DJ Mag's Top 50 Albums of 2018

There had always been a burning sense of resistance baked into SOPHIE’s experimental soundscapes, which simultaneously honored and rejected the tropes and rules of mainstream pop. But the Scottish producer’s visionary debut album is an exhilarating escalation—a work that not only exploded expectations around song structure and form but conventional notions of gender, identity, and self, as well. *Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides* is sweeping and defiant, pinballing from glitchy rave cuts (“Ponyboy”) to ethereal pop elegies (“It’s Okay to Cry”) to ambient passages that feel practically spiritual (“Pretending”). Each left turn is an invitation to slip further into SOPHIE’S neon universe. In the hands of any other artist, such dizzying digital distortions would appear to warp reality. Here, though, they clarify it. Every synthetic vocal, slithering synth, zigzagging beat, and gleefully warped sample brings us closer to SOPHIE\'S truth. Some of the project’s headiest questions—those about body, being, and soul—seem to rest on a distant horizon the rest of the world hasn’t caught up to yet. “Immaterial,” a fizzing, maximalist hat-tip to Madonna, moves the goalposts even further, proposing a version of consciousness in which the material world is, in fact, only the beginning.

w&p by Skee Mask

Houndstooth is pleased to announce the signing of Pariah for a debut full length, Here From Where We Are, due for release on July 13th 2018. The artist’s first release in six years marks a natural progression in his sound across nine interconnected pieces. Arthur Cayzer was a relative late comer to dance music. He grew up in various hardcore and punk bands before moving to London and being swept away by dubstep. After just six months messing around making his own stuff on Logic, Pitchfork coverage piqued the interest of the legendary R&S, and over the next two years he released three EPs with the Belgian label. Each one showed subtle evolution and further established Pariah on the international scene. Since then, Arthur has continued to DJ round the world and play live with Blawan as Karenn. Musically, though, he’s been adrift. With countless unfinished projects cluttering his hard drive, he felt he’d pressured himself into making the music people expected, rather than music that was an honest reflection of himself. It was only by taking a step back to analyse the music that has always resonated with him—and where, how, when and in what context it did—that gave him a renewed confidence in his work. After one track was finished, an album of coherent pieces naturally followed. Although Here From Where We Are is inspired by a series of very personal reflections, responses and reactions, Arthur is keen for people to process it in their own way, free from interference. Opening with the transcendental ‘Log Jam’ which spills into the huge, empty and plaintive ‘Pith’, the artist distills his experiences into an album of nine moving, multi-layered tracks, where peculiar textures combine with rich harmonies and absorbing melodies into a heady mix of abstracted environments, formally structured songs and sound collages. Absorbing from start to finish, Here From Where We Are is a long overdue return and accomplished new direction for this rejuvenated producer. Here From Where We Are VINYL / CD / DIGITAL

With the release of her debut album, Nabihah Iqbal makes two big announcements. Firstly, that she’s leaving her old Throwing Shade moniker behind. By embracing the name she was born with, she proudly wears it as a female British Asian artist making electronic music. Secondly, that she will be releasing her album on Ninja Tune. Incorporating live instrumentation more than before, ‘Weighing of the Heart’, takes on a bolder, more inclusive sound than her previous releases. Channeling influences from the likes of CAN and Bauhaus, she melds moody, propulsive basslines with shimmering synth atmospheres. The title alludes to an Ancient Egyptian myth about judgement and the afterlife, the concept of which underlies various ideas that are explored throughout the album. The album’s intertwining styles are underpinned by Iqbal's writing, drawing on themes of existential doubt, pondering the struggles and pleasures which mark day-to-day life. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the lead single ‘Something More’ - released today - her subdued vocals exploring the feeling of being eternally unsatisfied with what you’ve got. In addition to her music production, Nabihah has hosted a bi-weekly show on NTS since 2013, exploring the musical traditions of different countries. She has also received several commissions from other corners of the arts: she recently took part in a group performance as part of the Barbican’s Basquiat retrospective and collaborated with Wolfgang Tillmans at his major Tate Modern exhibition. She’s received plaudits from publications including Pitchfork, ­The Guardian, The Fader and Complex. She has also had radio support from Huw Stephens, Monki, and Toddla T on Radio 1, Jamz Supernova on Radio 1Xtra, Gilles Peterson on Radio 6Music and Zane Lowe on Beats 1.

Martyn releases new album ‘Voids’, his first for Ostgut Ton ‘Voids’ is in a few ways markedly different than previous Martyn records; it features no guest appearances or collaborations and at 9 tracks, is musically stripped down to the essentials. It’s also a highly personal take on forging new paths forward in genres where the Berghain/Panorama Bar resident has long been known for his production wizardry and innovation: post-dubstep and UK garage. The LP is roughly split between these musical foundations, recontextualized with elements of Nyabinghi, drum ‘n‘ bass, and gqom to form snarling, bass-driven hybrids. The direction was hinted at last November on his ‘GL Outtakes’ – reworks of his landmark 2009 album ‘Great Lengths’. In contrast however, ‘Voids’ is also an attempt to work through personal trauma and loss, including recovering from a heart attack and dealing with the passing of close friend and fellow producer Marcus Intalex aka Trevino, to whom the track “Manchester” is dedicated. The sound of ‘Voids’ is big and unapologetically rough around the edges. It is music as therapy, drawing on the healing elements of music past, but is far from retrospective. Indeed, Martyn is no stranger to electronic futurism, as his numerous solo productions for Ostgut Ton, Dolly, Hyperdub, Brainfeeder, Ninja Tune, Warp and his own 3024 label (run together with visual collaborator Jeroen Erosie) have shown. On ‘Voids’, however, these futuristic sonic qualities coalesce into something darker, more biographical and untethered from expectations. “Woken by the spirits of a new life dawning.” – The Spaceape

