Pearson Sound ‎– Pearson Sound

01 Asphalt Sparkle
02 Glass Eye
03 Gristle
04 Crank Call
05 Swill
06 Six Congas
07 Headless
08 Russet
09 Rubber Tree

David Kennedy, the Leeds producer behind Pearson Sound, has been at the vanguard of British electronic music since his first singles (under another alias, Ramadanman) back in 2006. He's had a productive and popular career to date, a dozen singles credited to Pearson Sound and another dozen as Ramadanman, and he even bested the likes of James Blake and Actress in a 2010 list at Little White Earbuds. But it's nearly a decade into his music career, and only now is Kennedy settling on his first full-length album.

For those who've followed Kennedy's work, "settling" hasn't been his specialty; he's a restless character. He came up as a dubstep producer alongside Mala, Coki and Burial, but before long began to embrace the rumbles of bass emanating beyond South London — most notably the sound of Chicago footwork. Kennedy's 2011 Fabriclive mix (credited to both Ramadanman and Pearson Sound) doubled as an overview of bass music in the new decade, ranging from dubstep escapees Burial, Pinch and Mala to the tech-house of Julio Bashmore and darker techno tones of Levon Vincent. A recent single, "Raindrops," was iridescent and ambient.

But for his debut, there's a sense of patience to Pearson Sound's productions; of not rushing toward the next new thing, but instead carefully considering each and every sound, be it thunderous or minute. (Listen to "Asphalt Sparkle" without the right speaker set-up, though, and the earth-moving bass might sound downright slight.) Pearson gets a tone so deep and resonant that it's like a seismic event beneath the otherwise anthemic synth chords, making the entire track wobble like Jello. "Crank Call" literally vibrates, but with smaller sounds, the way a phone might buzz across a tabletop. Listen more closely, and beneath the hi-hats and ghostly pads, there's more ringing, as well as a heavy breather at the other end of the line.

No matter the tempo, Pearson Sound thrills. "Glass Eye" slots into the modern bass canon, its rumbling hits offset by splashes of cymbals, tricky drum programming and snares that wobble like spinning plates. But Kennedy is just as effective making dark, stomach-churning ambient sounds, the way he does in "Gristle." The exotic hand percussion of "Six Congas" sounds at once bright and body-moving, but with a foreboding undercurrent. In spite of its title, the beat of "Rubber Tree" emits sparks like metal against metal before sliding into feedback. It's a noisy yet masterful end to a debut nearly a decade in the making...  www.npr.org

Hodge & Facta - Spheres of Costa Rica / Visions

01 Spheres of Costa Rica 
02 Visions

Tempa goes Bristolian with two lean and slinky riddims from Hodge & Facta. Both arrive at this 12" off the back of their strongest work, Hodge with the 'Mind Games' for Hotline and 'Amor Fati' for Dnuos Ytivil, and Facta on the 'Loveless' 12" for Idle Hands. Here, with 'Spheres Of Costa' they find a super-cooled balance of noirish chimes and humid, playfully tropical percussion for the early swingers, whereas 'Visions' is blatantly dark and moody, all Brizzle bass shifts and spiny drums worked for the 130bpm crew... www.boomkat.com

Joker - The Mainframe

01 Intro
02 Boss Mode
03 Wise Enough (Instrumental)
04 Midnight
05 An Intervening Episode
06 Lucy (Instrumental)
07 Scene 1 (Qo, NoS)
08 Scene 2 (Neon City)
09 Scene 3 (Spirit Ruins)
10 Mahogany
11 Love (Instrumental)
12 Fuzz Bop
13 Mixed Emotions

When dubstep went global, its most successful artists met a variety of fates. Some migrated to house and techno, while some stuck with an increasingly limited formula. Some, like Skream, ascended to bigger things. Others aimed just as high, and undershot spectacularly. Way back in 2008, the swaggering synths of Joker's "Gully Brook Lane" were an early indicator of the genre's stadium potential. But the tension in early Joker productions—between the austerity of dubstep and his taste for gleeful overload—didn't hold for long. Shortly after Magnetic Man showed how to make a dubstep album with pop appeal, Joker's 2011 LP The Vision got it quite badly wrong. It was grotesque and overcooked in places, but mostly it was just plain dull. 

