks ups the pace with jumpy rhythms and militant snare work. 'Zone (Packet)' rounds out with a double-speed workout and juke patterns that head out on a cosmic journey.

Review: Remarkably surreal club reconstructions from Uruguayan ur-producer Lechuga Zafiro. 'Desde los oidos de un sapo' ('From The Ears Of A Toad') is a truly elastic entanglement of designed sound refit for the floor, though we'd not be surprised if a private laboratory set aside for the safe containment and study of sonic bio-anomalies would hope to acquire this one too. Zafiro flexes his hylid hamstrings on this wriggling wet lurch through post-Baile sonics and field recorded club jamborees, emphasising the naturalistically percussive and fretfully textured. Basing his musical identity on field recordings of hard materials - metal, wood, rock, glass - as well as, somehow, animal tissue - from toads, birds, sea lions and pigs (let's hope they were at least taxidermied first) - these seven cochlear leapfrogs make for a highly exploratory sonic escape; Zafiro dares to define the next applicative generation of sound design for the dance.

Review: You will always have a job second-guessing where The Gaslamp Killer might go next. This time, it is to a new collaborative album with Jason Wool. ANANDA find the pair cooking up 33 minutes of avant-garde experimental jazz underpinned by heavy bass and topped with plenty of sound design madness that calls to mind the likes of Stanley Clark, David Axelrod and Aphex Twin. The synapse firing collage of 'Chaos In The Brain' is a great example of the joys of this record - organic and synthetic, chaotic yet calm. It's a real treat.

Review: Andy Stott has always thrived in the limbo between electronic genres where is able to constantly explore the unknown. After experimenting with minimal techno, dub and more, he solidified his identity with 2011's Passed Me By by creating a unique world of grey sounds, static and experimental rhythms. His 2012 LP Luxury Problems introduced Alison Skidmore's haunting vocals and blended the artificial with natural and On Faith in Strangers, Stott expanded his sound to combine his signature with new influences such as trap and minimalism. The album's intensity grows over its 54 minutes, culminating in tracks like 'Damage' which still, a decade on, sound like little else out there.

Review: Blawan is not only the most notable electronic producer to have ever come out of Barnsley (as far as we know, anyway_ but is also one of techno's most relentless innovators. He's done it all from heft, swinging bass to the most caustic and experimental techno. For this one on XL he aims at the club once more. 'Fires' is our pick - an unrelenting, tightly stacked rhythm with alluring vocal hooks swirling up top and weird synth sounds adding even more unusualness.

Review: ZamZam is hurtling towards its milestone 100th release but first it turns to enigmatic French producer Hiss Is Bliss. Both sides of this new 12" aim squarely at the dancefloor. 'Nope' opens up as a perfect dub techno exploration with driving 808 kicks and synth swirls that paint cosmic colours in the space above. Ras Lys' vocal adds a hint of dread while the B-side cut 'Abbadia' is stripped right back to the bare bones and still makes a mark. The pads are distorted as the shimmer above the rhythm and lock you into a mindful state. This one has been limited to just 800 copies so do not sleep.

Review: SPD makes a striking debut on Sneaker Social Club with a four-track EP designed for powerful systems and refined style. Will Sheppard has long established himself on labels like Keysound, EC2A, and Roska Kicks + Snares and here he channels UK bassweight while infusing it with a futuristic edge. First cut 'Genbu' features stripped-back, snaking sequences that keep dancers moving while 'Systema' delivers a bleep-speckled roller with a firm grip on deep, snarling bass. 'Willman' introduces a choppier groove that shows Sheppard's patient approach before leading into the emotionally rich 'OK'.

Review: The Time Is Now label single-handed ushered in a new era of garage if you ask us. That was a few years ago but the label continues to lead from the fort here with a new EP from Samurai Breaks & Napes who make their label debut in explosive fashion. They are skilled studio talents who are nudging at the boundaries of the current UK bass sound and here they hybridise bassline, jungle and garage. You won't easily be able to fit these into one stylistic box but they will do damage on the floor, from the ghetto restlessness of the opener to the manic melodies of 'Correct Technique' and onto the turbocharged 'FrogMob'. Thrilling stuff.

