Building on the themes of her most recent album, ‘Medieval Femme’, Fatima Al Qadiri’s newest release sees her pairing up with fellow Kuwaiti vocalist Gumar. The EP - also titled ‘Gumar’, Arabic for "moon" - is an homage to a style of lamentation singing that both Fatima and Gumar grew up with and were heavily influenced by, and for which the latter received formal training as a teenager. On these four short songs, Fatima provides a minimal counterpoint to Gumar's elegant vocals, a coalescence that powerfully and sympathetically complements and extends with cosmic, almost elemental depth. Serious and mournful in tone, the record ruminates on the subject of unrequited love, arguably the most common theme in Arabic music past and present. The cover is an original artwork by Kuwaiti artist Khalid al Gharaballi, Fatima's bestie and long-time collaborator. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Moving and painfully emotive, Al Qadiri adds to the beguiling cannon of neo-medieval musica with this release rich with Arabic influences and swathed in detailed synthscapes.

TRACK LISTING

Gumar (moon)
Fidetik (i Lay Down My Life For You)
Mojik (your Waves)
Meriem

‘Escapology’ - Kode9's first album since 2015's ‘Nothing’ – is the first audio document of a wider project, Astro-Darien, ongoing since last year. His most ambitious work yet as a multi-disciplinary artist, ‘Escapology’ is the soundtrack album to the sonic fiction Astro-Darien, which will be released in October on Hyperdub sub-label Flatlines.The music reconfigures Astro-Darien's tense, off-world atmospheres into slices of high definition, asymmetric club rhythms, woven through thrilling sound design and vertiginous sonics.‘Escapology’ is just one entry point into of the Astro-Darien universe, which had begun to surface in 2021 as a two-week audiovisual installation on the main dance floor at club space Corsica Studios in South London, and as a multi-channel diffusion on the 50 speaker Acousmonium at the invitation of INA-GRM in Paris, the institution founded in 1951 by the musique concrète pioneer Pierre Schaeffer, composer Pierre Henry and the engineer Jacques Poullin. The artwork for both ‘Escapology’ and Astro-Darien was produced by Kode9’s long-time collaborators Lawrence Lek (digital world design), and Optigram (typography and gfx). 

TRACK LISTING

01. Trancestar North
02. The Break Up
03. Toxic Foam
04. Orbex
05. Angle Of Re-Entry
06. Freefall
07. In The Shadow Of Ben Hope
08. Sim-Darien
09. Cross The Gap
10. Uncoil
11. Astro-Darien
12. Lagrange Point
13. Docking
14. Torus
15. T-Divine

Burial follows up the bleak and desolate "Antidawn", with more shimmering emptiness from the event horizon. The sublime three-track EP "Streetlands". Like being alone in an abandoned lost city long after humans have been made nearly extinct from Earth. I imagine it'd make amazing music for The Walking Dead video game. Or like I said about "Antidawn" - it continues the theme of 'walking through Skyrim loaded up on dissociatives. More brilliance from the master. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Burial follows up the bleak and desolate "Antidawn", with more shimmering emptiness from the event horizon.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Hospital Chapel (7:59)
A2. Streetlands (14:15)
B. Exokind (12:13)

700 Bliss is the forward-thinking duo of DJ Haram and Moor Mother. Their first full length for Hyperdub is an album of noise rap that ties together the raw edges of club music and hip hop with punk energy, jazz, house-party catharsis, percussion-heavy analogue sound design, and cheeky skits, ranging from experimental rap tracks with rolling hi hats and lyrical bravado, to poetry set to noise and sound collage.

Moor Mother and DJ Haram started collaborating in 2014 and eventually formed 700 Bliss, a blistering live act in Philly's DIY scene, releasing their 2018 debut, Spa 700 on Halcyon Veil / Don Giovanni Records. Since that time, both artists have grown global followings. Moor Mother is a prolific solo artist and collaborator, writer, and member of Black Quantum Futurism while Haram has been curating and creating radio shows, DJing, and producing (including an EP for Hyperdub in 2019).

‘Nothing To Declare’ is a smart, danceable revelation, a chiseled soundscape of dive bombing bass, piercing bleeps, crunchy distortion, and wavering synth lines. Welcoming in a variety of voices from their extended, cross-genre scene, 700 Bliss also bring along a cast of collaborators, including vocalists Orion Sun, Lawfandah, Ase Manual, and Ali Logout (from the band Special Interest), plus Palestinian producer Muqata'a, and writer M Téllez who delivers a surreal sci fi monologue over a pounding kick drum on ‘More Victories’.