“Qualm” is the new album by Helena Hauff, released via Ninja Tune. The title has a duality that Hauff enjoys - the German word “Qualm” ( kvalm) translates as fumes or smoke, whilst the English meaning refers to an uneasy feeling of doubt, worry, or fear, especially about one's own conduct. True to form, the record is unapologetically raw and finds her returning to her original modus operandi - jamming on her machines - “trying to create something powerful without using too many instruments and layers”. A former resident of the Golden Pudel club in her hometown Hamburg, Helena’s profile and global standing has grown exponentially since the release of “Discreet Desires” in 2015, purely on the strength of her authenticity and her expertly curated DJ sets spanning acid, electro, EBM, techno and post punk. Gigging incessantly (and still lugging a box of records across the world) Helena’s reputation earned her an invitation to join the BBC Radio 1 Residency, she was the subject of cover features for Crack Magazine and DJ Mag, she played headline sets at Sonar (b2b with Ben UFO) and Dekmantel, and at the end of 2017 Crack Magazine declared Helena “The Most Exciting DJ In The World (Right Now)” and her ballistic BBC Essential Mix was voted the best of 2017. Born and raised in Hamburg, a self-confessed child of the 90s, Helena was obsessed with the music she discovered via the television on channels such as MTV and VIVA. She recalls her grandmother buying Technotronic's 'Pump Up The Jam’ at the flea market for her and watching coverage of iconic electronic music festival Loveparade in Berlin on TV. She has fond memories of borrowing CDs from the local library and making her own mixtapes - these days an archaic practice but from a curatorial standpoint these were her earliest outings as a DJ. Helena picks out Miss Kittin & The Hacker and Toktok vs. Soffy O as inspirations but it was the self-titled album from 2001 by electro icon Radioactive Man that was "a real eye-opener" providing the stimulus for her to dive in and immerse herself in the music and culture. At university Helena studied first for a Fine Art degree, but whilst she enjoyed the emphasis on experimentation and artistic freedom, she realised that she didn’t have an innate need to make visual art, the prerequisite for a career in that oeuvre according to her lecturer. However, she did have exactly that compulsion in regards to DJing: “I was obsessed with DJing, there was no question that I had to do it. It wasn’t about the money, I just wanted to DJ somewhere,” she explains. Next Helena enrolled on a degree in Systematic Music Science and Physics. Heading in almost the polar opposite direction to her Fine Art background, it was a highly technical syllabus incorporating maths, physics and acoustics but perhaps on some level this juxtaposition of science and art has shaped her approach to coaxing music from her machines? Helena made her recording debut in 2013 on Werkdiscs / Ninja Tune. She has since partnered with PAN (as Black Sites alongside F#x), Lux Rec, Bunker sublabel Panzerkreuz, Texan cassette imprint Handmade Birds and established her own label Return To Disorder (2015). Most recently she released a 4-track EP “Have You Been There, Have You Seen It” (2017) via Ninja Tune that “pushed her machines to their breaking point… capturing the ironclad force she delivers in her DJ sets while further carving out her own space in the electro landscape” (Pitchfork).

'Portrait With Firewood' is Felix’s most personal body of work to date, the product of an emotionally turbulent 2017, capturing the range of feelings and emotions he went through in vivid sonic beauty. By putting aside his previous sampleadelic approach he returned to his childhood instrument of the piano as a core starting point. "It's a confessional record… I realise that's a word mostly used to describe singer/songwriter rather than (largely) instrumental music, but I think it's apt. There's a sort of emotional candour.” Felix is classically trained in the jazz tradition and influenced by the likes of Keith Jarrett and Alice Coltrane. Previously he was shy at the prospect of fans hearing his piano playing, but determined to overcome this fear he has brought forward a new honesty to his work. "Finding the confidence to work with my own piano improvisations was a big part of that. Once I had figured out how I was going to make the music, it actually fell in to place rather quickly.” Felix's goal was to create something "overwhelmingly beautiful", but also to capture the "inherent melancholy in beauty in all it's impermanance and fragility". He took inspiration and solace from performance artist Marina Abramovic. "She has an incredibly deep understanding of the human condition, and expresses it in such a poetic way. Many of the themes of her work had particular resonance for me over the course of 2017 as I worked on the album. I was moved to tears on several occasions watching her videos or reading about her work.” Felix collaborated with cellist Zosia Jagodzinska and vocalist Lola Empire. Jagodzinska recorded several takes of improvisations over the track 'Creature' which Felix would chop, pitch and layer into new melodic lines and seed throughout the album.  Felix's new approach expanded to experimentation with field recording, contact micing his beloved piano and purchasing his first hardware synth, all in service of enriching the personal, humane quality of the record. "Music helps me to communicate the sorts of things that I find almost impossible to put in to words. I think the process for this album has helped me create a more rich and emotionally complex body of work than I have managed before.”

“A thing of groundbreaking beauty” – Clash “Brooding, grinding, slow-burning emotional techno” – Resident Advisor 'Album of the Day' - BBC 6Music “Magical” – Mixmag “Profound, delicate… a gentle show of solidarity, Cooper’s intellectual excursions are communicating clearly, coherently and beautifully with his musical ideas... His Renaissance Man ambitions are staggering” 9.5/10 – DJ Mag "The always-awesome Max Cooper" - Tom Ravenscroft, BBC 6Music "Absolutely incredible, utterly enthralling...goosebumps" - Mary Anne Hobbs, BBC 6Music "Le tout, One Hundred Billion Sparks , est une invitation à l’immersion." / "One Hundred Billion Sparks as an album is an invitation to immersion." – Le Soir, BE [This album is available on vinyl and CD direct from Max's store: https://shop.maxcooper.net] "We are one hundred billion sparks. One hundred billion neurons whose firing creates feelings and ideas. One hundred billion neurons that make us all different yet connected." After spending a month in complete isolation at a remote cottage in Wales, Max Cooper presents ‘One Hundred Billion Sparks’, his third studio album, in which he interrogates notions of identity whilst profiling the complex mechanisms that make us all wonderfully unique. "For me personally, the foundations of nature, in the broadest sense (including us), carry the most beauty and maddening incomprehensibility." "The more something is distilled, the more its beauty is crystallised. That is why I am compelled to look for foundations as a general approach." His previous album 'Emergence' applied this reasoning outwards but for 'One Hundred Billion Sparks' he applied it inwards. Conceptualised during a period of intense isolation, the album searches for artistry amongst the mechanisms, emotions and constructs which yield our identity and experience. "'One Hundred Billion Sparks' is my attempt to express what was there after I had removed my everyday life. No phone calls, no emails, no messages, no human contact or conversation for a month, that was the idea. What I found were the constructs we live inside, the fables we tell ourselves about who we are and the system which creates us." "What I found were the constructs we live inside, the fables we tell ourselves about who we are and the system which creates us." It is a project that can be appreciated both for its complex groundings and beautiful simplicity in equal measure. Pairing crystalline, microscopic sound with sweeping ambience and immersive textures, Max refines his signature sound across a range of tempos. Retaining the duality for which his work is now known for, extensively detailed tracks are bound together by affecting harmonies and driven forward by focused drum patterns in tracks like 'Hope'. Whilst the sound palette is unmistakably his, the album sees him experimenting with new styles, as highlighted in the industrial swarm of 'Reflex', the dubby minimalism of 'Identity' or the post pop choppy vocals of 'Rule 110'. Every piece of music on the album is a score to the visual story underpinning the project. Each chapter conceived in both musical and visual form from the outset, and carried forward as collaborations with visual artists. These chapters are explained in detail on an accompanying website which will be released alongside the album. On his process, Max explains: "Nature is like art - full of structure, complexity, paradox and many other things which invoke awe, beauty, peace, confusion, frustration and feeling. That is why I involve scientific ideas in my projects; they are a rich source of aesthetic and feeling." As one of the leading artists exploring the intersection of music, science, art and technology, Max Cooper has sustained a reputation for providing insightful projects via sound, visuals and immersive installations. 'One Hundred Billion Sparks' advances that reputation, with an artistic exploration of ideas communicating the marvel of our existence.