Review: A full nine years on from the generation-defining smash success that was In Colour, comes In Waves, the upcoming second studio album by former indie band heartthrob come electronic-music matinee idol, Jamie xx. We don't imagine that the success of In Colour is easy to top, so we don't blame Jamie for waiting almost a full decade to follow it up. That said, the lead singles on this one do a pretty good job of marking the album's shift away from the summer-jammy and/or sentimental electronica ballad focus of In Colour; 'Baddie On The Floor' and 'Life' verge on French house and future house in turn, and suggest something of a shift in interest for xx towards the faster ends of things. Jamie xx's intended aim, in releasing label Young's words, was to recreate the thrilling volatility of an 'almost mystical' night out, "one where you return home in the cigarette ash dawn, the specifics of the last eight hours already blurring, but aware that these feelings will remain a crystalline memory." We eagerly await the ensuing, full-length story of heartbreak and introspection promised by the remaining tracks.

Review: Jamie xx's long-awaited new album, In Waves, marks the next chapter in the career of one of the most sought-after producers of his generation. With In Waves, Jamie captures the emotional crescendos and thrilling volatility of a mystical night out. As you return home in the cigarette ash dawn, the specifics of the last eight hours blur, but the feelings remain a crystalline memory. In Waves is a melancholy paradise of bliss, heartbreak, and introspection. It tells the story of a journey where you merge into the divine pulse of shadows, light, and dance floor rhythms. It's a strobe light epiphany about the limitless possibilities and spiritual capacities of humanity. Nine years after his debut solo masterpiece, In Colour, the London producer has not only surpassed the heights of its predecessor but has also rendered all supernatural adjectives and analogies understated. Jamie xx's reputation for creating deeply evocative and transformative music is all found here, setting a new standard for electronic production.

Review: In a world saturated with easily digestible sounds, aya's music is a welcome jolt to the system and the debut album from this Huddersfield-raised, London-based artist is a bold and uncompromising album that challenges norms, questions truths and celebrates the spectrum of queer experiences. Through a tapestry of fragmented sounds, distorted vocals and experimental electronic textures, aya crafts a deeply personal narrative that resonates with both vulnerability and defiance. Tracks like 'Somewhere Between The 8th And 9th Floor' and 'What If I Should Fall Asleep And Slip Under' delve into the depths of self-discovery, their introspective lyrics and haunting melodies capturing the uncertainties and anxieties of navigating a world that often feels hostile. 'Dis Yacky' and 'OoBrosThesis' inject a playful energy, their distorted vocals and tongue-in-cheek humor offering a counterpoint to the album's more introspective moments. 'Emley Lights Us Moor', featuring Iceboy Violet, is a standout, its ethereal vocals creating a sense of otherworldly beauty. Aya's refusal to shy away from difficult topics and her willingness to experiment with sound and language make this album a powerful and thought-provoking work that pushes the boundaries of electronic music and challenges listeners to confront their own preconceptions. It's a challenge to the often-limiting tropes of queer art.

Review: Knee deep in the foundations, head high in the clouds, anchored by bass: Robin Clarke's Dream Cycle is the perfect match for Sneakers Social Club. Across five tracks he runs the gamut through precision 2017 vision; "Dream 93" is a steppy drop into a slo-mo rave, "Start While It's Hot" tips a nod to the warmer tones of Detroit with its lilting chords and persistent drums, "Sour" dusts off its reeboks for a little garage hypnosis while "Paradise State" is a hardcore flashback with strong twangs of early Moving Shadow. Closing with a mesmerising ambient remix from Them & Us, it's yet another unique trip from the friendly trainer crew.