Its followup, The Mainframe, certainly isn't that. This, perhaps, is Joker's "vision" finally realised. It's just as overblown as its predecessor—more so, even, thanks to a palette of expensive sounding orchestral plug-ins. But the vocal appearances are much more sparing, limited to unremarkable turns from Zak Abel and Rochelle, and a skeevy performance from Sam Frank on "Lucy," the album's one truly grim moment. 

Instead, the focus has shifted back onto Joker's instrumentals. The producer has described The Mainframe as a "story" that should be enjoyed "from start to finish," like a film, and for once that tired cliche is pretty accurate. The album is cinematic in sweep. There's an absurdly grandiose "Intro," and an "An Intervening Episode" whose luxurious wafts of guitar carry a hint of jazz-fusion. There are three consecutive "Scene"s guiding us through a succession of cartoon landscapes, from the steely menace of "Qo,noS" (a Star Trek reference) to the sci-fi pomp of "Neon City" and the sentimental "Spirit Ruins." The moody segues slotted between tracks are often as entertaining as the tracks themselves.

But all of this is really just embellishment. If The Mainframe is a film, then it's a Michael Bay blockbuster: slick and engaging but totally adolescent in worldview, its plot tortuous, its characters flimsily drawn, all of it an excuse for a string of eye-popping action set-pieces. When they come, they offer a pretty undeniable thrill. "Boss Mode"'s bassline crumples like a metal-on-metal impact rendered in hi-def CGI, while "Midnight" is part boogie update, part euphoric trance breakdown, and part Godzilla-sized dubstep banger. A track like "Mahogany," with its cheesy synthetic piano and searing synths, is bracingly naff, but compelling nonetheless.

Still, just as, an hour or so into Transformers 2, the adrenaline rush peters out and the clunky sentimentality starts to grate, so too does this album outstay its welcome. The title of mawkish closer "Mixed Emotions" sums it up nicely. The Mainframe feels like the album that Joker has wanted to make all along. Whether that’s a good thing is questionable... www.residentadvisor.net

Roman Flügel - Sliced Africa

1 Black Towers
2 Sliced Africa
3 Spiritual Enhancer

The venerated German producer appropriates African musics in a long-standing Teutonic tradition on his latest for Hamburg's Dial. 'Black Towers' stretches out for nearly 12 minutes of effortless, subtly shifting groove repetition and awning, earthly synth pads; 'Sliced Africa' locks down to a percolated bounce with natty keyboard melodies reminding of recent Fiedel and MMM styles, 'Spiritual Enhancer' gets off on a sort of slow-mo mix of Roedelius and old skool electro. www.boomkat.com

Andy Stott - Faith in Strangers

1 Time Away 
2 Violence 
3 On Oath 
4 Science and Industry 
5 No Surrender 
6 How it Was 
7 Damage  
8 Faith in Strangers
9 Missing

'Faith In Strangers’ was written and produced between January 2013 and June 2014, and was edited and sequenced in late July this year. Making use of on an array of instruments, field recordings, found sounds and vocal treatments, it’s a largely analogue variant of hi-tech production styles arcing from the dissonant to the sublime. The first two tracks recorded during these early sessions bookend the release, the opener ‘Time Away’ featuring Euphonium played by Kim Holly Thorpe and last track ‘Missing’ a contribution by Stott’s occasional vocal collaborator Alison Skidmore who also appeared on 2012’s ‘Luxury Problems’. Between these two points ‘Faith In Strangers’ heads off from the sparse and infected ‘Violence’ to the broken, downcast pop of ‘On Oath’ and the motorik, driving melancholy of ‘Science & Industry’ - three vocal tracks built around that angular production style that imbues proceedings with both a pioneering spirit and a resonating sense of familiarity. Things take a sharp turn with ‘No Surrender’- a sparkling analogue jam making way for a tough, smudged rhythmic assault, while ‘How It Was’ refracts sweaty Warehouse signatures and ‘Damage’ finds the sweet spot between RZA’s classic ‘Ghost Dog’ and Terror Danjah at his most brutal. ‘Faith in Strangers’ is next and offers perhaps the most beautiful and open track here, its vocal hook and chiming melody bound to the rest of the album via the almost inaudible hum of Stott’s mixing desk. It provides a haze of warmth and nostalgia that ties the nine loose joints that make up the LP into the most memorable and oddly cohesive of Stott’s career to date, built and rendered in the spirit of those rare albums that straddle innovation and tradition through darkness and light. www.boomkat.com