Objekt, the British-born, Berlin-based producer TJ Hertz, reinforces his reputation as one of bass music’s most creative minds with his second album. Like his debut, 2014’s *Flatland*, *Cocoon Crush* employs bracingly broken grooves and startlingly vivid textures, sounding like techno that’s been exploded into 11 dimensions. His former career as a developer of audio software pays off in jaw-dropping sound design, like the ratcheting rhythms of “Dazzle Anew” or the depth-charge bass of “Nervous Silk,” a psychedelic approximation of a diving bell’s descent. Despite glimmers of dance-floor energy here and there, this is first and foremost a listening album, head music of the highest order—but “Deadlock,” a slow, menacing hip-hop cut lacerated by speaker-shredding bass, is one of the heaviest things he’s ever done.

PAN welcomes back Objekt for Cocoon Crush, his first LP since 2014’s Flatland. Over the past four years Objekt has continued to challenge conventions with his club output (the Objekt #4 single release and the Kern Vol. 3 mix CD for Tresor), while maintaining his reputation as a DJ who deploys impeccable technical finesse in crafting elaborate narratives from a diverse and challenging palette of electronic music. Written between 2014 and 2018 in Berlin and on the road, Cocoon Crush once again sees the producer jettisoning the functional requirements of the dancefloor. Marking a further evolution from the youthful exuberance of Flatland, Cocoon Crush explores a more introspective side, with themes of human interaction resonating throughout the record as it ruminates on a spectrum of complex moods rooted in 4 years of sometimes turbulent personal experience. Cocoon Crush represents an aesthetic departure from Flatland’s largely synthetic tonality, drawing from organic source material and natural textures to illustrate perplexing and unfamiliar sceneries in photorealistic detail. In Cocoon Crush, Objekt diverges further still from his musical influences to craft the purest manifestation of his own musical personality to date: an intriguing and enigmatic album whose reference points are hard to pin down, in which ghostly synth passages weave through mind-bending, weighty drums, and ASMR-triggering foley collages scrape and sparkle. Through meticulous sculpting, Objekt traces a rich and impressionistic journey through claustrophobia, hope, guilt, anxiety and joy, nested in layers of sonic detail which reward with every listen. The album is mastered by Rashad Becker, featuring photography by Kasia Zacharko, and layout by Bill Kouligas.

Deena Abdelwahed’s first album is shifting the epicenter of contemporary electronic music south: “Khonnar“ will be released on November 16, 2018 by InFiné. Pronounced “Ronnar“ (an essential detail so as to avoid facile misinterpretation by French- speakers) it is a term that makes the most of Tunisia’s cultural and linguistic spectrum. It evokes the dark, shameful and disturbing side of things, the one we usually seek to hide, but which Deena instead sticks our noses in with her debut. It is a testament to Deena’s coming into her own as a world citizen, and as an artist. A self-construction made of frustrations and constraints, borne of retrograde mindsets, which are not the prerogative of either the East or the West, and which she tirelessly strives to expose and break. Throughout the 45 minutes of “Khonnar“, Deena breaks down the codes of bass, techno and experimental music, and writes the manifesto for a generation that does not seek to please or to conform, taking back control of its identity – with all the attendant losses and chaos. A new creative world order is taking shape, a new tilting point between north and south, the response of a connected and liberated youth who takes the control of the new decolonization. Mask and photography by London based artist Judas Companion, who’s work is about transformation of human identity. She makes masks and masked portraits to create different layers of the human being. Drawing inside + poster "De quoi rêvent les martyrs n°7 & n°4" by Nidhal Chamekh © Adagp 2018 Design by Motoplastic All lyrics by Deena Abdelwahed except Rabbouni and Al Hobb Al Mouharreb written by Abdullah Miniawy All tracks performed by Deena Abdelwahed All tracks mixed by Edu Tarradas Mastered by Beau Thomas @ Ten Eight Seven Mastering (UK)