Review: Classy dancefloor-slaying action on 10" vinyl no less from West Norwood Cassette Library, combining a thumping four to the floor beat with nifty percussion, a fairly well known snippet of hip-hop vocal and ravey stabs. The results are as hard to resist as they are to classify, except to say it leaves absolutely zero prisoners. "This one had been previously doing the rounds as a 'dubplate only' exclusive," WNCS told us, "cut especially for the Futurepastzine tenth anniversary bash just on the cusp of lockdown ... so it seemed only appropriate to ask FPZ head honcho and fellow Cassette Librarian, Rawtrachs, to attend to remix duty." So flip it over for that equally excellent reworking from Rawtrachs and stand well back - we predict not only a riot, but an awful lot of spilt beer too.

Review: Etch returns with a seismic new release, diving deep into sonic world-building that spans dubstep, jungle, garage and hip-hop influences. On Scream of the Butterfly, Etch assembles an eclectic cast to explore darker shades of club music, starting with the thunderous low-end on the opening track, which signals this album as more than just club fodder. J-Shadow's footwork flair on 'Star Fallen' and Lee Scott's unmistakable flow on 'Not Surprised' add to the atmosphere, while E.M.M.A's ambient touch on 'Stepford Lives' creates an eerie midpoint. Each track veers from intense bass to atmospheric experimentation, making this a masterclass in evolving bass music.

Review: DJ Plead & rRoxymore make for a fascinating duo and take aim squarely at the floor on this new outing, Read Round City, for Smalltown Supersound. Opener 'Celestial' is a loose-limbed rhythmic jumble with hand claps, trippy xylophone patterns and deep bass that lulls you into a trance while 'Read Wrong' is a more reggaeton-inspired sound with snappy snares and warped synth sounds. It's gluey and gloopy and subtly colourful. 'Round Echoes' is a third and final cross blend of techno, dub and house that picks up the pace and heads off into the cosmos but retains an organic feel thanks to the marvellous wet hand claps.

Review: And so Bjork's majestic remix collection continues to trickle onto our shelves and into your eardrums. The legendary leftfield pop singer / producer gives up her "Lionsong" tune for remix action from none other than Juliana Huxtable; the newcomer has only got a couple of cameo appearances to their name, but she's coming through string with this one. In essence, it's a techno tune - driven by fire kick drums and minimal sonics - but her soulful twists of vocals render it to be much more than that in the end. It's a soothing, delicate techno massage with a powerful energy.

Review: Parisian producer Bambounou has long been part of the 50 Weapons family, having offered up a series of well-received singles and a debut album for the label since 2012. Centrum is his second LP, and sees him in a typically inventive mood, offering up a range of techno tracks blessed with curiously off-kilter rhythms, crackly found sounds, tumbling melodies and jumpy electronics. While there are dancefloor moments - see the Detroit-influenced, outer-space grooves of "Fire Woman", spiraling psychedelia of "S.A.C" and the kickdrum-propelled thump of "Excluding Natalia" - many of the more potent moments are far more influenced by IDM and ambient.

Review: Multidisciplinary artist Fatima Al Qadiri aligns with Hyperdub to release Asiatisch, a keenly anticipated debut album that's described as a "simulated road trip through an imagined China". First coming to prominence on the UNO label in 2011, Al Qadiri has subsequently provoked critical acclaim for the 2012 Desert Strike EP for Fade To Mind that played on her time spent living in Kuwait as a child, while her work under the Ayshay moniker for Tri Angle explored vocals in a unique manner. Asiatisch expands on the political themes of Desert Strike in a new and unexpected way, and acts as a homage to the style of grime known as "sinogrime". Asian motifs and melodies are prominent throughout whilst conceptually Al Qadiri runs through "the fantasies of east Asia as refracted through pulpy Western pop culture". If that wasn't enough to sell you on the concept, opening track "Shanzhai" is a "nonsensical Mandarin" language cover of Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U".

Review: Hyperdub kick off the vinyl side to their ten-year celebrations with this weighty four-tracker from some of the leading lights from the label's story. Mala is in a strident mood with "Expected, Level 10" carrying through that extra touch of melody from the Mala In Cuba LP. DVA cuts loose with the leftfield scattershot groove of "Technical Difficulties", reveling in tonal experimentation and jagged rhythmic flair to a stunning end. Still locked into the sci-fi trap tangent that characterised Severant, Kuedo turns out the haunting "Mtzpn" and Helix pops up for a remix of Kode9's "Xingfu Lu" that strips down to bare essentials with a little starlit soul rubbed into the framework.