Water Borders - Harbored Mantras

01. Tread On Them
02. What Wiwant
03. waldenpond.com
04. Bad Ethos
05. Even In The Dark
06. Feasting On Mongeese
07. See Bank
08. Miners
09. Antechamber

Another compelling entry from Tri Angle Records, who've cleverly snapped up the frightening debut album by Water Borders. With 'Harbored Mantras' the San Fran-hailing duo of Amitai and Loric use the rhythms of contemporary ritual dance music to resurrect the occult soul of Coil and their cabal in unique and succinctly pop balanced new forms. A couple of mixtapes - both self-released and for the brilliant DIS magazine - display their influences quite clearly, working in a circle of influence ranging from Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson's eerie Threshold HouseBoys Choir to James Blake's chamber pop and the rhythm schematics of Doc Daneeka or DJ Elmoe, and it's fair to say this album sums up all of those and more. The opening palette cleanser 'Tread On Them' crosses swords between gamelan, narcotically-blunted House and a deeply uncanny channelling of Jhonn Balance-like vocals, whose inspiration looms large into the stunning 'What Wiwant', practically scratching at the hairs of the neck with vocal anguish over the tuffest 'ardcore subs and clammiest ambience. We could happily play this on repeat this until the national grid shut down. That chilling vocal continues to pervade deeper in, with 'Bad Ethos' summoning depth charge Bristolian Dubstep in a tableau of sneering choirs and poltergeist shrieks, and to sour effect on 'Even In The Dark' and the 'Feasting On Mongeese', beautifully sustaining the aura of affected gothic torment. In the closing rites, this poise is held to elegant effect in the sepulchral space of 'Seed Bank', MIDI sax bleat circling abyssal 808 bass hits, and to exotic infusions of 'Antechamber' leaving us to dreams of grotesquerie even Pasolini would be proud of...www.boomkat.com

Daphni - Ne Noya / Yes, I Know / Jiao

1. Cos Ber Zam - Ne Noya (Daphni Mix)
2. Yes, I Know
3. Jiao

Jialong is a new label operated by Daphni aka Caribou. Like his Resista label it's also an outlet for his rewired dancefloor edits, but there's perhaps a more synthetic bias to these three aces. On the A-side is a remix of Cos Ber Zam's 'Ne Zoya', snatched from the 'Afro Beat Airways' compilation and shook down with bumpin' subs and cascading radiophonic synths to deadly effect. Flipside, it's his 'Yes, I Know' ace from that classic RA mix, playing rough with biting Funk-Rock samples and screwed acid lines for a proper ass-whipping 'floor mover, while 'Jiao' cuts loose to an exotic fusion of kosmic synth spirals and Far-Eastern melodies with a psych-techno burn. Limited edition, be quick!..www.boomkat.com

Emika - Emika

01. 3 Hours
02. Common Exchange
03. Professional Loving
04. Be My Guest
05. Count Backwards
06. Double Edge
07. Pretend
08. The Long Goodbye
09. FM Attention
10. Drop The Other
11. Come Catch Me
12. Credit Theme

The eagerly anticipated first album from Berlin-based, Bristol-hailing Emika, who's impressed over the past two years with singles and EPs that occupy the kohl-eyed space between electronic pop, dubstep, techno and minimal house, meaning she's equally at home with the Ostgut Ton crew (whose Funf comp she provided field recordings for) as with Ninja Tune, who are issuing this fine LP. There's a darkly sultry edge to all the tracks here, perfectly evocative of messed-up wee hours in some Kreuzberg basement, and the best tracks really ramp up and exploit that future-noir vibe. At times there are echoes of Emika's West Country forebears Portishead ('Professional Loving'), while 'Be My Guest' is a Subloaded/DMZ-friendly stepper with an injection of feminine pressure, and elsewhere the combo of heavy subs, spaced out snares and emotionally ambiguous vocals is pure Various Production. For all these reference points, Emika has cultivated her own sound here, and she keeps it tight throughout, refusing to deviate from the near-gothic moodiness but experimenting with rhythm and texture all the while. A bruising, seductive debut that pulls off a rare and remarkable trick: opening up dubstep to pop influence without pandering to the requirements of the mainstream...www.boomkat.com

