Juno Recommends Leftfield: February 2023

Review: Is there any artist in electronic music that releases as little music yet remains as highly revered as Burial? We can't think of any. As it happens, this new Streetlands EP is actually the hallowed UK producer's second outing of 2022 after the ambient offering Antidawn back in January. As always it finds him back on Kode9's Hyperdub label. 'Hospital Chapel' is eerie atmosphere and lo-fi samples, 'Streelands' is another sparse ambient cut that is full of melancholy and 'Exokind' is the soundtrack of a faraway planet with distant solar winds and only the smallest of microbial activities for you to tune into before a signature angelic vocal brings the beauty.

Review: Ideologic Organ do things their own way here with an uncompromisingly long new album Does Spring Hide Its Joy from Kali Malone. It comes as a triple LP set that cannot fail to immerse you into rich soundscapes that are aided by Stephen O'Malley on electric guitar and Lucy Railton on cello. Composer Malone herself contributes sine wave oscillators as she focuses on harmony, non-linear arrangements and intonation. It is an album of nuanced minimalism that builds on and departs from previous themes in her work to make for a stand-alone and stand-out record.

Review: Max Wurden's sophomore long player on A Strangely Isolated Place follows four years after 2019's 'Format'. 'Landmark' finds the artist exploring a new way of creating music as he combines and integrates some external forces into his usual studio production process. He sees this as a way of organically allowing himself to experiment and collate different sounds from things such as a self-built Klangkiste sound box, an old out-of-tune Schimmel piano, guitars, early jazz samples, classical music. and much more. Although disparate on paper, during the process they all began to relate to one another to give the intricately detailed album that emerges here.

Review: Sindh (IDO, Lowless Music) is a project from Louis Rapet which focuses on utilising modular synths and real percussion types to create the ambient spaces and complex grooves that we love so much. 'Gupta Tribes', his first album, is inspired by an old civilization living in India long ago and with it Rapet tries to catch onto the atmospheres of a period where religion and sacred rites represent a big part of the people's lives. There's still a good spread of moods across the eight tracks, from the lively, tribal momentum of 'Sycthians', and 'Spyres', not a million miles from the majesty of KLF's Pure Trance series, to the swampy echoes of 'Ayaka System'.

Review: ** Bee Mask Repress **The prospect of Donato Dozzy reworking Bee Mask for the Spectrum Spool label is a mouth watering one and this double LP collection, entitled straightforwardly enough Donato Dozzy Plays Bee Mask more than lives up to it's billing. Originally commissioned to turn in a remix of Bee Mask's "Vaporware" track from last year's LP for Room 40, Dozzy apparently felt the track's inherent beauty merited more than just the one and sent over seven! This decision has resulted in a superb collection of reimaginations from the Voices Of The Lake producer, ranging from calming moments of serenity to bleepish, deep techno explorations.

Review: Los Angeles-based marine eyes (aka Cynthia Bernard) and Melbourne-based IKSRE (aka Phoebe Dubar) come together for this new album on Past Inside The Present and it is one that draws on their respective backgrounds as musicians, multi-instrumentalists and sound healers, as well as their shared love of field recordings. The album came about when each heard the other's music and decided to share sounds through an email pen-pal format. The mail chain included notes and pictures and became a geographical lesson and exploration of emotional landscapes. It blends ambient drone with neo-classical, sound healing, dream-pop and gentle lullabies onto something warm, comforting and introspective.

Review: Here comes a special transparent yellow vinyl version of Romare's new album on You See. His latest album Fantasy finds the widely admired artist take something of a new approach to his work. The man born Archie Fairhurst gets nice and abstract with his samples as he also layers in his own vocals and instrumentation. He has said the album was inspired by log walks and watching films doing lockdowns, and it shows. Hints of 70s fantasy cinema also features and his trademark off-kilter electronic rhythms and kinetic grooves also play a big part in making this one another winner.

Review: Controversial but nonetheless technically accomplished producer Vatican Shadow is divisive for more reasons than his now-well-discussed choice of collaborative partners. There's always something pretty menacing and unsettling about his output, steeped in uneasy atmospheres, taking us into the twisted side of leftfield electronic music, then sticking titles like Ghosts of Chechnya on his albums.
Nevertheless, there's light in all that pitch black, aurally at least. Listening to tracks like 'Peace Rage', and, despite the name, it's impossible not to pick up on the surprisingly hopeful harmonies, set within an IDM framework. Elsewhere, dubby techno is flirted with (if that's an appropriate word for these sounds) on 'Encryption Nets', while 'Snipers As A Breed Tend To Be Suspicious' accentuates tense atmosphere in a way that most studio pros can only hope for.

