Back catalogue: Leftfield

Review: Tape Reworks Vol. 2 is the new 12" remix edition of the 2021 album Tape Works Vol. 1 (2021), by the UK's leading musique concrete ensemble Langham Research Centre. With the latter album following up the introductory Tape Works Vol. 1 (2017), which recollected the group's earliest experiments, the second album focused entirely on more recent, original splicings, cuttings and respoolings of the former modernist statement. Now, in turn, come two new remixes of the project by Kara Lis Coverdale and Beatriz Ferreyra, the former of 'Movable Fields' and the latter of 'Nachholbedurfnis'. Coverdale's version is an arresting, looming abstraction, capturing a sense of cosmic loneliness through exoplanetary whistles and deep subs gleaned from the original album's pickups of brutalist buildings; Ferreyra's is jerkier and stranger in palate, utilising glassy transitional sound effects and rapid, sped-up-slowed-down warbles.

Review: Colin Dunkerley, aka the artist Lapsed Pacifist, navigates the world as a sound engineer by day and leaves little time for his own music. He has plenty of accolades for his work from a niche audience for his productions under the alias Negative Neutron but for years wanted to pursue a more dark ambient route. Finally, he has made time to indulge his own music-making endeavours and now presents Hypatia, an album that materialised over an extended period. It features field recordings and audio loops processed through his modular setup and takes inspiration from Marco Polo's imaginary cities and rather mirrors Dunkerley's creative journey as it evokes memories of cold, distant places and the emotions they stir.