Andy Stott – We Stay Together EP

1. Submission
2. Posers
3. Bad Wires
4. We Stay Together (Part One)
5. Cherry Eye
6. Cracked

'We Stay Together' is a brand new doublepack from Andy Stott, a companion piece of sorts to the radical inversions of the 'Passed Me By' EP released earlier this year. Its predecessor left many heads dazed upon impact - in the best possible sense - and these six tracks, produced in its wake, amp the pressure to throttling degrees. Entering the digital compression chamber of 'Submission' you become a willing participant, before the lights are cut and you're forced to adjust to the humid atmosphere and bruising, muscle-contracting darkroom throb of 'Posers'. Suitably initiated, the EP's fearless centrepiece 'Bad Wires' plunges into full on mud-party mode, dropping the tempo while intensifying the kinaesthetic funk with slow, clusterf*cked syncopation until you're drowning in synthesized oil and crushed-glass textures. Fully submerged by 'We Stay Together (Part One)' time becomes elasticated like worn VHS tape, calling to mind Jamal Moss and James Ferraro soundtracking a rave in a sodden, flooded sauna, before inescapably tumbling into the sheer black hole of 'Cherry Eye' and left to the slompy jack of 'Cracked'. Blatantly, we rate this record massively, and although it's not for everyone, those looking for a more visceral, intense form of dancefloor pressure would do very well to check in...www.boomkat.com

Korallreven - As Young As Yesterday

1. As Young As Yesterday
2. As Young As Yesterday (Panda Bear Remix)
3. As Young As Yesterday (Girl Unit Remix)
4. The Final Fantasy

Take a moment to honor Swedish Balearic beat-minders Korallreven’s Class A assemblage of talent on their new “As Young As Yesterday” 12″: The track itself features vocals from oft-collaborator Victora Bergsman, and and the extended single boasts remixes from Panda Bear and pinnacle Night Slug producer Girl Unit, he of the world-beating club track “Wut.” You’ve heard Panda’s ambient take; Girl Unit’s is, conversely, more appropriate for bodily movement...www.stereogum.com

Ben Westbeech - There's More To Life Than This

01. The Book feat. Georg Levin
02. Something For The Weekend feat. by Danny J Lewis
03. Falling feat. Lovebirds
04. Same Thing feat. Chocolate Puma
05. Justice feat. Motor City Drum Ensemble
06. Stronger feat. Midland
07. Inflections feat. Henrik Schwarz
08. Sugar feat. Redlight
09. Let Your Feelings Show feat. Georg Levin
10. Butterflies feat. Rasmus Faber
11. Summer's Loss feat. Rasmus Faber

Reinvention can be tricky. Get it right, and you can become a master of musical metamorphosis like Bjork. Get it wrong, and you end up with David Bowie's's drum & bass period. Most artists trying to scrape their way out of a pigeonhole go for one of two tried-and-tested routes. The first, which we'll "the Mark Pritchard method," is to adopt a different alias for each musical pie you stick your finger in. The second—"the Madonna method"—is to keep your name, but clutch at the coattails of credibility by enlisting the trendiest producers of the moment.

Ben Westbeech has taken both paths recently. Last year's UK funky anthem "Fatherless" by Breach—which took research to reveal was indeed the work of the Westbeech—was a far cry from the acid jazz-tinged 2007 album Welcome to the Best Years of Your Life. And now we have There's More to Life Than This, the second album to bear Westbeech's own name but one that bears just as little resemblance to his debut. Welcome's blue-eyed soul has been shown the door. The new Ben Westbeech has been given a house makeover by producers like Motor City Drum Ensemble, Henrik Schwarz and Rasmus Faber.