Review:  'Queens Of The Circulating Library' sees a re-release from Dais, once more cementing the everlasting reputation of monarchic industrial-drone-ambient outfit Coil. All hail. This nearly 50-minute project has verifiably made its subjects quiver and shake with fear; the stern voices of the 'queens' who guard this seemingly infinite sonic bank of knowledge are narrated by the opera singer Dorothy Lewis, who takes a break from melismatic belting and trilling to play the role of totalitarian info-guardian. A deep, menacing psychedelic journey, not for the faint of spirit.

Review:  Dominick Fernow's Vatican Shadow project returns with something like his 16th single release. The dark ambient and industrial master shows his skills again here with 'Jordanian Descent (Sharia Law)' kicking off. It its a 20+minute opus that takes up one whole side of vinyl and has shuffling, ever evolving mechanical rhythms and droning sounds, automated machines and dust and grime all making for an intriguing listen. On the flipside the same tune comes as a Guantanamo Military Commisions version and it is more intense but also more stripped back. It's darkly alluring and wholly brilliant.

Review: Berlin based sound artist Sa Pa delivers AI-33, titled Atmospheric Fragments. First debuting as a 'digital showroom' to accompany ten short experimental films curated by Manon Bernard in 2020, it now comes in isolated LP form. Aiming for a style of new ambient environmental music inspired by modern cities and urban skylines, the music here is both minimal and relentlessly detailed, conveying the chaos and entropy of seemingly orderly city spaces.

Review: 'Arab American Radio' is one of Muslimgauze's rarer cassettes, salvaged from his impressive vault in 2020. Spanning unusual genre experiments for Bryn Jones, from big beat to house, it moves away from his preferred experiments in dub, in favour of horrible noise bursts and integrations of steel hangdrum and electronic beat. There's even a rather weird attempt at jungle on the B1, which we'll wager doesn't follow the 4/4 time grid.

Review: Cult experimental outfit Nurse With Wound has had their Alas The Madonna Does Not Functiion 12" cut to picture disc for this special reissue. It has also been beautifully remastered by Andrew Liles and is one father band's more rhythmic and musical offerings. It joins the dots between their earlier and second phase work and sounds as good now as it did over 30 years ago. This one-off pressing comes in a lovely die-cut sleeve with Babs Santini artwork to make it an extra special collector's edition.

Review: We also heard from Andrew Wasylyk late last year when he offered up his second LP for the esteemed Clay Pipe Music label. Now it is to Edinburgh's Athens of the North for Parallel Light, another collection of sumptuous ambient sounds that are so much more than just background music. The album is actually an alternate mix of his 2020 long player Fugitive Light And Themes Of Consolation so offers a different perspective with plenty of moving spiritual-jazz and neo-classical sounds that help paint alluring musical landscapes.

Review: Contrasting to the already-released soundtrack vinyl (full of 80s pop hits a-la Kate Bush, Siouxsie & The Banshees, and The Cramps), this Invada release of Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein's original soundtrack to Stranger Things' fourth series takes an obviously different approach. While the pop songs that scoured the series tended to be upbeat and of the best curatorial quality, Dixon and Stein's original motifs come in two versions of moodier and more dramatic intent. Volume 1 contains all manner of moody arpeggiations, atmospherics and top-notch darkwave stylings.

Review: Some eight years after it first appeared in stores on CD, one of James Clements' most perfectly formed ambient explorations as ASC finally gets a vinyl release. Quiet and dignified with impeccable sound design - a trademark of Clements' ambient productions - 'Fervent Dream' lives up to the promise of its title. The album's eight tracks naturally tend towards the ultra-atmospheric, with slowly shifting and calmly unfurling chords and aural textures jostling for space in the mix with processed field recordings and gentle melodies. It's nothing less than a comforting sound bath for the head and heart, with highlights including the mildly foreboding 'Deluge of Thought', the breathlessly brilliant 'Epsilon Dream' and the exceptionally immersive, effortlessly picturesque 'Promises To Keep'.