‘Nothing To Declare’ is a deeply layered rewriting of hip hop and electronic music that gives more with each listen. You won't hear another rap album like it in 2022.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Nothing To Declare
A2. Totally Spies Ft Lafawndah
A3. Nightflame Ft Orion Sun
A4. Anthology
A5. Discipline
A6. BlessGrips
A7. Easyjet
A8. Candace Parker Ft Muqata’a
B1. No More Kings
B2. Capitol Ft Alli Logout
B3. Sixteen
B4. Spirit Airlines
B5. Crown
B6. More Victories Ft M. Téllez
B7. Seven
B8. Lead Level 15 Ft Ase Manual

"Antidawn" marks the return of Burial - our nation's beloved shadow dweller, emo-garage innovator and cultishly adored bass producer. After nearly 2 decades unravelling the mystery - with countless breakdowns, assessments and even dissertations written about how the artist composes and records his music - William Bevan had decided it's time for a further redux.

Reducing the sound to just vapours, the record 'explores an interzone between dislocated, patchwork songwriting and eerie, open-world game-space ambience', which perfectly puts into context what you have in front of you. Like walking through Skyrim's metaverse loaded up on dissociatives  and ketamine, there's no real linear structure to the album. As usual, snips, sounds and textures take precedent, but it's the silences and the spaces BETWEEN the snips that Burial has really emphasized on "Antidawn". There's a movement created with sparseness - a change of feeling; a beckoning towards the light through tense and dark realms.

Encapsulated in a frozen, urban Winter; there's movements of painful sadness, juxtaposed between bursts of radioactive warmth as whispers of forgotten angels drift in on FM radio interference. It's quintessential Burial - crackles n static n all - but occupying a space that couldn't be further from the dancefloor. If his more recent 12"s have hinted at this wandering, non-linear, long-walk-home approach then on "Antidawn" we're lost & abandoned in the multidimensional realities of the present; with little reassurance that 'everything’s going to be ok'...

It's as breathtaking and awe-inspiring as you'd expect from the UK demigod yet brittle, fragile, constricted and smothered in darkness. It's really nice to see him explore these realms and while thousands of his online bloggers and trolls will no doubt have countless critiques on his development; I for one am well on board.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Burial heads even further down the cold, long & lonely road into almost pure isolation. Like walking through Skyrim's metaverse loaded up on dissociatives it's a completely transportive, if fragile and desolate listen.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Strange Neighbourhood [11:04]
A2. Antidawn [08:43]

B1. Shadow Paradise [10:20]
B2. New Love [07:13]
B3. Upstairs Flat [06:07]

‘Flush Real Pharynx 2019-2021’ is a three-part album from composer, producer and DJ Lee Gamble. Written over three years, and comprised of three seperate EPs, their individual releases unintentionally frame and timestamp a turbulent period. Across 77 minutes the full collection imparts a seamless tour through its three phases. File under #GullyAutomatedHyperConcrète.

“If the most widely available music is also the most easily digestible, then it is no wonder that artists like Gamble are so keen to grapple with music’s purpose beyond entertainment—to be an art form in fierce dialogue with the present.” (Pitchfork)

“This music gives form to the smart cities and networked realities of the 21st century … a thrilling meditation on the weirdness of now.” (Resident Advisor)

TRACK LISTING

01. Fata Morgana
02. Folding
03. Moscow
04. BMW Shuanghuan X5
05. Chant
06. In The Wreck Room
07. Many Gods, Many Angels
08. CREAM
09. Envenom
10. Glue
11. Naja
12. Tyre
13. Switches
14. Shards
15. Saccades
16. Balloon Lossy
17. Newtown Got Folded
18. Obsession Model
19. Empty Middle Seat
20. You Left A Space
21. Hyperpassive
22. Balloon Copy

Proc Fiskal's second album sees a reorientation of the source elements of his music. Where "Insula" fed off samples of the ramblings of his friends and sounds of his hometown, "Siren Spine Sysex" is laden with an inner voice of sampled Gaelic, Irish and English folk music, contorted and imbued into the futurist body of modern pop; the ghostly anima image of the female folk voice and the lamenting wheeze of the accordion rub against the rush of icey 808s and angles of grime. Joe Powers’ family history is in folk music, with several of his forebears active in the Scottish Folk revival of the 1960s. It's this cultural baggage - the Caledonian Antisyzygy of the earnest folk tradition he was raised in – alongside the modernist dance music he makes, that brings a personal element to the album. The music of "Siren Spine Sysex" examines dance music as folk music, re-routing them both comparatively, with the wordless emoting of chopped and screwed Gaelic vocals leading to joyous pop songs like "8 Mgapixel See Thru Phone" and "Leith Tornn Carnal". Though fast and detailed, "Siren Spine Sysex" feels relaxed and pastoral at times, its edits and drums sensual, swelling, and reactive to the music, its textures influenced by the tinny 16 bit flutes, strings, and wacky scores of gaming soundtracks.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Simply WOW. His first album was incredible and this one's taken it even higher! Casually dropping between half-tempo, luminescent breaks and plasma dub; there's no one who can conjure up the gooey, ketty daydreams that fizz and slurp like Proc. Beautifully radioactive intergalactic angel music. #LIKEx100