But does this new change of direction work? Yes, by and large...even if the "The Book" and "Something for the Weekend" initially make you think Westbeech has been reincarnated as Jamiroquai. The polished jazz-funk and daytime playlist disco aren't entirely unsuccessful, by the way. It's just that There's More to Life gets better from then on. "Justice" has the trademark wintry deep house atmospherics of Motor City Drum Ensemble, "Stronger" is a slowly building groove fashioned by Midland and "Inflections" adds speedily strummed Spanish guitar and rollicking percussion courtesy of Henrik Schwarz. Westbeech has chosen his new friends carefully: This sounds like a coherent album rather than a string of collaborations, with his creamy tones—and occasionally clichéd lyrics—providing a common identity throughout.

That identity doesn't seem as convincing or confident as his instrumental alter ego Breach, however. Indeed, you sometimes feel that Westbeech is hiding behind his producers. (Especially given that "Fatherless' proved he has the studio skills to produce something pretty spectacular—and more unique—on his own.) For the next album it'd be intriguing to see him drop the pseudonyms and the hired hands and combine both sides of himself to showcase the "real" Ben Westbeech, whoever that might be...www.residentadvisor.net

Ayshay - Warn-U

1. Warn-U
2. Shaytan
3. Jemsheed

Without a doubt, Ayshay's 'WARN-U' is one of the most original and spellbinding singles of 2011, and an artistic step-up for the already formidable Tri Angle imprint. Ayshay, meaning "whatever" in Arabic, is a handle for Fatima Al Qadiri, a New York City-based sonic sorceress born in Senegal and raised in Kuwait, who also writes a fantastic column on contemporary world music for the bizarro DIS magazine, sometimes accompanied by her kaleidoscopic, 'net-foraging mixtapes. These breathtaking tracks comprise her first release, and although we've become deeply familiar with their youtube videos for over a year now, it's a blessing to finally have them in the physical realm for tactile gratification. Each song is built entirely from her own pitched and layered vocals in a manner distinctly reminiscent of Grouper's ethereal harmonising, but more intriguingly inspired by the Islamic religious songs she's absorbed since childhood. Their impact distinctly recalls the emotion-enhancing autotune effect favoured by so many North African and Middle Eastern pop artists for its emphatic effect, but is still seen as distasteful in certain swathes of supposedly "forward thinking" western ears. Yet in our opinion it refracts a transcendent emotive clarity which frightens us to be quite honest, and keeps us returning to this trio of songs more times than a sane person possibly should. Furthermore, the accompanying Nguzunguzu megamix gives the tracks a crafty junglist context in a lineage of Arabic pop/hardcore dating back to the likes of Lennie De Ice sampling Factory Records' obscure Algerian Rai release 'N'Sel Fik' by Cheba Fadela. Ultimately, for seekers of mystical sublime frequencies from the near future, this record is just beyond essential...www.boomkat.com

Walls - Coracle

1. Into Our Midst
2. Heat Haze
3. Sunporch
4. Il Tedesco
5. Vacant
6. Raw Umber Twilight
7. Ecstatic Truth
8. Drunken Galleon

Walls waste no time in following up their widely acclaimed debut album (MOJO's #1 Electronic LP of 2010) with a glorious set of eight swooning slow trance tinglers for Kompakt. 'Coracle' is as cute as the name suggests, yet perhaps with a keener dancefloor edge than we've previously perceived from their music. The sleek Techno engine which drove this album's predecessor is fine tuned to a Balearic tempo, but with a trustingly Teutonic dancefloor efficiency. From the top of 'In The Midst' the groove steadily purrs at a chugging 110bpm while sublime shoegaze guitar repetitions unfurl across the long, straight road ahead. On cruise control, they pass into the lushly mirage-like 'Heat Haze' before the beat reappears to propel the heart-fluttering arpeggios of 'Sunporch' to almost giddy heights, and we plane across the gazing Techno scapes of 'Il Tedesco'. Down the line 'Vacant' is more blissed, coolly riding the brakes into the elated second wind of 'Raw Umber/Twilight' and the majestic kosmiche disco dissonance of 'Ecstatic Truth'...www.boomkat.com

