PopMatters' 25 Best Electronic Albums of 2018

Following his debut Fading Love, George FitzGerald returns with his second album, All That Must Be. A mesmeric and transportive collection of songs that firmly establishes him as a preeminent figure in the electronic music world and a rare example of a musician capable of making the transition from club producer to album artist. Through All That Must Be, Fitzgerald alters his creative process, focusing more heavily on the piano as opposed to the computer and combining the electronic drums of previous album Fading Love with live percussion recorded in the studio.

Ryan Lee West aka Rival Consoles presents his expressive new album ‘Persona’, set for release on 13th April 2018 via Erased Tapes. The title ‘Persona’ was inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s film of the same name, specifically a shot in the opening credits of a child reaching out to touch a woman’s face on a screen, which is shifting between one face and another. This powerful image struck Ryan and it inspired the album’s main theme — an exploration of the persona, the difference between how we see ourselves and how others see us, the spaces in between; between states, people, light and dark, the inner persona and the outer persona. “My music is generally inward looking. I like finding something about the self within music, that doesn't have to be specific but maybe asks something or reveals something. This record is a continuation on the self through electronic sounds. Like Legowelt once said ‘a synthesiser is like a translator for unknown emotions’, which I think sums up what I am trying to do. I think all these emotions we have make up our persona. So in a way by finding new ones you alter or expand your persona. And that is what I want my music to try to do. I deliberately aimed to be more sonically diverse with this record. I wanted to experiment more. I wanted to create new sounds and new emotions.” Recorded at his studio in south-east London, ‘Persona’ benefits from Ryan’s exploration of a dynamic production process that combines analogue-heavy synthesisers, acoustic and electric instruments with a shoegaze-level obsession with effect pedals. A greater depth of emotion and confidence can be heard across the album. From the deconstructed movements on‘Unfolding’ that starts the album with a snap of delayed snares, the apocalyptic drones of the title track and thundering drums in ‘Phantom Grip’to more restrained ambient feels of ‘Dreamer’s Wake’, ‘Rest’ and ‘Untravel’. The latter transverses six beatless minutes of undulating melodies representing “a limbo space, a feeling of ennui, of not really ever being known to others and others not ever really being known to you”. ‘Be Kind’ reveals a musical connection with fellow Erased Tapes artist Nils Frahm, with its minimal approach and improvisational nature. On the more complex sounding ‘I Think So’ Ryan aims to replicate a colour collage with sound. Like a musical kaleidoscope, a flashing and convoluted mass. Written after he saw Slowdive perform live last year, ‘Hidden’ builds from whispers to landscapes of controlled noise. In an interview with XLR8R magazine, Ryan explains: “once you start trying to make a sound loud, then you turn your back on thousands and thousands of sonic possibilities. One of the best things to do is to start a track with a really quiet, weak sound.” Taking this idea to its ultimate conclusion, ‘Fragment’ closes the album as an innocent sounding ambient piece, almost nursery rhyme like, yielding time for reflection on how the persona has changed. ‘Persona’ follows the success of a series of releases — the ‘Odyssey’and ‘Sonne’ EPs, long player ‘Howl’, and 2016’s mini album ‘Night Melody’— that saw Ryan mature into what Pitchfork has called a “forward-thinking electronic musician with his own ideas about sound”. Atypical of instrumental-electronic music, Ryan has achieved a signature sound that’s unmistakably identifiable as Rival Consoles. Going beyond typical electronic music production, Ryan defines it as “songwriting with an electronic palette of sounds”. The increasingly dynamic live audio-visual show, born from bespoke performances at the Tate and for Boiler Room at the V&A Museum featuring self-programmed visuals in Max/MSP, has propelled him to play around the world. Ryan launches ‘Persona’at London’s XOYO on 12th April with further dates to be announced.

