Back in stock: Leftfield

Review: Three years after delivering a stunning debut album that cemented their position as this century's finest fusionists of Middle Eastern music and analogue electronic music, Acid Arab return with a sophomore set that's every bit as impressive. The basic ingredients remain the same - think Arabic vocals, instrumentation and percussion mixed with heavy drum machine rhythms, raw electronics and mind-altering TB-303 motifs - though the resultant tracks arguably draw on a wider range of electronic music influences. So as well as nods towards acid house and techno, the album also contains throbbing, dancefloor-centric workouts informed by EBM, Italo-disco, new wave, synth-pop and industrial. It's a subtle switch-up, but one wholly in keeping with the French quartet's distinctive vision.

Review: Arv & Miljo's new album delves into radical environmental activism and draws from the Swedish Plogbill movement's early 90s actions alongside Earth First! and Earth Liberation Front. Mixing monologues, interviews, protest songs, and site recordings with raw kosmische synth music, the pair crafts a mesmerising audio collage. Chaotic yet harmonious, disorienting yet soothing, the album reflects dedication, passion, and the spirit of change. Originally a limited CDR release in 2021, it quickly became a highlight in Arv & Miljo's discography. Now on, Jorden Forst offers a multi-faceted journey through environmental activism and the human spirit's resilience.

Review: British experimental band Coil remain hardcore favourites for record collections of a certain age. They were on fire in the late eighties and early nineties and often switched it up from one album to another. Following on from the release of new editions of Love's Secret Domain and Musick To Play In The Dark 2 comes this trifold edition of The New Backwards, which was initially conceived in 2007. It is an extended edition that revisits a number of tracks that didn't fit with the band's first posthumous release Ape of Naples from 2005, and features plenty of chaotic rhythms and outrageous grooves that all have their own unique flow and atmosphere.

Review: Canadian electro-industrialists Front Line Assembly are legends of the EBM scene and were active from the 80s onwards. They are a rather obscure outfit, nonetheless, who make music for dance floras but with a really twisted and dark edge and plenty of distortion. The Initial Command is a reissue on limited gatefold coloured vinyl of their landmark 1988 album. It comes with all the original tunes as well as three bonus tracks to make this an absolute collector's must. The band are also out on tour right now across the US and still have what it takes to impress.

Review: Canadian electro-industrialists FLA really do understand what consistency is. Having put out 12 official studio albums since their inception in 1986, they have remained at the top of their niche game since first landing on the scene, making tracks with this dystopian dancefloor energy, rooted in the cold and unfeeling factories of the future and deceptive humanism of warm synth work.

Nerve War was their now-legendary first mixtape, released the year they got together, and it set the bar so high its any wonder any of what followed managed to live up to these standards. Suffice to say, the fact subsequent stuff did is testament to the band's genius. Presenting everything from strange and unnerving sonic collages ('Thy Glory'), to gritty slo-mo builders ('To The World') and grand sci-fi themes with shades of neo-Gothicism ('Front Line').

Review: "As a long-time fan of soundtracks and library music, I was thrilled by the opportunity to see just how much emotion I could compress into the brief connecting links that would augment a furtive kiss, a painful psychic vision, or a breeze across the bones of a scorched landscape," says Timmi Meskers, the North Country, New York-based artist behind Garden Gate. "The first glimmer of Magic Lantern flickered over the kitchen sink, if memory serves. I was cleaning up with a dear friend, author Roan Parrish, and we were discussing how we could collaborate creatively. "Our first idea was that she would share prose to inspire my themes, and inversely, I would share a few original themes to inspire her writing. Before we knew it, what started as a handful of stories and songs, damp with soap suds, ended up becoming a fully scored audiobook anthology." In practice, that sounds like achingly beautiful compositions packed with a sense of wonder and mystery, adventures and experiences waiting for a narrative, blissed out stargazing scores and spectacular ambient movements.

Review: Melodies In The Sand is another vital album from Melody As Truth. It collects together the works of Czech artists Irena and Vojt?ch Havlovi, a husband and wife pair who made music int he 80s as part of experimental collective Capella Antiqua e Moderna. Their style spanned various styles of European classical music and was never less than unorthodox yet beguiling. This record really shines a light on these talented artists and brims with an emotional honesty and vulnerability that will impact anyone who hears it. The delicate keys, the vocal whispers and way they drift in and out, the rippling chords -these are always empty, subtle tracks but they leave an inedible mark.

Review: Roger Webb was an accomplished composer and songwriter in the 60s and 70s who wrote for the likes of Shirley Bassey, Johnny Mathis, and Bette Davis, but he also turned his hand to some outstanding library works such as this bright and breezy LP from 1971. With vocals from Barbara Moore (also noted for working with Jimi Hendrix, Elton John, Dusty Springfield and Tom Jones), Vocal Patterns is a mixed bag that veers from kitsch 60s pop to melancholic reflections and more besides. If you want a portal back to a different era, this record will sweep you off your feet and land you right back there.

Review: Multi-award winning composer and viola maestro Astrid Sonne is an artist you won't forget in a hurry. Freewheeling between the somewhat regimented, or at least highly intentional world of electronic music production and the looser, more open-ended possibilities of experimental contemporary classical, melding both together in a place which is deceptively close to pop, she runs on improvised sections and meticulously crafted arrangements alike, in ways that feel truly natural. Following her acclaimed 2021 long form, 'Outside of Your Lifetime', with another beauty on Escho, one of many standout alternative imprints active in her native Denmark, Great Doubt is perhaps her most radio-playable effort to date, and yet musically it also embraces some of the most varied influences. From loop-based hip-hop to surreal court music, patient string-focused ambient, to leftfield drum machine pop.

Review: Four Flies are dab hands at digging out the finest curios from the hidden depths of Italian music culture, and this is surely one of their proudest proclamations. Guiliano Sorgini recorded the soundtrack to Riccardo Fellini's TV movie Zoo Folle in 1974, and the soundtrack came out the same year. Far more than a set of modest instrumentals or functional library music, this is raging, heavy psych funk of the highest order, with raunchy riffs, bugged-out flute, intense percussive beatdowns and so much more besides. Whichever plucky diggers originally unearthed this holy grail must have lost their tiny minds, because even framed with the significance it deserves, this is an out-of-this world record we're very fortunate to have back in our reach.

Review: In the John Williams & Hans Zimmer Odyssey, the Orchestre Curieux embarks on a sonic journey through the iconic film scores of two legendary composers. John Williams, known for his sweeping orchestral arrangements in classics like Star Wars and Jurassic Park, contrasts with Hans Zimmer's modern, dynamic and more minimal soundscapes from films like Inception and Gladiator. This orchestral fusion bridges generations of cinema lovers and seamlessly blends Williams' timeless melodies with Zimmer's contemporary flair. The performance promises a cinematic experience, transporting audiences through the rich tapestry of emotions evoked by these masterpieces, all interpreted through the Orchestre Curieux's unique artistic lens.

Review: The second studio album from Yello was added to the pantheons of weirdo electronic pop some time ago. In fact, some 31 years ago to be exact. While not by any stretch the outfit's most famous effort, that belongs to fourth album, Stella, and in particular the 1980s movie anthem 'Oh Yeah', in many ways that track doesn't encapsulate the spirit of the band anything like the tunes here.

At times low slung ('Ballet Mecanique') and occupying a space somewhere between roots and fairground, in other moments tragically epic and approaching New Romanticism ('Quad El Habib'), while the music itself is wildly varied and unarguably original, the overall magic is still found in how much fun it sounds like they were having, and how much fun we have hearing it.