TRACK LISTING

A1. Anti Chessst
A2. Convaerge Iana
A3. Humancargoe Estt
A4. Recall (Throate Achres)
B1. Met Path Thoth
B2. 8 Mgapixel See Thru Phone
B3. Thurs Jung Youtz
C1. Her In
C2. The Most Beautiful Irish Song
C3. Leith Tornn Carnal
D1. Auld Peop
D2. Iaosiphsean Powers
D3. God Aed
D4. Roman Fatigue

‘Medieval Femme’, Fatima Al Qadiri’s new ten track suite inspired by the classical poems of Arab women, invokes a daydream through the metaphor of an Islamic garden, at the border between depression and desire, where the present temporarily dissolves, leaving only past and future. Mixing neon drones and the faint outlines of Arabesque melody, ‘Medieval Femme’ reveals a fully-realised, dreamlike setting, shaded with colour and subtle friction. Conveying a thematic state of melancholic longing, Fatima seeks to transport the listener to a place of reverie and desolation, to question the line between two seemingly opposite states and rejoice in celestial sorrow. ‘Medieval Femme’ takes instrumentation from music of the Middle Ages, recast in a futuristic setting; soft-synth lutes, organs and pipes reverberate in space while gauzy pulses ripple in response. Fatima's vocals of repeated, mantra-like phrases are sometimes pitched and altered, drawing out increasingly intense peaks, angelic choruses and yearning incantations. On ‘Tasakuba’, Kaltham Jassim’s recitation of a couplet from the 7th century poet Al-Khansa', the sorrow of her words are given a turbulent, hallucinatory setting, before the album resolves on the final song, the limpid, airy ‘Zandaq’.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: I'm loving all these hybrids of neo-classical, bass and ancient music that seem to be coming out right now. File next to: Doon Kanda, Faten Kanaan, Lee Gamble etc. Mega!

TRACK LISTING

A1. Medieval Femme
A2. A Certain Concubine
A3. Sheba
A4. Vanity
A5. Stolen Kiss Of A Succubus
B1. Golden
B2. Qasmuna (Dreaming)
B3. Malaak
B4. Tasakuba
B5. Zandaq

Foodman is Takahide Higuchi, from Nagoya, in central Japan. After remixing Jessy Lanza’s ‘Alexander’ last year, ‘Yasuragi Land’ is his first release for Hyperdub, alive with Footwork-inspired musical freedom and the sense that everything is a rhythm.Unusually, ‘Yasuragi Land’ has no bass. Instead, the album is breezy and refined; hyper-rhythmic music, made with a few simple tools, dances around your head. ‘Yasuragi’ and ‘Parking Area’ feel like gently deconstructed acoustic jazz, while ‘Ari Ari’ is deep house splattered with a cartoonish hiccup.

‘Hoshikzu Tenboudai’ and ‘Shiboritate’ bounce around the speakers like trance-inducing polyrhythmic updates of the New York minimalists, programmed past human limits. ‘Food Court’ is busy with mechanical rhythm and naive melodies, ‘Gallery Café’ pairs a cute wooden flute melody with micro edited wooden drums, ‘Michi No Eki’ is like a digital take on Magma's complex rock, and ‘Sanbashi’ indirectly approximates 80s R&B. The album ends on ‘Misyuku’, with a treated guitar lick sounding like it was stolen from Daft Punk, woven into dense interlacing drums.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Omiyage
A2. Yasuragi
A3. Michi No Eki Ft Taigen Kawabe
A4. Ari Ari
A5. Shiboritate
A6. Hoshikuzu Tenboudai
A7. Shikaku No Sekai
B1. Food Court
B2. Gallery Café
B3. Numachi
B4. Parking Area
B5. Iriguchi
B6. Aji Fly
B7. Sanbashi Ft Cotto Center
B8. Minsyuku

"Chemz" is hooky, rushy and loved-up - both an unhinged premonition of unleashed post-pandemic joy, and a demonic flashback to past ecstasies in a hardcore style perfected in the UK. "Chemz" is a 12-minute rave monster that has ingested several tracks and incorporated them into its distended body. At the other end of the Burial bi-polar spectrum, "Dolphinz" is a desolate oceanic love letter to our underwater friends.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Still languishing comfortably in a decade-n-a-half long purple patch; Mr. Beven's faultless formula returns to Hyperdub. "Chemz" is up there with some of his most anthemic offerings to date; an endorphine-jacking hit of skewed 2-step littered with rave idents and possibly the catchiest garage hook of the last century! Literally unmissable. DO NOT SLEEP.

