Just Music レコード& CD

Review: It doesn't take much imagination to picture Hopkins' delight at positioning 'Light Through The Veins' smack bang in the middle of this album, which he first released in 2008. As rousing, life-affirming and inspiring as anything the producer has made, it arrived at a point when he'd been sharing studios and stages with a diverse range of artists - for example, Brian Eno, King Creosole, David Holmes and Coldplay. By this point he had cemented his status as one of those rare talents whose genre of choice is simply 'music'.

Of course Insides is Hopkins solo, so very much rooted in the post-club dance world he grew out of. Nevertheless, the evidence of his broad mastery is clear as day. Staccato stressed hi hats and sombre keys on 'Colour Eye', the most perfectly heartbreaking piano solo, 'Autumn Hill', and head-nodding dystopian downtempo on 'Wire'. Very good indeed, and very much worth returning to.

Review: Built as a continuous 55-minute suite split into nine movements, Marconi Union's The Fear Of Never Landing hears the duo recapture a state of exhilarating levity. Their 12th studio album, it finds them in refreshed head and soundspace, having come a heck of a long way since their 2003 debut Under Wires And Searchlights. The record emerged slowly over two years, during which the Manchester duo (Jamie Crossley, Duncan Meadows) grappled with creative uncertainty, reconnecting with their foundations through live experimentation. The catalyst came while scoring the cult 1975 film Downhill Motion, an experience that rekindled their affinity for cinematic composition and set the tone for this surefire introspection aid. From 'Eight Miles High Alone', a hypnotism which finds its inducer in sequencer-driven pulses, evoking isolation, weightlessness and quiet tension.

Review: The twelfth studio release from Manchester duo Marconi Union reaffirms why they remain such a quietly vital force in ambient music. Formed in 2003, the pair's latest work arrives after a two-year process of reorientation i one that saw them scrap old habits, test new material live, and ultimately return to the atmospheric instinct that first defined them. The result is a seamless 55-minute composition split into nine movements: fluid, immersive, and full of emotional nuance. It's a brand new release that spans sequencer-driven passages, low-lit drone work and impressionistic electronics, all stitched together with an elegant sense of pacing. 'Eight Miles High Alone', the first piece completed and shared publicly, sets the tone with a solitary pulse and slow-building tension i its clarity and weightlessness shaping much of what follows. The music unfolds without force, evoking both disquiet and release. Though wordless, the journey speaks volumes. A sense of modern anxiety hovers throughout, yet it's counterbalanced by warmth, space and stillness. After years of refining their sound across acclaimed releases and multimedia collaborations, Marconi Union deliver some of their most affecting work to date i not by reinventing themselves, but by rediscovering the beauty of doing less, slowly, and with purpose.