Back catalogue: Leftfield

Review: The artist himself admits that The Glory Days EP marks a new era for Alan Johnson after a decade of sporadic releases. Building on last year's Stillness EP, this release features entirely new music which has been made over the past two years as the creative process has been refined and moved towards a simpler storytelling approach. Assembled for the YUKU label, the EP showcases a shift in sound that blends past influences with new experimentation and danceable, glossy playfulness. Divided into two distinct moods, it reflects both a nod to a chaotic past and a glimpse into the future with earthed low ends and kinetic rhythms run through with fizzy electronics and menacing moods.

Review: Back in the 1990s, the combination of Mixmaster Morris, Jonah Sharp (he of Spacetime Continuum fame) and Haruomi Hosono was the closest thing you got to an ambient supergroup (the Orb's collaboration with Robert Fripp and Thomas Fehlmann as FFWD not withstanding). The trio only recorded one album together, the sublime Quiet Logic, but it's an absolute doozy - as this timely reissue proves. For one reason or another, it was only ever released in Japan at the time, meaning this is the first time it has been available worldwide. As you'd expect with such masters of the art form at the helm, it is genuinely superb - a slowly evolving opus that moves between unfurling, dub-fired ambient techno ('Waraitake') to ambient jazz eccentricity ('Dr Gauss/Yakan Hiko (Night Flight)'), via deep ambient d&b ('Uchu Yuei (Night Swimming)') and deep space ambient.

Review: Berlin-based producer JakoJako aka Sibel Kocer's debut album for Mute - after appearances on a stream of leading German labels including Tresor - is described as a distillation of ideas that she's been exploring for many years. In reality, that means working on a minimal set up, away from the computer while restricting herself to just a Eurorack and a Waldorf Iridium Core, in the search for spontaneity. She found it, for sure, as the results - recorded in Vietnam during the Tet Lunar New Year celebrations - are a feast of glistening arpeggios and lush modular textures, stripped back but full of expression and personality. 'Ghi-ta' will appeal to fans of vintage perky ambient productions the Pete Namlook/Mixmaster Morris collaboration Dreamfish, while 'Gio' has a touch of Tangerine Dream's classic widescreen sensibilities. Bold tones, bold debut.

Review: Allegedly one of the first ever records to make use of sampling, Jean-Michel Jarre's seventh album Zoolook brought with it a unique vibe, one well worth looking back on in light of its latest Sony reissue. In terms of notoriety, Zoolook pales in comparison to the electronic music crackerjack's 1976-8 heyday, which saw to both Oxygene and Equinoxe; but this is understandable, as Zoolook came much later, and sacrificed the grandiose mood of otherworldly space-awe for an eerier menage of playful factory hits and cacophonous dance hubbubery. Perhaps this sound - a jankier one that grew in popularity in the mid 80s - was driven by Jarre's use of the Fairlight CMI workstation and sampler, an example of a piece of gear that had the power to define an entire sound. We'd venture to say that the titular "Zoolook" is a kind of gaze that, by virtue of us living in a machine society, makes animals of us all.

Review: In 2005, Jan Jelinek "pitched" his electronica/kosmische vision to the potent collective fan by way of ten ecosystemically-informed, prepared ambient numbers. Spanning Bibio-esque reversy guitar and sloshing exotica, this one existed for an inordinate period as a digital download, in which much time elapsed until now, its 20th anniversary - at which point we hear it available again, arriving for the first time on vinyl. Modelled on the sonic prototypes of his German rock forbears, this early electronica work from Jelinek amounts to a fearsomely intricate revue, expanding on krautrock's organic textures and unremittingly restless feel.