In a recent interview with Bay Area music journalist Marke Bieschke, Russell Butler speaks on the inspiration behind their debut album, The Home I'd Build For Myself And All My Friends, released November 15 via San Francisco label Left Hand Path: "The album attempts to set out an idealistic space for the community, a space to dream in this frantic, late capitalist system, and feel what freedom and transcendence would be like. What does it look like when everyone has a home? What does it look like when rapists are held accountable? What does it feel like if everyone had clean water to drink? What does it feel like for a woman or a transperson to walk freely down the street?" In ten tracks across 60 minutes and two LPs, and featuring original artwork by Muzae Sesay, Butler presents a vision of an imagined future: "techno" in the truest sense, in its original sense. Wrought of hope and the spirit of resistance, The Home I'd Build For Myself And All My Friends recalls techno's emancipatory, Afro-futurist roots. Written in the aftermath of the Ghost Ship fire in Oakland in December 2016, the album is infused with an immediacy, a viscerality, unmatched by its contemporaries. Tempo and tenor vary throughout, making the record an engaging, dynamic listen. "Builder" is a slow burn, a roller for breaking hearts on the dancefloor. "No New Neighbors" is tense, upbeat, and sparse, built around a taut bassline. "These Seeds" runs slow, ideal for twisted afterparties. "Cure Water" is three minutes of unbridled passion, a beatless cosmic otherworld. The album finishes on a high note with its eponymously titled track: uptempo, intensely percussive, and almost overwhelmingly beautiful. To Chelsea, Johnny, Joey, Cash, Griffin, Barrett, Micah, Jonathan, Feral, Kiyomi, Draven, Hanna, Peter, Vanessa, Edmond, Billy, Jennifer, Michele, Nicholas, Jenny, Amanda, Denalda, Alex G., Nick, Jsun, Michela, Wolfgang, Sara, Ben, Travis, Ara, Em, Chase, Donna, David, and Alex V.: This is for you. We remember you. We honor you. We love you.

To record *All Melody*, Frahm designed his dream studio inside Berlin’s historic Funkhaus complex, rewiring the cables, installing a pipe organ, and building a custom mixing desk. Then, like a kid in a candy store, he created one of his most meticulous and adventurous albums yet. A delicate mix of ambient meditations (\"The Whole Universe Wants to be Touched”), wandering piano melodies (“My Friend the Forest”), and staccato, Latin-leaning grooves (“A Place,” “Kaleidoscope\"), it’s an absorbing study of atmosphere that\'s full of surprises.

For the past two years, Nils Frahm has been building a brand new studio in Berlin to make his 7th studio album titled All Melody, which will be released on January 26th, 2018 via Erased Tapes, before Nils embarks on his first world tour since 2015. Since the day Nils first encountered the impressive studio of a family friend, he had envisioned to create one of his own at such a large scale. Fast forward to the present day and Nils is now the proud host of Saal 3, part of the historical 1950s East German Funkhaus building beside the River Spree. It is here where he has spent most of his time deconstructing and reconstructing the entire space from the cabling and electricity to the woodwork, before moving on to the finer elements; building a pipe organ and creating a mixing desk all from scratch with the help of his friends. This is somewhere music can be nurtured and not neglected, and where he can somewhat fulfil his pursuit of presenting music to the world as close to his imagination as possible. His previous albums have often been accompanied with a story, such as Felt (2011) where he placed felt upon the hammers of the piano out of courtesy to his neighbours when recording late at night in his old bedroom studio, and the following album Screws (2012) when injuring his thumb forced him to play with only nine fingers. His new album is born out of the freedom that his new environment provided, allowing Nils to explore without any restrictions and to keep it All about the Melody. Despite being confined within the majestic four walls of the Funkhaus, buried deep in its reverb chambers, or in an old dry well in Mallorca, All Melody is, in fact, proof that music is limitless, timeless, and reflects that of Nils’ own capabilities. From a boy’s dream to resetting the parameters of music itself. Words from Nils, October 2017: “In the process of completion, any album not only reveals what it has become but, maybe more importantly, what it hasn't become. All Melody was imagined to be so many things over time and it has been a whole lot, but never exactly what I planned it to be. I wanted to hear beautiful drums, drums I've never seen or heard before, accompanied by human voices, girls, and boys. They would sing a song from this very world and it would sound like it was from a different space. I heard a synthesiser which sounds like a harmonium playing the All Melody, melting together with a line of a harmonium sounding like a synthesiser. My pipe organ would turn into a drum machine, while my drum machine would sound like an orchestra of breathy flutes. I would turn my piano into my very voice, and any voice into a ringing string. The music I hear inside me will never end up on a record, as it seems I can only play it for myself. This record includes what I think sticks out and describes my recent musical discoveries in the best possible way I could imagine.” The cover art was taken by photographer Lia Darjes in Nils’ new studio and designed by Torsten Posselt at FELD. A series of these in-studio photos will be included in a booklet with a copy of All Melody.

Bruce – AKA Larry McCarthy – is set to release his debut album Sonder Somatic this October on UK imprint Hessle Audio. The album packs 11 singular UK club tracks that evoke a distinctly emotive and dense energy, channelling detailed sound designs, tangled textures and club anthems for 2018 and beyond. The record is deeply varied in styles, ideas and tempos; from the tight rhythmic groove of album opener 'Elo' to the weaponised onslaught of ominous club cuts 'What' and 'Cacao' - through drifting, meditative techno and the skeletal sound design of 'Ore' and 'Baychimo.' Each track shifts the tonal mood in subtle and distinct ways, whilst retaining a consistent icy sound palette infused with colour and human warmth. The shapeshifting Hessle Audio imprint is run by Pearson Sound, Ben UFO and Pangaea. For over ten years, through their combined tastes they have continued to unravel and explore the edges of sounds and ideas from the wider dance music scene, across the boundaries of the functional and the experimental, with consistently innovative results. As a long time follower of the label, Bruce wanted to craft an album that continues their singular attitude and approach; incorporating vibes from UK soundsystem music as well as music from his home town of Bristol. "From being a fan of their work from the very beginning, it's not only the music they have released that has informed my taste/work, but also the journey they have formed through the application of their attitude and approach." - Bruce Much of Sonder Somatic was shaped by Bruce's own understanding of club culture as a whole, and predominantly his personal relationship with it both professionally and recreationally. The album was partly written as an attempt to capture that rare transformative feeling that can cause you to fully lose yourself in a club space, disconnecting from your immediate environment for a short time. Sonder Somatic follows EPs for Timedance, Livity Sound, Idle Hands and Hemlock, and comes 4 years after his debut EP 'Not Stochastic' for Hessle Audio. The album pushes the boundaries of what club music can be whilst expertly refining his work as both a club producer and an experimental sound designer. With a unique sense of flair that sets him apart, Sonder Somatic is set to raise Bruce's profile across all corners of the dance world.