Review: Making a welcome return to Swamp 81 after the Mean Streets pair of releases, Falty DL is on superlative form as ever with a pair of direct cuts that play on different sides of his production personality. "Huff & Puff Bruk" takes the fundamentals of 2-step and infuses it with lazy jazz and ethereal tones for a crisply funking, whimsical cut that should get all soulful spinners in a lather. On the flip things get edgier as "Mo" takes sharply looped vocal samples and works them around clattering slices of breaks to whip up the kind of frenzy that Tessela and co. inspire with their own rum choppery.

Review: It makes perfect sense for the London trio of Carlo Anderson, Matthew Benyayer and Thomas Edwards to issue their debut Dark Sky album on Monkeytown as they've gradually become more and more affiliated with the network of labels overseen by Modeselektor. So how exactly does Imagin sound? It covers alot of the bases we've come to expect from both Dark Sky and Monkeytown; there's the skywards pointing melodic flex of the opening title track, a smattering of vocal numbers (such as lead single "Silent Fall"), some bass heavy floor burners ("Voyages" and the neck snapping "Odyssey" stand out) and plenty more to boot.

Review: Of all the artists past and present who claim to let their music do their talking for them, Burial is one of the elite band of whom this truly is the case. In fact, so reluctant is he to engage with the cult-of-personality hoopla that surrounds almost every modern producer and musician of merit, that he remains a genuine recluse; he has never appeared live, only one obliquely-angled publicity photograph is known to exist, and the number of interviews he has given can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Yet despite this, his music speaks loud and wide, and the world has been listening ever since his 'South London Boroughs' EP debut on Hyperdub in March 2005. His eponymous album, which began life as a low-key release in May 2006, is now widely regarded as the benchmark release of the ever-widening dubstep genre, picking up unanimous critical acclaim along the way, and ending the year heavily featured in many 'best of' polls. Now Burial returns with 'Untrue', a new record of weird soul music, which lovingly processes spectral female voices into vaporised R&B and smudged 2step garage. Vocal lines are blurred, smeared, pitched up pitched down and pitch bent until their content is cast adrift from their original context and they whisper their saccharin sweet nothings into the void. The album continues with the debut's crackle-drenched yearning and bustling syncopations, haunted by the ghosts of rave, but also reveals some new Burial treats with a more glowing, upbeat energy. Kicking off with the skittering 2step syncopations and vocal science of 'Archangel', 'Near Dark' and 'Ghost Hardware', before long it descends into a space of radiant divas and ambience. Where 'Burial' first was humid, suffocating and unrelentingly sad, 'Untrue' is less sunless. Many of the tracks are so sweet, they become toxic, underscored by the almost geological rumbles of growling basslines. Unlike the overpoweringly melancholic prevailing mood of before, Burial's sound is now better defined as a downcast euphoria typified by the epic, muted optimism of the album's last track 'Raver'. Forget central heating the radioactivity of this album is all that you'll need to keep you warm this winter. 'Untrue' is available as full 13 track digipack CD, including recent underground hit 'Ghost Hardware', and 9 track DJ friendly double vinyl set, from which some of the beatless pieces have been edited.

Review: Naturally, there's been plenty of hype surrounding this new Hyperdub 10", which features Burial indulging his often-discussed ambient influences. It's a typically creepy and ghostly affair, with the lack of beats - if not rhythmic elements - only serving to amplify the shadowy producer's impeccable sound design and brilliant use of manipulated field recordings. A-side "Subtemple" is particularly paranoid in tone, featuring as it does chilling melody loops, curious vocal samples, looped vinyl crackle and all manner of layered background noise. Flipside "Beachfires" is, if anything, even more dystopian, with Burial basing the action around the kind of pulsing chords that gust back and forth like an autumnal breeze.