Back catalogue: Leftfield

Review: Reissued by Before I Die after being singled out as a choice cut from a recent Swedish library music compilation, 'UFO' is a cosmic funk jam by one lesser-cited duo known as Falk & Klou. This being their only collaboration, the fused efforts of Carl Johan Fogelklou and Fredrik Segerfalk make for an otherworldly experience, with lasery sound FX and a strange narration complementing this toothy electro-funk oddball. The remix by Andi Henley (Ruf Kutz) on the A-side cements the track's importance.

Review: Andrea Ferlin presents four stunning tracks that dive into deep house depths on this sick new HAZE release. 'OPIA' is first and features modulated stabs, rumbling pads and a sliding bassline that makes it an ideal choice for peak hours. In contrast, 'ORGO' shines in after-hours sets with its intricate percussion polyrhythms and layered sounds. The B-side shifts the mood with 'DORF,' while 'Morning Sunshine' evokes the anticipation of a classic orchestral interlude. This one is full of goodness for all sorts of settings.

Review: Most of the time you expect Terence Fixmer to deliver a steely strain of techno which reliably moves monolithic crowds in any temple you care to mention, but on this album for Novamute he's purposefully opened his palette to the EBM and industrial sounds which sparked his imagination as a teenager. It's instantly apparent on the abrasive jackhammer sonics of opening track 'Test of the Times', while 'In Synthesis' comes on with the sort of tough but sexy arpeggios you'd readily associate with Nitzer Ebb or Front 242. There's still a dancefloor functionality in these tracks, but pure techno is not the order of the day, and the results are thrilling from start to finish.

Review: Established as a record label some four years ago, Live At Robert Johnson have really come to the fore as representing the best of contemporary European deep house alongside the likes of Dial and Running Back. Here, the Frankfurt institution returns to their recent triumphant Lifesaver compilation with this addendum 12" release featuring the productions from Roman Flugel, Lauer, San Laurentino and Tuff City Kids. Flugel opens proceedings with the rough and moody "More Is Not Enough" which brandishes a beat that can't help but get in your face. This is complemented by the calmer, sumptuous New Beat stylings of Lauer's "Hector" and the richly colourful "Final Landing" from San Laurentino. "People Is A Crackhead (Tuff Hamlet Riddim)" is not only the best track title in a hot minute but yet another original dancefloor slayer from Gerd Janson and Lauer's Tuff City Kids, opting for the Germanic digi dub meets tuff house route.

Review: Queeste welcomes FMVEE with a hugely singular collection of sounds. Though this is idiosyncratic music with its very own lexicon, the feelings of which the artists speaks are familiar to us all even if the methods are not: love songs, rueful reflection and heart ache are things we can all relate to. 'EverythingUneverKnewUwanted' is a particularly dense track of abstractions that reveal more beauty with each listen. 'Seed Perfuming' is all broken bass and reflected melody that shimmers and shines in a post-dubstep fashion and 'Sobbing' is avant-pop gem with a soaring vocal from Rosie Ruel amongst heavy as you like hits and bass.

Review: Berlin-based but American-born producer Fred P is as deep as they come. Private Society has been his latest label concern for a while now and this State of Bliss series kicked off in November last year in fine fashion. Part 2 is another of his smooth signature blends of jazz, ambient and house. 'NY' has shimmering chords and a percussive clatter that eventually clears to reveal a skittish broken beat that is live and lush. 'Awakening Desire' then cuts loose on expansive ambient pads, with worlds vocals smeared across a wide open night sky in suggestive jazz drumming drifts way down low. It's an experimental piece before the funky jazz dancer 'High Fusion' gets you on your toes with a killer bass guitar line.

Review: A collaborative new single by sampletronic master Kieran Hebden (aka. Four Tet) and guitarist and composer William Tyler, two acclaimed musicians and both longstanding friends. Part of a recent spewing-forth of Hebden-adjacent material to hit the shelves after the artist's oft-reported-upon "agent of chaos" phase, these two tracks, pressed to a furtive 12", provide a neat counterpoint to that assessment. Rather than a pair of riddim bangers, the record flaunts Hebden's signature electronic textures and Tyler's guitar into a hypnotic, nominally dark soundwhirl, reminiscent of the earliest days of Text, but with a unique edge - a sonic corner never quite scoured before by either artist.

