Back catalogue: Leftfield

Review: BOOM! Our favourites, Cititrax, roll the third editions of Tracks out onto our shelves, and the results are unsurprisingly strong on this excellent various artists comp. It's a mixed bag of skills, as per usual, and the sounds are those of a new NYC, fuelled by a new sort of post-industrial sensibility. Amato Y Mariana open with the tight beats and groove of "Queires Bailar", followed closely by the ominous compositions of the EBM-flavoured "Montgat" from The Sixteen Steps. On the flip, His Dirty Secrets bleeps out some morphed acid on "Structures", and "Another Stranger" from Further Reductions churns out a slow, mild-mannered house experiment with its roots clearly planted in the coldest of waves. Sick.

Review: Savage Garden's Darren Hayes returned from the wilderness in 2022 after a hiatus of almost ten years. During that time, he tried his hand at stand up comedy, kept a social media presence in the form of shared videos featuring him bursting into song, and evidently spent a fair amount of time recharging. After all, you don't make albums with the energy of Homosexual, the comeback piece, if you're running on empty.
Let's Try Being In Love was the first single taken from that, and in many ways the whole package is more about message than music - a guy publicly celebrating his sexuality and marriage after spending a very long time not feeling ready to do so, during a period in which he was a bonafide global pop star. Here said track appears in both 12" extended form and a Louis La Roche mix, both of which are made for chugging dancefloors, filtered tracking synths firing on all cylinders and an overall sense of self.

Review: Sheffield's Hedge Maze is back with Riding The Wave EP, a great 12" that is drenched in distortion and grime. 'Strukku's Beat' kicks off with thick, slimy textures and vocals fragmented like blunt objects that evoke raw anguish. The title track intensifies with relentless beats, static-dipped drums, and haunting melodies, and as things progress, Hedge Maze refines his sound into a serrated syrup with 'Zown Spirit,' where ruffled rhythms play off with distant echoes and reverb. 'O X O (Zero Times Zero)' maintains the eerie aura with filtered textures, while 'Over and Out' closes the EP with post-punk gloom, featuring raw vocals and trademark distortion.

Review: Let's get a few things clear before we start. This Heinrich Dressel is not the same German archeologist Heinrich Dressel who studied under the great Theodor Mommsen in Berlin during the late-mid 1800s. He is, however, the Rome-born electronic producer who takes a massive lead from the funky, glittering, but subtly chilling horror movie scores of the 1970s and 1980s, crafting highly detailed but lo-fi feeling tracks that are packed with pastiche but never parody.

Promenade is his latest effort, and instantly captures (or creates) the atmosphere this producer is best-known for. At a time when this end of synth wave has experienced a huge resurgence thanks to successive movie soundtracks that took a lead from the aforementioned era, not to mention TV series like Stranger Things, this couldn't be more appropriate, and what makes it so essential is that authenticity in audible - feeling like it belongs, rather than simply riding a bandwagon.

Review: Bordello A Parigi is back with more of their sublime electro jams this time from Heinrich Dressel. The EP kicks off with 'Galatograd', a slow and steady jam with shimmering chords and lazy baselines. 'Eden Olympia' then picks up the pace a little with still skill drums and celestial keys that take you on a jaunt through the cosmos. 'Remoria' brings many layers of lush and futuristic synth work and timeless electro rhythms that are comforting and subtly celebratory and 'Mylos' shuts down this most lovely EP with another classy sound.

Review: Ruben Benabou marks out and identifies another sonic constellation; this is a rapid indie trance-dance four-tracker of galactic ambition and scale. Drawing inspiration from sci-fi soundtracks, and the warmer currents of electro, leaders 'Message To Nowhere' and 'Words In A Void' also recall the gladdened awe of space disco, with twinging leads skirting about the stereo like passing shooting stars. The Hacker's version of the title track plays back like an 8-bit minigame version of the main mission, with its pocket-generated drums, while 'A Thousand Nights' is a prime exercise in retro synthwave, and the perfect closer.