TRACK LISTING

A. Chemz [12:31]
B. Dolphinz [09:03]

The Bug aka Kevin Martin, and producer/vocalist Dis Fig aka Felicia Chen, refer to their style on ‘In Blue’ as “Tunnel Sound”; a foggy, melancholic meltdown of narco-dancehall-soul and dread-drenched, electronic dub. The 2018 prototype rhythms for this album were a continuation of Martin’s ongoing quest for a futuristic dancehall mutation, but more sci-fi, aquatic and smokey than before. An obsessive search for the right sultry 2AM voice to ride his syncopated walls of sub, fuzzed out white noise and infinite echoes eventually led him to Dis Fig’s torched soul-jazz glow, and 20 months of subsequent lab exchanges have resulted in the deeply sensual pulsations and lyrical long shadows of ‘In Blue’ - an album that shares shades of King Midas Sound’s wrecked lovers rock, alongside the bass immersion that The Bug has become infamously known for. Just as Martin took a stylistic swerve on ‘In Blue’, so did Chen. Previously known for experimental noise onslaughts and emotional exorcisms, she opts here for threatening intimacy and hushed confessionals, concentrating on bittersweet vocals and seductive surprises that are all the more potent for their inferred narratives and delicate delivery. Mixed during lockdown, the sense of claustrofear, escapism and tension throughout is palpable. With the bewitching croon of Dis Fig directing the flow, carnality and violence merge under the turbulent, cinematic surface of an hypnotically addictive album.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Around Me
A2.Come
A3.Destroy Me
B1.Blood
B2.In 2 U
B3.Levitating

C1.Forever
C2.Blue To Black
C3.Take
D1.No Return
D2.You
D3.End In Blue

‘All The Time’, Jessy Lanza's first album since 2016's ‘Oh No’, is the most pure set of pop songs that she and creative partner Jeremy Greenspan have recorded, reflective and finessed over time and distance. Innovative juxtapositions sound natural, like rigid 808s rubbing against delicate chords in ‘Anyone Around’, subtle footwork flutter giving a nervous energy to ‘Face’, unusual underwater rushes underpinning ‘Baby Love’.

The songs also sound more “live” than ever before. Jessy’s voice is treated, re-pitched and edited on songs like ‘Ice Creamy’ and gestural sounds seem to respond to her lyrics in songs such as ‘Like Fire’, which reward the listener on repeated plays. More than previous albums, the lyrics on ‘All The Time’ became an important focus for Jessy too, channelling the negativity of anger and frustration arising from some significant changes in her personal situation into the text. These lyrics sometimes process raw feelings, which aren't obvious to begin with, but are soon felt, standing in stark contrast to the cushioned settings of the music. ‘All The Time’ has ended as a triumph and an abstracted diary of a sometimes difficult, but enduring friendship and creative relationship, and it’s their best work yet.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Jessy Lanza has made many waves in the music world, finding a perfect home in the home of off-piste electronic adventures, Hyperdub. This one sees Lanza in a more playful mood, encompassing aspects of synthpop, future beats and r&b. It's a beguiling and exciting listen, and a superb return for Lanza.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Anyone Around
A2. Lick In Heaven
A3. Face
A4. Badly
A5. Alexander
B1. Ice Creamy
B2. Like Fire
B3. Baby Love
B4. Over And Over
B5. All The Time

Topping off Hyperdub's 15th year, Burial selects 'tunes’ from the last eight years of his EP releases on the label, for this very welcome two CD collection.

Sequenced by Burial, ‘Tunes 2011-2019’ shows the depth and brilliance of his post-‘Untrue’ development; from long, twisting, collage works which travel through unexpected zones, to a more pointed, poppier side, and back again to the haunted, open horizons of his beatless pieces.

We hope this collection of Burial's work is familiar, yet unfamiliar, to each listener.

17 tracks across 150 minutes, all previously released, six being available on CD for the first time.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Though his albums have possibly garnered the most adoration than anything else, Burial's post-LP outings have been an absolute rollercoaster of unbelievable groove and unrivalled ingenuity. For those of you that didn't snag the EP's, or if you're a CD buyer, 'Tunes' is absolutely essential.

