New releases last two weeks:

Review: Blaque Dynamite is the work of Mike Mitchell, a drummer from Texas who has played with neo-soul queen Erykah Badu, and jazz legends old and new in Herbie Hancock and Kamasi Washington. He also makes challenging, defiantly original house music on his own and on top of a couple of albums worth checking from the last two years, comes this EP, which arrived late last year but now debuts on wax. It has a couple of short, sketchy originals that are lo-fi, low-key hip hop vignettes, while JT Donaldson and Stefan Ringer add their own more club-ready reworks. Ben Hixon & Blaque Dynamite also hot up for a remix that is all shimmering melodies and shuffling percussive rhythms.

Review: It's been a long time coming that we should reach the point where German minimal house megamind DJ Koze gets to indulge his own "influences mix", for none other than resident who's-who mix aggregator, DJ-Kicks. Koze's long-loved, minimal house spirituals sound is unmistakable, serving to fill out in widescreen technicolour the best sound achievable across dance spectra; a palatial pan-European palate of crisp, soul-driven sound, crossing into downtempo, bedroom pop and lo-hi-fi crusts. This landmark 50th edition in the 'Kicks series hears Koze blear through said sounds with ease, disparately uniting laid-back hip-hop flips of Madlib through to the raw racecourse force of Berghain techno, then incorporating indie-pop and melancholic outliers further afield, then closing on a fully edited piece of 'Hyuwee' by fellow titan Session Victim. Koze's goal was never to show off his deep knowledge but to craft a mix that anyone could enjoy: in his own words, he sought to recreate a radio show-like experience, emphasisng harmony, not beatmatching.

Review: Dallas-based Ben Hixon has long been one of the key contributors to the catalogue of hometown label Dolfin Records, most recently co-producing a swathe of cuts on fellow Texan J.T Donaldson's most recent EP. Here he returns to solo action with a typically assured two-tracker. Check first A-side 'Cuming Inside', where warming Fender Rhodes motifs, squelchy synths, cut-up soul vocal snippets and warming bass cluster around a crunchy drum machine beat and jammed-out melodic motifs. He opts for an even deeper and more alien-sounding construction on flipside 'MMM!', an early morning workout that sounds perfect at that point when minds and bodies are entering the hallucinatory realm.

Review:  Liv.e is an LA-based, Dallas-born artist who this summer has a reimagined version of her acclaimed sophomore album Girl In The Half Pearl served up after collaborating with Dallas-based producer Ben Hixon. Together, they transform the original tracks into an energised, feel-good experience that symbolises resilience and recovery after heartbreak. Hixon's innovative approach to each song adds a wholly different perspective on Liv.e's introspective lyrics with genre-blending production traversing, trap, broken beats, deep house and and blissed out grooves all with the vocals unifying the sounds with an otherworldly edge.