Bassline charts

Review: Constant Sound is one of the many labels Burnski aka Instinct is heading up right now and they are all as good as each other. This one focuses on house and tech sounds and welcomes Adam Pitts to the fam with three standouts. 'Gadget Crew' opens up and has a big, high-energy groove with plenty of oversized drum sounds and a retro melody paired with an intriguing soulful vocal. It has a dark garage tinge and is perfect for late-night action. 'Just This Once' is tough and physical, with warped and naughty bass and thwacking great hits irresistible to all. Last all comes a Skins Junglist Crew remix which is exactly that - a fine one for the jungle heads.

Review: The always naughty Sneaker Social Club label taps up D3U5E for this fresh bass fiver tracker. It's a celebration of the UK's rich heritage of electronic music with the plunging bass and massive thwacking hits of 'Quasar' kicking off. There are dusty jungle breaks to 'Dust Particle', twisted dubstep contortions on 'HAL9000' and fizzing broken beats with a real urban menace on 'Deckman.' Closer 'The Abyss' is a collab with Gav that rides a more zoned-out and atmospheric groove and completes a varied and vital EP once more from this crucial underground label.

Review: Kassian serves up some heady and heavy club-ready thrills on this superb new 12" for !K7! It kicks off with hefty broken beats and earth shattering bass that is topped with chopped up vocal stabs. 'Yami' then rides on elastic rhythms with loopy bass and warped synths under gritty percussive textures. 'Pulgueiro Baile' is a jittering rhythm that rides up and down and comes alive with a turbo-charged bassline. 'Sistema Baile"' then shuts down with more rave ready energy and warped drum and bass combinations that are full flavour and muscular and impossible to ignore.

Review: The label with the finest catalogue number naming convention in all of dance music is back with another fresh slab of wax. This one from Purple Kush mix up US house and UK garage starting with the swinging sounds of 'Let The Spirit Flow' which has a beautiful organ line and heart wrenching vocal. 'La Bahia' is another one with throwback organs and a fat bassline over low slung and well swung drums. 'Make Your Mind Up' goes deep with chopped up vocal fragments and plenty of 90s house vibes and 'Purple Kush Theme' is a stoner reggae downtempo delight.

Review: ACME is Jerome Isma-Ae and WJ Henze and they first wrote their 'Soul Of Life' EP in 1998, back when tech house was still new and exciting. It was one of the genre's biggest tunes at the time and has remained ever popular in the years since for the way it draws on sped garage and techno for its vibes. This faithful reissue offers up the tune in three related but distinctive parts so that you have whatever you need at whatever point in the night you may be. We like 'Part II' with its more balmy and heady cosmic chords.

Review: Drew Lustman's longstanding FaltyDL moniker makes a welcome return with a debut full length record for the eminent Central Processing Unit label. In The Wake Of Wolves deconstructs Lustman's usual rough dance sound for a less predictable album-length breakdown, retaining his usual arid textures while playing up the more sound-designed and maximalist ends of his craft. In the pithy words of CPU: "This could pass for Four Tet or even Hannah Diamond at points, the steady build of pulsing synths and looped vocals recalling a more mysterious version of the PC Music sound." Whether you totally agree, you'd have to agree FaltyDL has at least taken on something of their contemporary future-pop/digisonic aesthetic and incorporated it into his own; this is most evident on the glassy pirouettes and gladiate complexities of 'Minds Protection', or the tenebrous post-punk descensions of 'New Friends', or many maximized IDM trap-doors and toolroom hard-clips of 'Workout'.

Review: Set to be a collab for the ages, Special Request (Paul Woolford) and Novelist (Kwadwo Kankam) team up to capitalise on the cultural residues of bassline, grime and house with 'Sliver'. Pairing Novelist's unmistakable cadence and flow with classic grime square-waves and booty house-esque drums, 'Sliver' has been a highlight of both Special Request and label boss Peggy Gou's recent sets, climaxing in a tempo change designed to turn the dancefloor inside out. As potent in intimate dark rooms as it is festival main stages, you'll be hearing this one all summer and beyond.

Review: For those with their ear to the ground, 'Make Me' has been an underground monster hit for Borai and Denham Audio for time, but now it's getting a proper 12" release on Room Two with some heavyweight remixes. Taking a classic 90s vocal sample and giving it a thorough ruffing up, the original is hard to top, but Big Ang and Mani Festo turn in suitably rowdy versions which continue the theme of hardcore revivalism in fine style. Meanwhile bassline legend Paul Sirrell steps up for a flamboyant version which harks back to the original mid-90s cut that inspired 'Make Me' in the first place.

Review: The unstoppable production powerhouse that is Paul Woolford aka Special Request is back with another of his frankly ridiculous run of releases. Never one to just drop a single tune, this year he has several albums on the way off the back of his superb re-imagining of the KLF's cult 'What Time Is Love?' and this Portals Box Set Project is one of them. It is a multi-part collection that "uses today's modern technology to bring you the sound of tomorrow" and each limited edition 12" comes with its own custom artwork by Nic Hamilton. As you should expect, these are all utterly monstrous bangers and this first part has the high-pressure techno bounce of 'Hectic' and 'Pure Potential' to welcome you to the Portal.