TRACK LISTING

DISC 1

01. State Forest
02. Beachfires
03. Subtemple
04. Young Death
05. Nightmarket
06. Hiders
07. Come Down To Us
08. Claustro
09. Rival Dealer

DISC 2

01. Kindred
02. Loner
03. Ashtray Wasp
04. Rough Sleeper
05. Truant
06. Street Halo
07. Stolen Dog
08. NYC

Ok chaps and chapettes, new Burial here for you to get your filphy mits an ears around...!

"Claustro" occupies side A and sees Burial's formula given an urgent update. There's a killer female vocal hook, fast paced n skitty garage beats (thoroughly Burialized with hiss and coke can pops as always...) plus some nice bass plumes, ravey hoover lines and a kinda ascending / descending, slightly computer game vibe to the mid-range riff. Gotta make it to the end on this bad boi too - there's a killer switch around to see off the last 32 bars or so.

It's destined for repeat plays across the radio networks and cutting edge club nights but there's nothing better than a Kode9-approved, 180g wax pressing to bring out all those gritty details and smash outta your bedroom window for all the neighbours to enjoy!

B side track, "State Forest" is an ambient atmosphere, nicely constructed and full of some very interesting, bleak soundscapes; but you'll be disappointed if you're looking for another club banger to compete the package. Thankfully, that A-side track absolutely slays it, so you won't feel hard done by forking out eight quid. It's also nice to see the producer confident and inspired as ever. We heart Burial! 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Urgent, endorphin-rushing greatness from the UK master. "Claustro" is hooky enough to get repeat radio plays, but deadly enough to soundtrack that peak moment of release in any club environment. He's still got it!

Barry says: There's never a reason not to order a new Burial record on sight, and this one will almost certainly fly like the rest. Get on it.

TRACK LISTING

A. Claustro 
B. State Forest

Since Danielle Mana's 2017 debut EP for Hyperdub, ‘Creature’, which was a taut, evocative suite of beatless, almost neo-classical electronics, we now find his music has caught an alien virus and started hallucinating. On ‘Seven Steps Behind’, the borders between reality and the weird have collapsed on each other, and with each listen through its zigzagging course, you’re rewarded by its strange twists and turns. ‘Seven Steps Behind’ is an electronic album that doesn’t always sound electronic; a great deal of the record has been created to sound like prepared pianos, harpsichords, cellos and flutes. At other times, sampled acoustic instruments and specially recorded sessions have been processed through software and careful editing. It’s this sophisticated layering of contrasting versions of the same sources that help give this record its uncanny balance.

The album also plays with your sense of time in its mostly drum-free hall of mirrors, pulling from minimalism, chamber music, dark jazz, and synthesiser experiments. Mana’s singing voice also makes it’s debut here, albeit adorned by abrasive FXs. His lyrics are encrypted in noise, in fitting with the music’s chimeric character, casting images for the listener to decipher. His heavily manipulated voice enters on second track ‘Myopia For The Future’, sounding something like a singing motorbike pitched over bouncing ostinatos, or on ‘No Body’s inhuman, word-less range, where it’s impossible to tell where the human finishes and the machine starts. Or in the case of ‘Leverage For Survival’ it’s animal and machine. Here, as with the album’s eponymous final track, a sensory assault subsides to reveal a heart-wrenching melancholy that anchors the record. Listening to ‘Seven Steps Behind’ is like stepping into a dream, with all the curious emotions and buried meaning that involves. Yet for all its restless, shifting energy it manages to hold both dissonance and melody in sweet proportion.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Risk Taking
A2. Myopia For The Future
A3. Talking / Choking Ft. Yendry
A4. A Note To The Limits
B1. Swordsmanship
B2. Leverage For Survival
B3. Symphony Of Regulation
C1. Solo
C2. No Body
C3. Instinction
D1. Soaking In Water
D2. Seven Steps Behind

Angel-Ho is known as one of the founders of Non Worldwide, alongside Chino Amobi and Nkisi. Highly regarded as a DJ and electronic music producer, on ‘Death Becomes Her‘ she shifts things up to another level. Pulling on inspiration from her flamboyant favourites from Lady Gaga, Missy Elliot, and Bjork through to Kanye West, this ambitious, artful and sometimes radical album of neo-pop pushes the pop framework even further, often teetering on the brink of vertiginous chaos and dissonance, whilst slowly revealing its depth and grandeur once you settle into its sound world. Alongside a cast of collaborators that include French producer Nunu, South African producer Baby Caramel, Asmara Maroof from Nguzunguzu, Bon and Gaika, Angel re-orientates the usual trans-atlantic pop sound to encompass a brace of experimental, diasporic producers to create beats that alternate between angular, propulsive, murky, loose, abrasive and breezy.