Ravaged and warped breakbeats haunted by wailing euphoric noise, vivid and graphic reflections of fractured post-industrial hardcore, moments of poetry flashing within a thick impending fog. This is our soundtrack. A unique and visionary achievement; a wholly original future of beauty and despair: brutal, gritty, alive and urgent, blooming in the ruins, spiralling and raw, howling with life. Heavy The Eclipse was written and recorded at Speedy J’s Rotterdam studio over 14 days in late November 2016. The Neurealm world was conceived and then carefully developed in close collaboration with graphic designer David Rudnick during the following year and a half. neurealm.net 2018, Electric Deluxe

Aïsha Devi has announced the release of her sophomore album ‘DNA Feelings’ out 11th May via Houndstooth. In conjunction with the album announcement comes first single ‘Inner State of Alchemy’. No one on this planet sounds like Aïsha Devi. Her voice is her most powerful tool in a repertoire that includes thumping beats and rave stabs, seraphic and guttural throat singing, mystical linguistics and corporeal sonics. Her music is spiritual and her live shows are transcendent experiences. She is a rebel and a radical alchemist who is breaking down barriers and traversing dimensions with her art. Born by the Swiss alps with Nepalese-Tibetan heritage, a transversal of cultural and spiritual identity was forged, guiding both her personal and creative process as a non-conformed seeker. Devi applies meditation techniques in her approach to production and performance, channeling metaphysical research, ritualistic practice and healing frequencies into an alternate club paradigm. Dislocating pop culture, also evident in her mixes for NTS, FACT, etc., is one of her foundational tools and stylistic signatures. In 2013 Devi co-founded Danse Noire, a label collective supporting insurrectional club music from around the world, where she released her breakout single ‘Aura 4 Everyone’ followed by ‘Hakken Dub / Throat Dub’ in 2014, giving context to her universe alongside artists including Vaghe Stelle, El Mahdy Jr., J.G. Biberkopf, GIL and IVVVO. In 2015 Houndstooth released Aïsha Devi’s debut album, 'Of Matter And Spirit', a significant sonic statement rich in political and philosophical subtext. The process led her to collaborating with Chinese visual artist Tianzhuo Chen on videos featuring profane and sacred iconography, as well as theatrical dance performances together with the Asian Dope Boys. Photographer Emile Barret is another longtime artistic collaborator, touring throughout the world with their spatially disruptive audiovisual show. But Aïsha Devi is just as magnetic performing solo. With her mesmeric digital mantras and a captivating stage presence she’s bowled over crowds at CTM, Mutek, Unsound, Boiler Room and countless festivals and venues from Siberia to Mexico and beyond. Look out for further updates on www.aishadevi.com

German electronic producer DJ Koze has always been a self-selecting outsider, the kind of artist who sits blissfully on the sidelines of the big picture while the world passes him by. His third proper studio album unfolds like a daydream: breezy, sunny, and strangely beautiful, filled with ideas that don’t make sense until they suddenly—thrillingly—do. As with 2013’s *Amygdala* (as well as his endlessly inventive DJ sets and remixes), the style here is curiously out of time, touching on house (“Pick Up”), hip-hop (“Colors of Autum”), and downtempo soul (“Scratch That”), all with a slightly psychedelic twist that keeps everything hovering an inch or two off the floor. Fashion is fine, but it’s no match for a muse.

WEN (aka Owen Darby) will release his new album 'EPHEM:ERA' via Big Dada. This follows his ‘CARVE + GAZE’ EP for the label in 2017, and is his first full length since his 2014 debut ‘Signals’ on Keysound. In 2018, consumption can be fleeting and momentary with only fragments retained. WEN’S new album is a response to this transient state of affairs: 'EPHEM:ERA' is presented as a collection of “temporal pauses” from an internet-driven, restless cycle of distractions. It’s an album of precise tracks, drawn from his spectrum-spanning, bass-driven style; it’s for an era of endless, short-lived discoveries. Influenced in part by architect Carlo Scarpa’s designs whilst drawing inspiration from late night drives and weather patterns, those cyclical, passing movements – from rain, to fog, to mist – struck a chord with Darby’s fixation on transience. Here Darby steps further outward, rendering the changing currents of UK-born, ‘weightless' iterations of grime across 12 tracks which he describes as “electronic studies - a sequence mapped out across the fringes of experimental club music”. Revolving compositions map out the core of ‘EPHEM:ERA’ while subsequent texturing and honing puts disparity at the heart of Darby’s process, balancing impulsive creativity and acute attention-to-detail. Warm, worldly sounds meet with cold, digital constructions. In ‘RAIN’, melodic bleeps are enveloped inside airy atmospherics. Elsewhere, ‘VOID’ sees vivid, smashed glass punctuated by tense, steely arpeggios. The album shifts between different rhythmic approaches. In ‘CURVE_RELAY’, the drums are swung, heavy with groove, and percussion recedes in and out of focus of a shifting atmosphere. In ‘TIME II THINK’, icy, raw melodies are propelled by a 4/4 kick drum, muffled and subdued. The changing structures of his tracks reflect a wide-open perspective, delineating between different genre markers and club contexts. As an album, it’s as much a reaction to our relationship with music as it is a continued exploration. Collecting together different, distinct moods in a deluge of tracks, it’s a comment on prevailing, fickle attitudes; music is quickly discovered, momentarily explored, before attention is swiftly re-directed elsewhere. But, at the same time, it’s a vehicle for connecting new ideas: bringing together lawless, overlapping lineages into something that’s forward-facing and whole.

Two years after *Wonderland* blew the witchy sound of their early years to smithereens, Demdike Stare return even more forcefully: Their mixture of grime, dancehall, techno, and ambient sounds like a rave tape that had been buried for 30 years, dug up, and set on fire. After a dramatic noise intro, “At It Again” barrels ahead with jungle breaks, dub sirens, and white-noise blasts reminiscent of Pan Sonic; “Spitting Brass” smears grease all over grime’s brittle palette before “Know Where to Start” tosses the gritty, lo-fi UK style into a blender, shards flying every which way. But redemption comes with closer “Dilation,” a mournful nod to New Order at their most desolate.