Tropics - Parodia Flare

01. Navajo
02. Mouves
03. Parodia Flare
04. Going Back
05. Wear Out
06. Celebrate
07. Figures
08 Telassar
09. Playgrounds
10. After Visiting
11. Sapphire
12. On the Move

Tropics is the sultry electronic shoegaze project of young British producer and multi-instrumentalist Chris Ward. Unlike so many similarly oriented artists, Ward doesn't hide behind distortion - his arrangements are complex and crystal-clear, reminding us less of any nu-gaze outfit and far more of the gushing electronic fantasias peddled by Nathan Fake, early Four Tet and Tropics' Mu labelmates Solar Bears. We can't help but compare a good number of the album's tracks to the US chillwave of Washed Out and Toro Y Moi, but the most satisfying tracks are those that go for the levitating electronic rock sublime, like the title number and the epic 'Mouves', being the kind of extravagantly psychedelic fare that The Horrors wish they could make. It’s certainly a diverse album - 'Celebrate' summons the Valium-smashed beatscapes of Balam Acab, 'Telassar' is boogie gone Balearic - and Ward deploys an incredible range of rhythmic and instrumental ideas to flesh out his disarmingly pretty songs, but he manages to keep everything coherent. A highly impressive debut all in all...www.boomkat.com

Anthony 'Shake' Shakir / Oni Ayhun – Meet Shangaan Electro And BBC

A Anthony Shake Shakir Meets BBC
B Oni Ayhun Meets Shangaan Electro

The one we've all been waiting for! Anthony "Shake" Shakir and Oni Ayhun dissemble and rebuild highlights of the incredible Shangaan Electro comp with inimitable results. Face up, Anthony Shakir reworks BBC's 'Ngunyuta Dance' as an electrified and tribalist House rhythm, amping the kicks and shaking the percussion with a more Latin shuffle, Detroit-via-Shangaan styles. Flip it and you'll find Oni Ayhun shaping fragments of various compilation tracks into a skipping breakbeat House monster, twysted like some rude Shed riddim with a delirious case of sunstroke. Simply, they're sh*t hot dance trax and highly recommended!...www.boomkat.com

Aerea Negrot - Arabxilla

01. Bipolintro
02. Arabxilla
03. Todeloo
04. A Volar
05. Deutsche Werden
06. Please Move To ...
07. Berlin
08. Breathe Deeply
09. It's Lover, Love
10. Come Back
11. Hair (tobias. Album Version)
12. Proll-Og
13. Listen to the People
14. It's Lover, Love (Dub)

Aerea Negrot is best known as part of the revolving cast in Hercules & Love Affair: she sang on the group's latest album, Blue Songs, and performed with them on their recent tours. But the Venezuelan-born, Berlin-based artist was writing her own music long before Andy Butler and co came along—Arabxilla includes songs that were written as early as 2004. Much like her two 12-inches for BPitch Control, the album pairs electronic beats with her dynamic and multilingual lyrics, many of which chronicle her life since moving from London to Berlin. "The idea of the album was actually to use songs that document relationships and situations of my past seven years," she says. "I like to think of these songs like a theatre piece with several breaks and interludes."

The album is co-produced by Tobias Freund, AKA Tobias., the Berlin-based producer and mastering engineer who just released an album of his own. It will be followed later this year by a remix EP for Right Body Wrong Time, featuring reworks by Seth Troxler and Ricardo Villalobos...www.residentadvisor.net

Gazelle Twin - The Entire City

1 The Entire City
2 Concrete Mother
3 Men Like Gods
4 I Am Shell I Am Bone
5 Far From Home
6 Changelings
7 Bell Tower
8 When I Was Otherwise
9 Obelisk
10 Nest
11 Fight-Or-Flight
12 View Of A Mountain
13 Untitled