On top of these often advanced rhythms, she also raps and sings for the first time with lyrics about love, sex, glamour and struggle, universal fantasies, treated with an ambiguity that restructures the narrative within a trans-identity. Her choice of guest MCs also reflects this energetic queering with K-$ and Qweezy from Cape Town, plus underground Asian American rapper K-Rizz laying down assertive bars. On ‘Death Becomes Her’, Angel-Ho carves out a new space with her unique take on contemporary pop. Overflowing with charisma, sometimes reminiscent of Grace Jones, this album is fiercely sassy and celebratory. It feels like the start of something very exciting.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Business
A2. Drama
A3. Like A Girl Ft. K Rizz
A4. Jacomina
A5. Muse To You
A6. Good Friday Daddy Ft. Queezy

B1. Cupido
B2. Live
B3. Desity
B4. Pose
B5. Bussy
B6. Baby Tee Ft. K-$
B7. Like That
B8. Parachute

A generation younger than the founders of the Teklife crew, DJ Rashad and DJ Spinn, DJ Taye was originally a rapper and beat maker before hooking up with the collective and jumping into the world of footwork production and DJing. However, it was Rashad’s untimely passing in 2014 that was the unlikely catalyst for developing the sounds and ideas for this album. He says, "When Rashad passed away I felt inspired to continue evolving the music that I loved so much coming up in this world. So, I had to do something…make something brand new." 100% committed to pushing further the potential of the footwork template, Still Trippin’ is ambitious in its range and scope.

Taking two years to formulate, the record broadens the possibilities of the sound, forcing it to adapt to songwriting, and also revives Taye’s talent for MCing and producing beats to which he can rap and sing. Furthermore Taye definitely ups the ante with his complex and precise drum programming, never losing sight of footwork’s ability to confound. The album features a range of guests that span contemporary music; the eccentric, instructive rapping of Chuck Inglish of Detroit duo the Cool Kids is featured on ‘Get It Jukin’, Odile Myrtil, a young vocalist from Montreal, lends her smokey soul to ‘Same Sound’, Fabi Reyna, the editor of the celebrated women’s guitar magazine She Shreds, sings and plays bass and rhythm guitar on ‘I Don’t Know’ and Jersey club queen UNIIQU3 offers production and rapping on ‘Gimme Some Mo’.Also, Teklife members DJ PayPal and DJ Manny assist on production, and DJ Lucky is a guest MC on ‘Smokeout’. Taye is ambitious in his hopes for the album; "I took this as an opportunity to not have boundaries with footwork. Different approaches to our ‘underground’ sound to make it broader. It’s only underground until it crosses that visible threshold.” This album brings all of this to the forefront. 

TRACK LISTING

A1. 2094
A2. Trippin’
A3. Need It (ft DJ Manny)
A4. Smokeout (ft DJ Lucky)
A5. Same Sound (ft Odile Myrtil)

B1. 9090
B2. Anotha4 (ft DJ Manny)
B3. Bonfire (ft DJ Paypal)
B4. The Matrixx (ft DJ Manny)

C1. Get It Jukin’ (ft Chuck Inglish)
C2. Pop Drop (ft DJ Paypal)
C3. Gimme Some Mo (ft UNIIQU3)

D1. Truu (ft DJ Paypal)
D2. Closer
D3. I’m Trippin’
D4. I Don’t Know (ft Fabi Reyna)

"The Underdogg" is DJ Tre's debut EP for Hyperdub. He contributed two brilliant tracks to the DJ Rashad tribute set "Next Life", but compared to other long term members of the Teklife footwork crew, he hasn’t released much. Tre has been about since the early days, born and raised on the south side of Chicago. Encouraged by Rashad and his partner DJ Spinn, he has been making tracks since 1999, over a decade before footwork's ascent to global popularity. On this EP his sound, for the most part, is rooted in the speedy 4/4 of juke. It features a sparse and minimalist take on footwork but he's got a knack of adding in tight little switches and details that keep the tracks moving as essential dancefloor weapons. The EP starts with "It’s House Hybrid", which has its musical roots in Chip E's "It's House", one of the very earliest house tracks. It’s a tried and tested dancefloor devastator on dubplate, built on a crackling and hiccuping juke 4/4 which grows in intensity, until a ferocious amen break cracks it open and joins in the onslaught. "A Hammond Jam" matches a moody organ with typical sub rumbles and ghetto-tek drum programming. "Get Dat Ass Up!" bounces against a twitching melody that'salmost purist Detroit techno in its executed, save for the stuttered footwork rhythm that underpins it all. "Tha Rhodez Jam!" micro-edits a delicate Rhodes sample into flickering shapes against switching 8 bar patterns of drums that go from rolling to soca-like pulses with whistles. Essential tools for DJs on the hyperplane.