R&S proudly presents a retrospective round up of Mariel Ito AKA Eric Estornel's futuristic yet heartfelt electro. An early alias of the Cuban Miami born Eric Estornel the Mariel Ito trademark driving percussion, deep pads and hypnotic arrangements saw releases on iconic imprints like Modern Love, and Scsi AV at the turn of the century before being put into hibernation from 2006 onwards. Estornel on the genesis of the project: "When i was 3 years old, Miami suddenly became flooded with refugees from Cuba called the Mariel Boatlift.  There was a huge crime wave and cubans that had been in Miami for years would call the "bad" refugees Marielitos.  I was a problematic and hyperactive kid constantly getting into trouble, and eventually my teachers began calling me el Marielito." Fast forward to 2000, while thinking of a new name for this project Eric settled on Mariel ito as a nod to the Cuban community. "Usually only Miami Cubans understand the pun" he adds. Electro had always been a popular sound in Miami during Eric's formative years there, he gravitated towards its futurism as well as the its emphasis on sound design, synth work and beat programming. His natural facility for emotive melodies and irrestistable grooves are immediately evident in the ten tracks on this release. Composed between 2000 and 2005 the music takes cues from the iconic IDM and electro sounds of the mid / late 90s  putting a new twist on broken beats and synthetics, artists such as Aphex Twin, Gescom, Bitstream, Gimmick, Pendle Coven, the pioneering Sheffield bleep sound and of course, a certain infamous Belgian imprint. "R&S helped sculpt my taste growing up in the 90s.  So many seminal records came out back then that were really ahead of their time.  There's obvious picks like Selected Ambient Works and Energy Flash, but I was even more inspired by the works of David Morley, CJ Bolland, Source and the rest." This release underlines the welcome reactivation of the Mariel Ito project from hibernation, with Estornel's full creative commitment moving forward;  "Friends have been asking me for years why I ever abandoned it in the first place, and would egg me on to relaunch it.  Last year when I decided I would not continue doing my Mosaic party in ibiza, I knew I would have more time to finally relaunch it and began writing new material.  Thanks to R&S i can now release the music i was making back then in the form of a retrospective album and start up again where I left off."

BLISS SIGNAL is a new electronic metal project between James Kelly (Wife, Altar of Plagues) and UK DJ / Producer Jack Adams (Mumdance). Their eponymous debut album, out September 28th on True Panther Sounds/Profound Lore, is the stunning result of an unlikely partnership soldering together a seemingly disparate mélange of sounds. Formed within the last year and initially begun initially as a simple experiment between the two producers, BLISS SIGNAL sees Kelly return to making harsher and heavier music with a guitar for the first time since the last and final groundbreaking Altar Of Plagues album “Teethed Glory & Injury”. While not a direct continuation from Altar Of Plagues, the music enveloping the BLISS SIGNAL debut album captures the vibe and essence of the more ambient and experimental moments found in Altar Of Plagues, most notably on the final Altar Of Plagues album, almost as an extension of those moments in what would be have been further explored if Kelly were to continue developing the Altar Of Plagues sound through the expansiveness of what he could create for his former musical output. BLISS SIGNAL though is a different a new musical expression coming from Kelly’s musical repertoire. Teaming up with Mumdance, throughout the album's eight tracks, one hears Adams and Kelly trace a line between blackened metal, driving club music, and ethereal atmospherics. The expansive sound fabric of BLISS SIGNAL is one awash with a massive wall of unrelenting sound, intense atmosphere, and shimmering enveloping ambience, ultimately, a sonic reflection of the very moniker that Kelly and Mumdance conjured for their new musical venture.

On her debut, *Dark Energy*, Chicago producer Jlin took footwork music past the known limits of the form, braiding sleek, rolling drums into hypnotic triplet patterns; on the follow-up, *Black Origami*, she emphasized the globe-spanning percussive palette that makes her work unique. *Autobiography*, her score to a major piece by the British choreographer Wayne McGregor, represents a detour in her evolution. Stutter-stepping cuts like “Unorthodox Elements” alternate with synth-strafed trap mutations (“Annotation”) and even pensive ambient interludes like “Anamnesis, Pt. 1,” a minimalist study for piano and empty space. Jlin’s relentless kinetic energy shines like never before on tunes like “The Abyss of Doubt,” which sounds like a mainframe computer being torn apart by heavy machinery; it’s no wonder dancers would want to flex to this.

By now, the story of how Jlin went from working in a steel factory in Gary, Indiana to being one of the most widely appreciated electronic musicians is well known. “Black Origami” was one of the most lauded albums last year. Seriously prolific and seriously hard-working, she has toured constantly since its May 2017 release and despite being involved in a wide range of projects, still manages to find a balance and time to “do some personal healing and growing.” Here we are over a year later with “Autobiography,” the score for her collaboration with renowned British choreographer Wayne McGregor (a collaboration arranged by Krakow's Unsound). This isn’t technically her third album (that’s due to arrive in 2019 or 2020), but the soundtrack stands up on its own with all the emotional peaks and troughs of a well-sequenced LP. For Jlin, making music for dance is the fulfillment of one of her lifelong dreams – and remarkably, Company Wayne McGregor’s performance was the first show she’d ever seen. She describes the process of working with Wayne: “We first met face to face in October 2016 in a downtown Chicago hotel, talking for about a solid two hours. Immediately, I saw Wayne was very friendly and energetic. He’s brilliant, witty, and knows exactly what he wants; an absolute gem to work with. Before I even started composing for Autobiography, Wayne told me so gently that he trusts me completely with my direction of creating the score. That was the best feeling in the world. I would wake up at two in the morning and work until six in the evening until I completed all the pieces. We were both very happy with the outcome. Creating the score for an impeccable piece of work such as Autobiography changed my life as an artist.” “Autobiography” is a highlight in an evolving and growing career. During the last year, Jlin has also become an in-demand remixer, securing her place among a roster of music heavyweights. Unsurprisingly, given her positive and outgoing nature, she also developed friendships with the artists she has remixed such as Björk, Max Richter and Ben Frost. Jlin will be touring with Company Wayne McGregor performing “Autobiography” this year into next. She's also completed a commission for the Kronos Quartet titled “Little Black Book.” She still approaches every performance “with the same attitude of doing my best to execute a good show, no more, no less. Doing my best is what’s most important to me.” She also still lives in Gary, Indiana, which keeps her grounded. She notes with her typical humility, “The local community is a little more knowledgeable of me now. But I don’t mind my community taking its time.”