Elizabeth Walling could be Brighton's answer to Fever Ray's Karin Dreijer Andersson, with her queer masked costumes and avant-garde electronica. Her repertoire draws from sci-fi film scores, choral music, underwater life and the paranormal. The visual accoutrements – stark, monochrome videos, theatrical live shows – are striking, but the brooding, atmospheric scores on this debut are thrilling enough to stand alone. The Entire City is named after a Max Ernst painting, and Walling casts her metropolis as both comfort and threat; the safeness and succor of Concrete Mother becomes suffocating claustrophobia on Nest, with its suspense-filled percussion, and the war-like rush of the eponymous track becomes stark isolation on Changelings. The album feels all the more arcane for its nakedness, its mood shifting subtly from sensual and euphoric to eerie foreboding. Walling is both star and morphing other, warping breathy harmonies and siren miasmas into elegant cyborg operas. A stunning debut...www.guardian.co.uk

Southern Shores - Atlantic EP

01. Take Me Anywhere
02. Antibo
03. Tangier Winds
04. Night Is Young
05. Grande Comore
06. Meridian

Southern Shores are the latest Balearic-leaning group with a release on Cascine, a label following in the footsteps of Swede counterparts Sincerely Yours and Service. Sonically, the Canadian duo mine the same brand of nostalgia-flecked ecstasy as Air France or even the Avalanches, but the their choice of samples and propulsive rhythms trade in the lightheaded focus of those groups for something clubbier.

The summer mood of their Atlantic EP debut is largely carried on waves of optimistic major chord shifts, but there's an introspective, thoughtful quality to the production that lends enough depth to reward repeat trips. "Tangier Winds", for example, samples a grab bag of a cappella vocals-- including 1990s R&B smoothies U-Mnyd-- each contributing a distinct sentiment to what eventually becomes a cluttered conversation. The lyrical snatches are just intangible enough to add a heavy feeling of romance to a bedrock of lush keys and drifting bass patterns. The resulting effect is a satisfying tangle of jammed frequencies.

"Night Is Young" plays similar sampling tricks, but here the clipped vocals lose themselves in more propulsive surroundings. Unlike the relatively stable dynamics of "Tangier Winds", the momentum shifts gears throughout, carrying more of a disco palette than anything else on the record. There's a fun and hedonistic Salsoul vibe to the track-- Shep Pettibone and Cathy Dennis are among the samples-- an idea that feels just distinct enough to work as a worthwhile homage exercise as well as a blissed-out summer dance track.

Pretty much everything on Atlantic exists in a seasonal haze-- nobody's going to mistake this for anything but a record of summer jams. That tight focus may seem limited in scope, but it helps yield the EP's concentrated burst of sensation. And, while the majority of recent sun-drenched music's been concerned with retelling half-remembered feelings from the past, Southern Shores escape that vacuum by investing in the moment at hand: As the opening track title "Take Me Anywhere" suggests, this is music that not only wants to soundtrack your vacation, it wants to be your vacation...www.pitchfork.com

Mark Ernestus - Mark Ernestus Meets BBC

01. Mark Ernestus Meets BBC
02. Mark Ernestus Meets BBC Version

Hugely influential Berlin lynchpin meets Afro-Futurist Dance-Pop in the first of Honest Jon's Shangaan remix series. Forthcoming editions will feature revisions by Anthony Shakir, Oni Ayhun, Peverelist and many more, but the one in question is a superb opening gambit. Ernestus reduces the original's 180bpm ebullience to a suave, almost Kwaito-styled House tick layered with savannah gaze synths and teasing delays resulting in a lushly seductive groove. A version simply reduced this further, leaving traces of velvet-clad bass and scanning synth pads. Butterly lush. Highly recommended...www.boomkat.com

Innercity - Untitled

1. Dada Les Apocalypses
2. The Pyramids Of Northeast Belgium

Vermont's brilliant NNA Tapes are fast becoming one of the best labels out there, following mind-melting releases such by Diamond Catalog and Laurel Halo already this year with this fractal gem from Antwerp's Innercity. The tension building panoramic drama of 'Dada Les Apocalypses' feels like the soundtrack to a 100 mile ceremonial queue lugubriously shuffling towards the titular landmark on the horizon, and when we reach the pinnacle of 'The Pyramids Of Northeast Belgium' we're washed with glittering synth magic before given access to a ritual Techno club at the structure's core and promptly evaporated by a sustained synth strobe flash. Don't miss this...www.boomkat.com