It's always an exciting time when Burial drops a new single, and this one features his long term friend, cohort and, really, if you think about it, the person responsible for bringing the skills of this enigmatic Londoner to our ears: Kode 9. If it wasn't for Steve Goodman's inspired A&R work way back in 2005 then who knows if this self-confessed recluse's body of work would have ever seen the light of day. A symbiotic relationship between label and artist, pretty much all Burial's solo work has been reserved for Hyperdub, with just a few mixes and collabs sneaking onto other outlets. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is the first time since 2009 that the label head (not to mention author of Sonic Warfare) has remixed one of the most cultishly adored people in bass music - making this new 10" one hell of a coup! Burial's side continues to push the depths of deep UKG, rolling out one of his idiosyncratic shuffles to a fiery angelic mellodyne'd vox - classic Burial if you will then, but fresh and brand new and guaranteed to please. Kode 9 opts to set a new gold standard for the footwork / 150BPM genre, displaying a rhythmic prowess and beat construction that rivals anything from the trap genre with some of the most advanced synthesis (I'd you'd expect) passages to boot. As essential as it gets then. 

TRACK LISTING

A. Rodent 04:25 120bpm

B. Rodent [Kode9 Remix] 04:41 150bpm

Laurel Halo returns to Hyperdub for her third LP with a fresh approach and a new sound. Routed out of the electronic abstraction of 2015’s In Situ - but with clear reference to 2012's sleeper-hit Quarantine - Dust is an album revolving around loose and languid songs; warped, sun-filled, melted and at times, heavy-hearted and obscure. Recorded over a period of two years, the writing process began at EMPAC in upstate New York in January 2015. With access to microphones, percussion, keys and a wide range of routings, Laurel spent days alone in the cavernous space, later inviting musicians Eli Keszler and Lafawndah to join her there. Those sessions would eventually become this album: a collection of breezy, broken songs, based on woody instrumentation, sub bass and restless, intricate electronics.

Earnest songwriting meets with modal cut-up strategies, improvisational playing with higrade digital dust. Tactile and fibrous throughout the record, the vocals and percussion coalesce and breathe life into each other. Swung grooves eddy and collapse; acoustic drums are warped into sensual, febrile melodies. The lyrics are themselves bricolage, without a specific narrator or place in time. They slip in and out of view, something that is visualised in the album’s inner panel. Extending the influence, the album opener ‘Sun To Solar’ is an adaptation of 'Servidão de Passagem' by Brazilian concrete poet Haroldo de Campos. In line with the album’s sound, Dust is 'Laurel Halo' as a flexible cast of characters. Filled with dialogue, the album helms an interchangeable ensemble of vocalists and musicians, featuring vocals from Klein, Lafawndah, and Michael Salu, as well as musicians such as Eli Keszler, Craig Clouse ($hit and $hine), Julia Holter, Max D, Michael Beharie and Diamond Terrifier. Laurel’s omnivorous influences play out in mutated fashion - coalesced, unfettered and inclusive - a broad musical palette free from entrenched modes, catalysed by digital production that could only happen in 2017

TRACK LISTING

A1.Sun To Solar
A2.Jelly
A3.Koinos
A4.Arschkriecher
A5.Moontalk
A6.Nicht Ohne Risiko

B1.Who Won?
B2.Like An L
B3.Syzygy
B4.Do U Ever Happen
B5. Buh-bye

Finally, time for a brand new solo effort from the shadowy producer, Burial.  'Young Death' sees a warped vocal cut smeared atop atmospheric drones before launching skyward into an airy and euphoric arpeggiated synth riff. Swirling chimes and sliced loops melt into a warm bath of celestial drones and crackling faded polaroid memories. 

'Nightmarket' takes the arpeggio route, but in a more instantly noticeable way. Opening with an uncompromised broken-chord rise and then abstracting that into darkened corners. Faded covertly into juddering drone and grown organically into slowed-down chordal bliss. Ambient passages intersperse with assured but physically fragile solar-flare lights before launching into a bout of retro-futuristic dusty hardware jet-stream shimmers. 

As stylistically contrary as you would ever expect from Burial, but without losing any of the post-everything charm.  A classic. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Young Death

2. Nightmarket

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2014 EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

First ever vinyl pressing of Kode9 & The Spaceape’s 2006 debut album, including previously unreleased extra track ‘Stalker (alt edit)’.

Limited edition of 1000 copies exclusively for Record Store Day, pressed on translucent yellow vinyl, in gatefold sleeve.