Review: Death On Wax has already slipped out a handful of sharply informed edit and remix 12"s which fly the flag for the early 80s dance culture, when seedy, nocturnal bands were colliding with the flamboyant grooves of disco and synth pop. On this latest record, Jaz goes low and slow on the new wave goth tones of 'Cleopatra' before Frantz leans in on the Eurodisco freakiness of 'Hyde & Go Sleaze'. DJ Rocca & N2B pile on the pressure with the camp delights of 'Abuse' and Facets completes the set with the boxy beats of 'Never Passing'. Essential cuts for any discerning death disco.

Review: Shift Records debuts with a potent collection of four techno tracks on their first release, bringing a dystopian future to life through sound. Set in the year 3666, the label's narrative is one of a world where humanity has lost hope, and a clandestine operation, SHIFT, emerges to breathe life back into a darkened Earth. On Side-1, it opens with Sanktion Libido's 'Dream on You,' a haunting track that pulses with deep, hypnotic rhythms, that blend EBM and techno. A2 follows with Fakk's 'Naturalenza,' blending organic elements with mechanical precision for an intense, driving groove. but also, a nostalgic trip. On the flip side, B1's 'Fuzschal' by P.O. is a sonic weapon, its relentless beats and dark atmosphere pushing the listener further into the dystopia. B2 closes with AMQN's 'Persecuta,' a track that combines futuristic soundscapes with a raw, industrial edge. Shift Records #1 delivers top-tier techno that captures the essence of a future in need of sonic salvation.

Review: Athens dub techno producer Fluxion debuts their latest LP on Vibrant Music, riffing on his earliest days as a member of the trailblazing Chain Reaction crew whilst also bringing said early pioneering stirrings into the present moment. Recorded between 2023-24, this record plays back like an impression of back-roomed delirium; blackout moments in intra-club corridors, where one's sense of time is lost. Louder music may pump away in the room next door, but that's OK, because nothing comes close to this affective hotbox. Branching out from "dub techno" in its strictest sense, 'Touch' adds superluminal, vacuumed Whammy guitar to a swelling, motionless chord repeated throughout the track, and bluesy dub crackler 'Reflections' indulges mournful piano above a scape-squinting mix; 'Desiderium' is the third highlight of ours, powerfully evoking the sense of something irrevocably lost.

Review: Back in 2005 we might not have predicted what a phenomenon Ghost Box would become. In the years since, the label has become a beacon for the hauntological exploration of Britain's inherent oddness creeping just below the surface. Julian House's graphic design is a huge part of the label's artistic merit, and it figures his music as The Focus Group follows a similarly aesthetically rigorous direction. There's a pastoral collage quality to Hey Let Loose Your Love which takes you right back to the 70s, with beautiful musical passages offset by surrealist samples and unexpected diversions into the recent history of these wyrd isles.

Review: Unheard Of Hope - one prominent tine of the holy trinity / label supergroup known as TAR/MM/UOH - specialises is that all-too-rare subsection of music, the avant-garde. Theirs is a seedier aesthetic, preferring the more traditional, yet grimmer and demurer ends of this hotly contestable musical "approach", and perhaps emblematic of this is the latest record by Guatemalan cellist and vocalist, Mabe Fratti. Out on every format - tape, CD, vinyl - Sentir que no sabes ("feel like you don't know") hears Fratti's crystalline vocals glint like life-giving liquids, and sound too to effuse from the same fruitful source as its watershed cello lows and occasional blossomy arp-pop structures (ballad 'Pantalla azul' is by far the poppiest moment). The evident confidence brought to the record lends it an element of surprise, too, when we discover that it is entirely thematically rooted in doubt. In the words of the artist, this is a record born of the "moment when you feel you don't know anything and you are soft like jello and any fork can go through you." When one finds strength in permeability, one embraces what is normally registered as a pure antagonism, and all seemingly rigid particulars are changed for ever.