This record is an antistrophe, an active re-turning, qhipnayra, eye-blossoms of past born on the future's spiral spine unwinding Antistrophe as a turning against, that responsive & resonating refusal to be still– janiwa, the No that we are that is also And– Y y Y Antistrophe fleshed like a ch'ixi stone carried inside but fractured like the granules that pigment our skin, songs knotted to a body document held, drawn by darkness— deep shadow’d hanging city, city like a spider that hoards us in the web of its avenues"

The doomy club mutations of Bristol producer Vessel’s 2014 album, *Punish, Honey*, left the shadowy post-dubstep of his debut, 2012’s *Order of Noise*, in the dust. He travels an even greater distance with *Queen of Golden Dogs*, a thrilling fusion of acoustic chamber instruments, voice, and jarringly digital timbres. “Fantasma (For Jasmine)” lays out the album’s extremes in somber strings and thrashing synths and drums. From here he zigzags wildly, through the spectral choir of “Good Animal (For Hannah)” to the buzzing drum-pummel of “Argo (For Maggie),” from the neo-Baroque harpsichord of “Arcanum (For Christalla)” to the trance arpeggios of “Glory Glory (For Tippi).” It’s a dazzling and even overwhelming listen, in the best way—a trip through the distant past to a mind-bending future you never saw coming.

Queen of Golden Dogs -the third album from Vessel- was conceived, developed and rendered into life over eighteen months of solitude in rural Wales. In essence, it is an exploration of living a life devoted to uncertainty, curiosity and change. Influenced by a range of writers, the painter Remedios Varo, and a new love, the album is a marked departure from Vessel’s previous work. The world of QoGD is saturated with colour; oscillating between grief, bombast and fierce joy, this is music shot through with both sincerity and irreverence. Whilst traces of his sonic signature remain, there is much changed since Vessel’s second album, Punish, Honey. An infatuation with chamber music brought about in collaboration with his violinist lover, and a voice given by singer Olivia Chaney leave strong impressions, providing landmarks in a world that is essentially about the joys of difference. ‘Fantasma’, a prologue of sorts, careens from bent cello to blunt force percussion and billowing synthesisers, dispersing into the harmonically restless lament of ‘Good Animal’, providing the album with the first of it’s many purposefully uncomfortable segues. Ideas of transformation are regularly explored internally within individual pieces, as well as across the album as a whole, dominated by unpredictable shifts in tone. The probing string swells of ‘Argo’ give way to throbbing bass and slippery rhythms, which twist briefly into an almostpop leaning chorus before a barrage of fuzzy drums lead to one of the albums most straightforwardly techno moments. The layered voices of ‘Torno-me eles e nau-eu’ offer the most overt example of Vessel’s move towards classical forms. Using chromaticism, dissonance and sweetness, he explores a space that seemingly refuses to resolve, although eventually revealing itself as an extended reflection of album centrepiece, ‘Paplu’. "I wanted to make this work to realise experiences that I thought I had already had. Quite quickly I realised that I was reaching too far; and because I wanted so much more I had to give more. I often think that the writing was mutual." - Vessel ‘I become them and stop being I’ -Fernando Pessoa

'Another Life' is the debut album from Amnesia Scanner, the Berlin-based music duo, performing arts group, experience design studio and production house, created by Finnish-born Ville Haimala and Martti Kalliala. Founded in 2014, Amnesia Scanner's approach is informed by a unique perspective on technology and the way it mediates contemporary experience. System vulnerabilities, information overload and sensory excess inform their work, which has found a home in both clubs and galleries. Building on their mixtape 'AS Live [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]' (2014), Amnesia Scanner’s critically acclaimed audio play 'Angels Rig Hook' (2015) laced a potpourri of dancefloor tactics with a machinic narrator. Their dual EPs for Young Turks, 'AS' and 'AS Truth' (2016), distilled this immersive environment into an abrasive collection of cryptorave tools. The most striking detail of ‘Another Life' is Amnesia Scanner's use of both human and inhuman voices. The latter is provided by the latest addition to the production unit, a disembodied voice called Oracle, which represents the sentience that has emerged from Amnesia Scanner. Oracle's vocal performance ranges from exuberant mania to anxious dread and beyond. Coupled with the pop song structures that Amnesia Scanner employs for the first time, the avant-EDM productions of ‘Another Life’ evocatively explore a schizophrenic present marked by narratives of a slow apocalypse or salvation via technology. Indeed, the lullaby of 'AS Another Life' swings between trill hope and casual threat, lending a precarious gait to the song's staggering rhythm. The album's first single, 'AS Chaos', is its most powerfully direct track, with Pan Daijing’s English and Mandarin vocals taking over for Oracle. At its peak intensity, as in ‘AS Faceless’, Amnesia Scanner's doombahton overheats into nu-metal-gabba. Amnesia Scanner has presented work at art institutions such as ICA London, HKW Berlin, and the Serpentine Gallery Marathon in London. They collaborate with PWR Studio for their design and visual direction. The AS live experience is co-created with Stockholm-based Canadian designer Vincent De Belleval. When unplugged from the Amnesia Scanner stream, Haimala works as a composer and producer with a wide range of musical and visual artists, and Kalliala co-directs the think tank Nemesis. The album is mastered by Jeremy Cox, featuring photography by Satoshi Fujiwara, and visual direction from PWR Studio.

