New releases last two weeks: Trance

Review: Bassland Prophecy was a Southern California music collective featuring Alex Xenophon, Stuart Breidenstein who is ex-Skylab 2000, vocalist Alissa Kueker and Maxx Vaxx of Euterpre and Butterfly Garden. Their 1996 tracks 'Nine/Deeper' and 'Blue and Purple Starship of Trust' were thrilling genre collisions that have since become hard to find. The originals were long thought lost but have, in fact, turned up and been remastered and reissued by Bristol's Sex Tapes From Mars. Their sound was crafted using gear like the Juno 106, Yamaha FB-01, Roland S330 sampler, Sequential Circuits Pro-One with external MIDI, and various guitar pedals, all tools that helped forge their distinctive, otherworldly prog house sound.

Review: Following his acclaimed 'Love Dub So' EP, Nick Barber's Doof returns to Mysticisms with The Love Mixes-early, raw recordings from cassette-only archives. Made in 1990-91 while studying philosophy in Cambridge, these tracks fuse the spirit of Pink Floyd and Goa's Full Moon parties with the rise of UK trance culture. Crafted with minimal gear and pure DIY energy, the recordings capture the wide-eyed excitement of a scene still being born. Hand-dubbed and passed around at afterparties, one tape reached Mute Records and it was that which sparked Doof's Novamute debut. Now remastered, The Love Mixes offers an unfiltered window into the roots of electronic trance.

Review: Norwegian producer Ekkel, co-founder of Ute Records, returns with four sharply drawn tracks for Seismic's third release. His blend of 90s-indebted progressive textures and rhythm-forward minimalism remains intact, though with new, more interior inflections. 'Hradec Fog Fever' is the steadiest of the lot-clean, rolling percussion and tight low-end restraint-but it's 'Owl Foot' that lingers, pairing whispered vocal snippets with eerie atmospheres and subtle motion. On the B-side, 'Drum Ring' builds unease through gritty kicks and unresolved phrases, echoing trance motifs without ever fully revealing them. 'Endphase' teases a moment of release via distant melodies, but soon undercuts it with brittle, clipped drums. This is dance music in a minor key-focused, evocative, and unusually meditative. A smart addition to Seismic's emerging catalogue, and a compelling statement from one of Norway's most consistently interesting underground names.

Review: Italian producer J.P Energy resurfaces with a reissue of two rare late-90s works-deep, percussive hybrids from a fertile moment in underground Italian club culture. Originally released in 1997, 'Prima Dell'Alba' and 'Forbidden Planet' blur the lines between early trance and stripped-back techno, brimming with cinematic tension and pulsing groove. 'Prima Dell'Alba' is the more mysterious of the pair: tribal rhythms, eerie pads and a gradual rise in intensity evoke a kind of sunrise ritual for the dancefloor. The original mix of 'Forbidden Planet' delivers a leaner, more mechanical energy-icy and forceful but with a meditative undertow. A 2025 revisited mix by J.P Energy himself kicks things off on the A-side, reimagining the track with updated production and added spatial depth, without losing the spirit of the original. As part of the Sound Migration series, this reissue pays tribute to a singular voice in Italian electronic music-subtle, rhythmic, and visionary.

Review: In the early 90s, Danny Griffiths, Darius Keeler and Jiten Acharya formed Shikasta before dropping just one release on the now-defunct Swarm Music label. REZ34thirtyfour digs deep into that rare gem and gives it a fresh Rezpektiva polish. The EP features four tracks in all, three of which are from the original record plus a previously unreleased version recovered from DAT tapes. It's a thoughtful, atmospheric journey crafted for the dreamers and the deep thinkers who crave textured, immersive soundscapes. Trance is back and bigger than ever, but you can rarely beat OG get like this.

Review: Electric Ballroom proudly introduces Tommahawk, a rising force from Germany's next generation of peak-progressive house producers. 'Unfolding' lends a heart-in-mouth pre-drop choir motif to an antecedent stab centrepiece, whose vestiges linger long after the refrain tapers off. Label head Thomas Schumacher remixes the track in airier and floatier tones, meanwhile, creating an abiding minimal progressive ballast to contrast the A-side's intense eschatology.

Review: French techno alchemist Vardae is the latest artist to feature on German experimental drum & bass label Samurai Music. Vardae has dabbled with 85/170bpm speeds before, most notably on his excellent 'The Kaipos' EP. This time we get a full EP's worth of deep techno-influenced drum & bass, a sound that is familiar to anyone following recent trends in the deeper scenes of techno: acid lines, forest drums, mystic vocals, etc. The opener 'The Light Motion' is a halftime groover with fluttering percussion propelling it forward. The second 'Chaeming Your Soul' has a more recognisable drum & bass rhythm underneath, bringing to mind Overlook and UVB-76's back catalogue with powerful acid washes over the top. 'Voices Of Depossesion' has a conventional four-to-the-floor beat but at a blistering BPM and 'Flaming As A Cloud' ends with an excellent drum & synth-ony. One for fans of Marco Shuttle, Pessimist, et al.

Review: In January 2025, Al Wootton visited Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio, which is home to a rare archive of vintage drum machines. Once there, he recorded the unique rhythms and quirks of these machines and captured their raw character. Back in the UK, he transformed those recordings through processing and layering to create this new EP, Rhythm Archives. The result is a stripped-back but impactful exploration of rhythm that draws from industrial, dub, post-punk and proto-techno influences. The record stands as both a creative tribute to the iconic machines and their makers and a nod to MESS's mission of preserving electronic music heritage and making it accessible through public engagement and education.