The Return is a natural evolution from the Yussef Kamaal project, mining the influence of visionary jazz but blended with all kinds of texture, sounds and signals from the over-saturated London streets. Notable tracks for old and new listeners are ‘Salaam', 'Situations', 'Medina', 'LDN Shuffle' which features Mansur Brown (of Mansur's Message) and for those die hard Yussef Kamaal fans - they should hear the interpolated roots of 'Strings of Light' in the title track 'The Return’. And that signature Wu Funk can be heard on 'Broken Theme', and 'High Roller'. The Return will be the debut album released on Wu's new label Black Focus Records.

Planet Mu are excited to announce Ital Tek's 'Bodied', the follow up to his acclaimed 2016 album 'Hollowed'. Stepping in a different direction from that album, It’s as if Hollowed's detailed world has been fleshed out and filled with the spectre of human voices. As on his last album, the sounds on 'Bodied' are highly designed, but this time barely a whisper of dance music remains. Instead it's built around acoustic elements and ghostly choral arrangements, refracted and transformed into atmospheric, alien forms which are given the time to settle and transform. Rhythm is used only as a tool to give his world a sense of dark, mechanical momentum. Alan explains; "After completing 'Hollowed' I had over a year away from writing any of my own material. I was working, composing music for a video game and a number of different projects. I needed to find a way back in and I rediscovered the joy of music being a release as opposed to a job. I was getting up really early and sketching out lots of ideas very fast, squeezing in quick bursts of writing at the beginning or end of long studio day spent working on other musical projects." "It was important for me to define the world that the album was going to inhabit before taking it any further, so I put a much greater focus into the sound design and palette than I had before. I wanted to make the music sound very physical, geometric, and monolithic, as if it inhabited a physical space."  "On 'Bodied' the music focuses on the interplay between the minuscule and the vast, beauty and brutalism. With this album I was much more concerned with dynamics and the discipline of holding tension; the use of space and silence to provide a counterpoint to the intensity." "Most importantly, I was keen for there to be a human acoustic foundation, so I did a lot of live recording of cello, violin, harp and guitar - anything I could get my hands on. I was certain that I wanted there to be a greater vocal presence - nothing lyrical or at the forefront but to give it an underlying organic quality - to impart some humanity into the music." As Ital Tek moves further from his roots, he's creating new sounds and spaces in which his music can exist. It's up to the listener to decide what kind of world 'Bodied' evokes, but it's certainly one that's beautiful and rewarding to spend time in.

UNDETECTED ACT FROM THE GLOOM CHAMBER Ever since the early 90s, The Mover has set the standard for apocalyptic melodramatic techno and has been praised as one of the leading artists of Planet Core Productions. His distinct tone and memorable production expertise, causes one to leave the world behind. In 2018 he returns with „Undetected Act From The Gloom Chamber“, an album which implies all the goodness and fears he is renowned for. Eight masterpieces carrying the authentic excitement that you would expect from the Mover in a timeless fashion. Shifting between electro beats and classic old school techno patterns, the album sets a moody tone. The release is filled with magnificent bass lines and dark-dreamy pads that leave the mind in a trance. Muscular drums and authentic synth-lines paired with the unmistakable Mover signature, makes this assembly of gems an outstanding masterpiece.

dBridge’s career stretches back to the early ’90s, including membership in the hard-hitting quartet Bad Company (not to be confused with the classic rockers of the same name). But he made his real mark much later, by turning drum ’n’ bass’ tumbling cadence to a halting, half-time creep—an outgrowth of the stylistic explorations of his *Autonomic* podcasts with Instra:mental. While his debut album, 2008’s *The Gemini Principle*, bubbled along at D’n’B’s typical clip, *A Love I Can’t Explain* is often unhurried and uniformly moody, wrapping eerie, John Carpenter-esque synths around slow-motion beats, whether a 4/4 trudge (“They Loved”) or a dancehall lurch (“Depersonalised”). “Your Bit Crushed Heart” moves faster, but its snapping, crackling rhythms sound as much like Autechre as they do jungle, and his synths throughout summon the melancholy glories of golden-age IDM.

After his first three EPs on the label, the much talked about debut album from Glasgows Big Miz is finally ready to drop on Dixon Avenue Basement Jams!

Cult of The Damned regroup for the follow up to their self-titled EP of 2015. The Cult followers demanded an album and this time around that's exactly what they're getting. "Part Deux: Brick Pelican Posse Crew Gang Syndicate" is 11 tracks of that raw and unadulterated, kill-the-beat Rap music. The album further cements the group as one of the most incredibly gifted, excellent, God-like, magnificently brilliant group of consummately-skilled, hyper-elite rap superheroes of all time ever. Enjoy.

'This is a record about nothing. A record without a concept or ulterior motive. Or maybe it ́s about everything. A vignette of all that has ever happened to me. It ́s also collection of sounds. New sounds, sounds I recorded 10 years ago, sounds I've found, sounds stolen from records my brother bought in London in the summer of `88. There ́s also Sissel Wincent (who ́s the coolest person I know) singing on one track.'' Having spent most of 2017 working on the latest Fever Ray album (and subsequent live show together with Pär Grindvik) Peder Mannerfelt returns with his third album Daily Routine, two and a half years after the critically acclaimed Controlling Body. Working with themes on the intersection of rave and domestic life, Daily Routine sees Mannerfelt pushing his signature sound into a new micro cosmos. Released on November 16th thru his own Peder Mannerfelt Produktion with a limited vinyl edition feat 300 unique handmade art originals by long time visual collaborator Malin Björklund.

