Back catalogue: Experimental/Electronic

Review: A new album from Sam Shepherd AKA Floating Points is always cause for celebration, but even by his standards "Crush" is rather special. Largely eschewing the ambient jazz soundscape shuffle of 2017's "Reflections - Mojave Desert", it sees the Shepherd showcase his musical dexterity in stunning fashion via cuts that wrap shimmering neo-classical strings around what sound like modular electronics and rhythms that variously touch on broken beat, off-kilter experimental D&B and Autechre-style IDM. Of course there are ambient and experimental soundscapes showcased, but it's the fact that the album contains a swathe of formidably dancefloor-focused cuts in the style that first made him standout that pleases us most. Highlights include recent single "LesAlpx", the dreamy "Anasickmodular" and the "People's Potential" style deep house intricacy of "Last Bloom".

Review: Forest Swords (Matthew Barnes) is a beloved electronic artist, and his latest album Bolted will surely add to that credence. Though his earliest albums are bona fide modern classics, Barnes has since spent the past few years working as an in-demand composer and sound designer, writing music for ballet, film and video games. Now he returns to form: 'Bolted' was recorded over the past year in a warehouse factory space in Barnes' home city of Liverpool. As tends to be the case with Ninja Tune's roster of experimental electronic artists, we're again reminded of the sound Barnes has established over the years as entirely his own; a deeply earthen dub come electronica, spanning mournful, resampled-and-sequenced calls into the night ('Caged'), knockingly broken and ghostly schisms ('Butterfly Effect') and 'scapes evoking sublime desert pilgrimages ('The Low'). For those hoping to hear Ninja Tune return to their atmospheric side in the tradition of Lone or Amon Tobin, this is your record.