TRACK LISTING

Side One
1. Glass
2. Victims
3. Backward
4. Nine

Side Two
1. Curious (Ft Miss Haptic)
2. Portal
3. Addiction
4. Sine

Side Three
5. Correction
6. Kingstown
7. Nine Samurai
8. Bodies

Side Four
9. Lime
10. Quantum
11. Stalker (Alt Edit)

Hot on the heels of his collaboration with Four Tet and Thom Yorke, Burial drops this solo 12" - his first in four years! Title track "Street Halo" sounds like 1990s speed garage (the bass-heavy, 4/4 end of UKG), but filtered through Burial's unique sound vision. Intricate, crackly (fear not, it's a deliberate atmospheric rather than any kind of pressing fault) and dream like, the track's rhythm moves along at a fair pace, while the melody and frail vocal seem to drift along on the ether. A beauty. "NYC" is even more fragile, with a sepia-tinted 2-step rhythm underpinning more retro crackle and a sped-up vocal - it's like Autotuned R&B for the 22nd Century. Lastly we have "Stolen Dog", possibly the most melodic of all three tracks, utilising a rolling broken house to tie down a subtle vocal and simple keyboard refrain.

The fourth and final EP taken from Terror Danjah’s "Undeniable" CD opens with the amazing "Leave Me Alone" featuring Terror’s old vocal spar Bruza. This time it’s different though - instead of his usual cockney mateyness, Bruza’s reflecting on his bad mood. "All I Wanna Do" is the album’s densest track, featuring East End singer / songwriter Lauren Mason, who complements Terror’s moody music with a forlorn and angry vocal about a break-up, Terror editing her lines into strange rhythmic shapes which rub against the subtle trap-doors and fills of his accompaniment. "Time To Let Go" is light and breezy in comparison. With light Rhodes keys and a vocal from Terror himself , this is a house track in disguise, as the constant shifting patterns of the drums work against the flow of the melodic elements to produce something that is simultaneously recognisable as a both genre track and a Terror Danjah trademark tune. Number Four in a series of four limited-edition EPs bringing "Undeniable" to life on vinyl. Limited pressing on phat wax.

The third EP taken from Terror Danjah’s "Undeniable" CD kicks off with one of the big surprises of the album, the inimitable genre-traversing "SOS", with a simple melodic riff played out over drum patterns that shift up in down in rhythm and tempo, grinding to a halt in the middle of the track before starting up again. "Sonar (Selassi Mix)" is a beatless mix of Terror’s classic grime riddim ‘Sonar’, where the originals rhythmic fx and melody pulse in and out of the mix creating strange smeared textures as sounds rub against each other. The album’s title track "Undeniable" features D Double E of Newham Generals, doing something you’d not expect of him – being romantic over Terror’s warm, colourful chords and melodies. Number Three in a series of four limited-edition EPs bringing "Undeniable" to life on vinyl. Limited pressing on phat wax.

Burial returns with "Untrue", a new record of weird soul music, which lovingly processes spectral female voices into vaporised R&B and smudged 2step garage. Vocal lines are blurred, smeared, pitched up, pitched down and pitch bent until their content is cast adrift from their original context and they whisper their saccharin sweet nothings into the void. The album continues with crackle-drenched yearning and bustling syncopations, haunted by the ghosts of rave, but also reveals some new Burial treats with a more glowing, upbeat energy. Where "Burial" first was humid, suffocating and unrelentingly sad, "Untrue" is less sunless. Many of the tracks are so sweet, they become toxic, underscored by the almost geological rumbles of growling basslines. Unlike the overpoweringly melancholic prevailing mood of before, Burial's sound is now better defined as a downcast euphoria. Forget central heating, the radioactivity of this album is all that you'll need to keep you warm this winter.

TRACK LISTING

Archangel 3:57
Near Dark 3:52
Homeless 5:20
Shell Of Light 4:39
Raver 4:57
Etched Headplate 5:58
Untrue 6:15
UK 1:41
Endorphin 2:58

London's Burial issues this belated overview of his career to date on Hyperdub, including the definitive "Spaceape" and other formative dubstep and grime highlights. It encompasses the myriad of styles which have followed and continue to manifest themselves after UK garages's implosion. Universally acclaimed as one of the best, most ground-breaking releases of 2006.

TRACK LISTING

Untitled 0:36
Distant Lights 5:26
Spaceape 4:02
Wounder 4:52
Night Bus 2:20
Southern Comfort 5:02
U Hurt Me 5:23
Gutted 4:43
Forgive 3:07
Broken Home 5:05
Prayer 3:46
Pirates 6:10
Untitled 0:55