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.