Review: 
For the first time ever since the mid-80s, Robert Fripp's God Save The Queen is now avaialble on fresh vinyl once more. It was the second solo album from Fripp and is made up almost entirely of so-called 'Frippertronics,' which means much of the record was performed by improvisation. Under each track are solid drums and bass to get the grooves going and guitar loops for the five tracks were recorded live in concert during 1979. It's a real left turn of an album and one that can be as mesmerising as it can wild.

Review: Robert Fripp's pioneering work in electronic music reached its influential peak with the so-called Frippertronics tour of 1979. Creating compelling soundscapes out of tape loops might not seem revolutionary now, but it certainly was at the time, and out of the tour came this limited and highly prized album, perhaps the most sincere recorded document of Fripp's creative breakthrough. Now Let The Power Fall is being pressed on vinyl for the first time since its initial release on Editions EG in the 80s, and it comes with additional versions of '1984' never heard before.

Review: Regular collaborator with label boss zake, City of Dawn teams up with From Overseas, an aptly named producer based on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean. The result is classic Past Inside The Present - quivering, celestial ambient music that would fit into the drone category if it weren't for the fact it's constantly, subtly changing and evolving almost imperceptibly. Utterly horizontal in attitude, utterly heavenly in realisation, this is a corker even by PITP's very high standards, with this edition arriving in limited transparent sepia vinyl LP (+ download code) form.

Review: Music From Calendars is the on going project Future Sound of London have been helming since 2017. It sees them serve up new digital tracks each month and home put them out as an album at the end of the year. This time out the crew pick some of their best tunes from the last four years and put them together in a seamless mix over the course of 50 minutes. Their sound is a perfect fit for the format - all sleek ambient, gently lilting electronic grooves and sci-fi moods that drift by like zephyrs.

Review: British electronic duo Future Sound Of London celebrate their 30th anniversary in 2018. In From The Archives Vol 9, unpublished tracks from their extensive archives see the light of day for the first time spanning the period from the early 1990s to present day. Discover progressive electronic experiments from the depths of the FSOL catalogue - timeless and innovative expressions in IDM such as "Semi Conscious Participant" or "Super Tide" could have been created during any era, through to sublime ambient house excursions like "Ocea" or "Riverbed". Upbeat moments can be heard on the drum 'n' bass influenced "Without You It's Meaningless" or the blustering beats of "Oska Traveller.

Review: Since the mid 2000s, veteran ambient duo Future Sound of London has been doing their own thing, occasionally dropping a new installment in their Environments series of albums. This edition - 6.5 - is their second of the year, and continues the pair's tradition of blending trippy elements to create soundscapes that veer from creepy iciness (the melancholic "Some Degree of Sanctuary"), to mystical ambient dub ("Something Approaching Happiness"), via deep space explorations ("Amplification of Intelligence"), and electronic psychedelia ("Halodule"). While they've arguably sanded down their rougher and weirder edges over the years, FSOL are still capable of crafting distinctive downtempo music that's as hallucinogenic as it comes.

Review: This is a special audiophile vinyl version of Live Improvisations, an album featuring two sides of music, one the response to the other. The A-side is a recording of a 2014 session between Hakobune and Chihei Hatakeyama that was made with the colours of autumn and rural Japan in mind. Both of these artists have composed dozens of works that have established them as leaders in their field and this is no different. On the flip, zake and From Overseas craft 'Live Improvisation II' and 'forge an intercontinental bond' as they recorded the music in one take with no editing afterward. It's a gorgeous listen that shows a real mastery of tone and texture.

Review: This new one from our favourite US ambient outlet takes the form of a selection of long-form compositions from artists who are close to the label. As such it's a perfect reflection of its signature sound - deeply immersive soundscapes, slowly shifting synths and meditative moods made with a mix of hardware tools, guitars, pedals and even baritone vocals. It's named after a Norwegian term for warmth and intimacy, which certainly plays out from the evolving loops of 'A Whisper' to the textured melancholy of 'Canaan' and the reverberant drift of 'Coronation Ring'.