The blueprint for a futuristic new dancehall style is laid out on this debut full-length release from Miss Red, produced by close collaborator Kevin Martin aka the Bug. A fully realised and precision-tooled longplayer that sits in an outernational beat continuum alongside the likes of Jamaica’s Equiknoxx, Canada’s Seekersinternational and Portugal’s Principe crew. Miss Red’s fierce flow rides roughshod over warped bashment anthems like “Shock Out” and “One Shot Killer”, but the album also showcases her ability to adapt to different flavours with the addition of ethereal harmonies to the psyched out arcade blips of “Clouds” or the plaintive dystopian lament of “War”. Similarly, the Bug’s riddims are a masterclass in restraint, retaining his trademark heaviness but taking a step back from the atmospheric ambience of his recent work with Burial and Earth. Instead this is an example of the dexterity with which Martin can deploy a minimal arrangement, taking a bassline, beat, FX and vocal and sharpening those elements for maximum dancefloor devastation. In 2015 she dropped her first solo mixtape, Murder, with The Bug’s riddims supplemented with contributions from other producers such as Mark Pritchard, Mumdance and Andy Stott. Subsequent singles on her own Red label and the in-house imprint of iconic London record shop Sounds Of The Universe have sold out straight away, and she has received acclaim for her collaborations with Warp Records artist Gaika. The Miss Red persona has developed over time spent in London and Berlin, and as a regular member of the Bug’s touring line-up alongside fellow MCs Flowdan, Daddy Freddy, Warrior Queen and Riko Dan. From before she left Tel Aviv she was magnetically attracted to the sound, style and fashion of the reggae scene in Jamaica: “Nicodemus really influenced me, but as a girl, it wasn’t my voice, and it was listening to those 80s dancehall gyals that i gravitated towards, because they were chatting as proud girls, and from a female perspective, so it was vocalists like Sister Nancy and Lady Ann that really made the biggest impression on me”. Of K.O. specifically, she comments: “For me, reggae is the foundation of this record but the album’s movement is freer. It mirrors my need to move and keep challenging myself. As a white Israeli girl working as an MC in the music industry, and in particular as a singer, it’s a BIG battle to be taken seriously, and as a woman in the music industry, I am in an obvious minority, the situation is clear, the MAN is still in control - that has got to be addressed, and changed.”

Air Lows is the debut solo album by Silvia Kastel. The Italian artist has been a fixture of the underground since her precocious teens, clocking up many miles in Control Unit with Ninni Morgia (“It’s like Catherine Deneuve dumped two cases of post-Repulsion psychiatric notes over Pere Ubu’s Dub Housing, lit the fuse and, ahem, stood well back” – Julian Cope), including collaborations with the likes of Smegma, Factrix, Gary Smith, Aki Onda and Gate (Michael Morley of The Dead C). Through her own label, Ultramarine, she has released music by the likes of Raymond Dijkstra, Blood Stereo and Bene Gesserit. Both solo and in her work with others, Kastel has explored the outer limits and inner workings of no wave, industrial, dub, extreme electronics, free rock and improvisation. Air Lows – which follows the cassette releases Love Tape (2011), Voice Studies 20 (2015) and The Gap (2016) – is both her fullest and most refined offering to date, a work of vivid, isolationist electronics which draws deeply on her past experience but assuredly breaks new ground. Prompted by a late-flowering interest in techno and club music, Kastel sought to create something which combines a steady rhythmic pulse with the otherworldly sonorities of musique concrete, and avant-garde synth sounds inspired by Japanese minimalism and techno-pop (Haruomi Hosono’s Philharmony being a particular favourite). The formal artifice of muzak / elevator music, the intros and outros of generic popular songs, the extreme light-heavy contrasts of jungle, the creative sampling of hardcore, and the very “human” synths in the jazz of Herbie Hancock’s Sextant and Sun Ra: all these things were touchstones for Air Lows’ conception and composition. All strains of music addressing – and complicating – the relationship between the human and the technological. By extension, visual inspirations also proved important: anime, and the avant-garde fashion of Rei Kawakubo. What does that shirt or dress sound like? Though used sparingly, Kastel’s voice remains her key instrument, whether subject to dissociative digital manipulations as on ‘Bruell’, delivering matter-of-fact spoken monologues, or providing splashes of pure tonal colour. Recorded between her expansive Italian studio and a more compact, ersatz set-up in Berlin, Air Lows gradually takes on some of the character of the German capital: you can hear the wide streets and empty spaces, the seepage of never-ending nightlife, the loneliness. Air Lows is The Wizard of Oz in reverse: the glorious technicolour J-pop deconstructons of its first half leading inexorably to the icy noir of ‘Spiderwebs’ and ‘Concrete Void’. These later tracks are reminiscent of 2015’s magnificent 39 12”, Kastel in the role of numbed, nihilistic chanteuse stalking dank, murky tunnels of reverb and sub-bass. But there is contradiction and emotional ambiguity to Air Lows from the outset, and throughout: a sense of both infinite space and acute claustrophobia; energy and inertia; fluency and restraint.

Nearly one and half years on since he released his stunning LP 'Happiness' on Classic Music Company, Eli Escobar returns to the label with an album which couldn't be further removed in sentiment. Whereas 'Happiness' radiated sublime house/disco hybrid bliss throughout, 'Shout' is a heartfelt rage against America's developing political disasters. The quintessential New York City DJ, Eli is a devoted collector, explorer and connoisseur of all kinds of music from his hip-hop roots. He is hugely well-respected in the New York club circuit after over two decades of mutual love for the city and the house scene. Having been switched on to Eli by his debut album 'Up All Night', Classic Music Company is now his creative home. 'Shout' starts robustly with 'Nightmare Rag', police sirens ringing out in the background while a disgruntled voice repeats ?ode to America? and a dream-like piano riff gathers momentum, turning into a punchy acid beat. Giving way to tangible heartbreak in 'Interlude (American Sorrow)' with lamenting saxophone and light percussion, Eli maintains the political message in 'The People', urging the listener to wake up by using crafty vocal samples and hypnotic chords. Further highlights include heavier tracks like 'Muzik' and 'ANGR (Country Music)' which pick up the pace of the record, before 'City Song' brings back the New York house vibe with vocal cuts and warm synths. 'City Song Part 2' and 'Body and Soul' show Eli's disco influences while 'Goin' On?' flickers with hope. A stormy departure from the glowing balminess of his previous LPs, 'Shout' addresses Eli's anguish over his country hitting self-destruct, while still putting his own twist on his city's house and disco soundtrack, joining the dots between yesterday's golden era classics and today's club anthems. Underpinning it all is Eli's acute musical sensitivity; whether it's a straight-up party jam or a crafty disco cut-up, warmth and soul are poured in