Review: Deathprod (Helge Sten), hailing from Norway, deconstructs what we mean by the word 'composition' on this latest LP for Smalltown Supersound. Exploring what could be described as his own style of lowercase music, there is a granular quality to this eerie collection of 17 'compositions', which appear in the chronological order of which they were first recorded. Building the music from an array of salvaged, largely obsolete, and sometimes faulty digital synths - this is a looming, towering monolith of a drone LP.

Review: There are echoes of Coil's mid-1980s cult classic album 'Horse Rotorvator' in 'The Ape of Naples' in that it has such a wide variety of sounds and styles. This one first came back in 2005 and is a go-to for fans as it is just a great example of the band's singular sonic world. The album was put together by Peter Christopherson a year after Jhonn Balance's deadly fall and it features re-workings of the live favourites like 'Amethyst Deceivers' and Love Secret's Domain album track 'Teenage Lightning' plus a numb of tunes first meant for the ultimately ill-fated Backwards long player. Grammy-nominated engineer Jessica Thompson has remastered all the originals for this new reissue.

Review: The ominous clangs and thuds grow louder and louder, louder and louder, atmosphere of increasing tension turning into borderline panic as timbre's brooding menace threatens to erupt into snarling aggression. Suffice to say, like a good chunk of Diabel, 'Wedding Dance Macabre' is disinterested in niceties and would likely run anyone through who is looking for background music. The fact this is one of Andrzej Korzy?ski's scores for one of Andrzej ?u?awski's movies only makes that feat more phenomenal, given the role soundtracks often play in cinema.

Of course, it's not all so foreboding and intimidating. Tracks like 'Through the Door - Theodor' are in fact downright playful, tune comprising high pitched 'boing' noises, like springs recoiling in harmony, while 'Your Father Is Dead Young Lord' is a masterclass in emotionally captivating piano. Nevertheless, the point remains - these were never meant to accompany a visual piece, but instead play leading parts in the narrative of Diabel.

Review: Arovane is Uwe Zahn and is someone who can conjure up, arrange and thread together music and sonic texture that is so lush it feels like you could reach out and bath in it. This is a record couched in ambient music but that leans heavily on the classical sounds he has also showcased over the last two decades. The whole thing is meticulously crafted with exquisite sound design and plenty of sensitivities, lush melody and rich emotions that all linger long in the memory and add up to a beautifully escapist listen.

Review: Perhaps only dedicated avant-garde electronic heads will know about The New Backwards, the final project from the seminal industrial band Coil. But that doesn't make this 2008 masterpiece worthy of this new gory, visceral reissue; far from it. Limited to just 555 copies and splattered with the murderous blood of listeners who didn't survive the album's first incarnation from beginning to end, this one contains 8 additional tracks, including an exclusive live 'work in progress' track ('Backwards'), documenting the many criminally insane production choices Peter Christopherson and co. would make in real time.

Review: This reissued version of Muslimgauze's 'Emia Bakia' is a long out-of-print and hard to find album from 1994. It is one of the most unique in the late, great producer's vast catalogue. The set's uniqueness lies in the surprising shape and focus of the rhythms that Muslimgauze utilised on the album; while as percussion-rich as ever, and often cloaked in his usual dark ambient sounds, dub-influenced basslines and Eastern exoticism, the beats are regularly far more dancefloor-focused than you'd expect. This isn't otherworldly ambient dub, but rather some mind-altering mutation of psychedelic house music that still sounds like nothing else around.

Review: Detlef Weinrich is back with his fifth full-length album under the Tolouse Low Trax moniker. Now based in Paris after leaving Dussledorf, he heads in something of a new direction and brings heavy yet velvet sounds which replace the rawness of his earlier work. Tracks on Leave Me Alone bring razor-sharp rhythms to drifting cosmic melodies, there are slow and industrial drones and haunting pads, a signature sense of drum funk and much more besides. This is a great new sound for an artist always on the move.

Review: Bryn Jones was the man behind the always hugely experimental Muslimgauze project. The late Mancunian has a catalogue of music that is complex and dense, especially for newcomers but the ongoing reissues of it will help people get stuck in and explore. Lo Fi India Abuse has been remastered for the occasion and comes on vinyl, picture disc as here, or CD. It is a mix of brilliant, brutal and beguiling sound collages that ride ramshackle rhythms and chew up and spit out biased bass, rusty metal, middle eastern melody, psyched-out dub funk and plenty of hard-to-define sounds in between.