Review: Here comes a special Japanese edition of Harvey Sutherland's superb Boy album. Since debuting in 2013, Mike Katz has released a lot of music under this alias, always flitting between interconnected styles (electronic disco, deep house, jazz-funk, nu-boogie, revivalist New Jersey garage and Italo-disco) without ever laying down an album of all-new music. Boy, then, is a significant milestone in the Melbourne producer's career and offers an exploration of what he calls "neurotic funk" - a boundary-blurring fusion of jammed-out analogue electronics and live instrumentation that draws on a multitude of musical styles without neatly sitting in any one pigeonhole.

Review: UK noise maverick Russell Haswell has had an impressive, star-studded career, and we're pleased to see that he's sticking close to the underground thanks to his recent friendship with Powell's Diagonal imprint. After a series of appearances for the lo-fi imprint, Haswell comes through with an album, a whopping seventeen tracks of brutal power electronics and quasi techno. This is the sort of shit you can stand back and be thrown backwards by, or exactly the sort of gear you can layer over DJ sets for added damage. There are pieces such as "Wholly Unaware" and "Gas Attack", which do verge onto the 4/4 sphere. In any case, this is some serious stuff and it comes hotly recommended

Review: South London's potent indie auteur Heartworms unveils her highly anticipated debut album here on Speedy Wunderground. It has been produced by longtime collaborator Dan Carey and fuses the driving, motorik energy of Depeche Mode with PJ Harvey's sharp lyrical prowess, and is finished off with the offbeat rhythms of dance-punk favourites LCD Soundsystem. The result is a dark, intense sonic assault that is unmistakably Heartworms in the way it blends gothic post-punk with unashamed emotion and relentless momentum. It once again proves why Heartworms is one of the most exciting new voices in alternative music.

Review: WRWTFWW Records is back with a third collaboration with Japanese electronic, ambient and synth-pop group Interior. This time they reissue a forgotten 1989 solo gem by band member Daisuke Hinata that very much deserves more spotlight. Tarzanland captures the essence of late-'80s California with sun-soaked kanky? ongaku, minimalistic proto-chillwave and breezy synth melodies all washing over you in delightful fashion. Its lush soundscapes evoke the likes of Steve Winwood and Steely Dan as it is infused with nostalgia and serene electronic sounds. They make for a blissful journey through simple pleasures, where ocean waves and warm breezes empty your mind of all but the nicest of thoughts.

Review: A warm welcome back to perennial genre-benders Hot Chip, who return to stores after three long years with their eighth album, some 21 years after making their debut. Freakout/Release is no dramatic change in direction, but instead a further distillation of what has always made the band so appealing - a trademark fusion of synth-pop, loved-up house sounds, lilting and sometimes melancholic lead vocals, loose-limbed organic drums, nods to Prince and an ability to craft killer hooks. There are highlights aplenty, from the gravelly live hip-hop funk of 'The Evil That Men Do' (where rapper Cadence Weapon delivers a star turn) and the subtly post-punk influenced, saucer-eyed brilliance of 'Hard To Be Funky' (featuring Lou Hayter), to the classic Hot Chip sing-along flex of 'Time' and the krautrock-tinged 'Out of My Depth'.

Review: Southern California-based composer and improviser David Rosenboom is a figure who can't quite be aligned to one particular school, his work slipping intriguingly through the cracks. A collaboration with vocalist Jacqueline Humbert, Daytime Viewing is an extraordinary narrative poem set over a song cycle consisting of six pieces. Quietly released privately in 1983, Unseen Worlds has brought this seminal work back into view along with a full remastering. Exploring ideas of absurdist theatricality, TV soap operas, commercialism, and family, Humbert's voice and Rosenboom's production merge to create a landscape that is at once lush yet also dystopian. An entirely unique release that invites endless study.