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.

Maribou State announce their new album “Kingdoms In Colour”, via Ninja Tune’s Counter Records imprint, their first full-length since 2015’s breakthrough debut album “Portraits”. The record features new single ‘Feel Good’ - a collaboration born of their friendship with Houston-based trio Khruangbin and a shared love of breakbeats, vintage surf riffs and a common desire to explore worldwide music cultures. "Sometimes a chance meeting plants the seed for something bigger,” say Khruangbin. “Such was the case when we met Maribou State at KOKO a couple of years ago. We are very happy to be involved in this project. And we ‘feel good’ already.” The band continue their long standing relationship with Holly Walker who has previously vocalled fan favourites such as ‘Midas’, ‘Steal’ and ‘Tongue’. Also featured on the record is recent single ‘Turnmills’ - named after the legendary London club which closed its doors in 2008 - the release was accompanied by a sold-out ‘all-night’ DJ set at Corsica Studios raising money and awareness for the The Night Time Industries Association's #SaveNightlife campaign to protect the UK’s most vulnerable music venues from closure. Today they also announce a new headline UK tour this Autumn. Returning with a 5-piece band, they play at London’s iconic Roundhouse on the 18th October. Ahead of this they will also embark on a string of European festival dates which include a headline show at Sonar By Day, Parklife Festival, Roskilde, Pukkelpop Festival, Nova Batida and recently DJ’d after Flying Lotus at All Points East festival in London. Beginning life in 2011 as a project between Chris Davids and Liam Ivory, Maribou State had released a string of EP’s and singles before the arrival of debut album “Portraits” propelled them to the world stage. Spawning a live show that took them around the globe and included standout festival performances at Glastonbury, Bestival, a headline slot at Secret Garden party; a 32-date European tour with two sold-out London shows including the legendary KOKO; plus dates throughout Asia, Australia and America. They received radio support from the likes of Annie Mac, Zane Lowe and Gilles Peterson, addition to the BBC 6 Music A-list, a 5-show BBC Radio 1 Residency, a slot on the legendary BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix and performed a session Live from Maida Vale. Critical support came from the likes of The Guardian, I-D magazine and Vogue, with the album amassing over 80 million streams to date and drawing comparisons to acts such as The XX, James Blake & Mount Kimbie, as well earning them plaudits from the likes of DJ Koze and Bonobo. This incredible success that followed the release of “Portraits” took Chris and Liam quite by surprise, “It was like Christmas every day” laughs Liam, “stuff like doing a show in Bangalore and having a crowd come and see us who knew the music and would sing all the words. It was an incredible experience”. After more than a year of touring they returned to the UK to begin work on new material, but relocating their studio from The Shack - their home-built studio at the back of Liam’s garden in Hertfordshire - to a new base in London found them struggling to find their creative flow. The solution was to start looking outward and back over their journey of the past two years. They began making regular excursions out of the city, setting up a temporary studio space for weeks at a time, they started to piece together a “sonic collage” - drawing on ideas that were written while touring in places like India, and on field recordings from Asia, Australia, Morocco, America and beyond - the result of which is the stunning "Kingdoms In Colour”. “The first album felt quite insular for us” says Chris, "not just in sound, but literally that it was all written in The Shack. We always had a bigger idea of what we wanted it to be, we wanted to create something that was palpable, that could in some way transport you to another country or another place entirely in your mind”. “The idea with Maribou State was always to draw on influences from different parts of the world” continues Liam "by traveling, sampling, recording, we wanted to create this all encompassing thing. Which is what this second record has ended up being for us”.

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.

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.

Marie Davidson’s new album turns the mirror on herself. "Working Class Woman” is the Montreal-based producer’s fourth and most self-reflective record: it’s a document of her state of mind, a reflection of the past year she’s spent living in Berlin, and a comment on the stresses and strains of operating within the spheres of dance music and club culture. Drawing on those experiences, as well as an array of writers, thinkers and filmmakers who’ve influenced her, Davidson’s response to such difficult moments is to explore her own reaction to them and poke fun. “It comes from my brain, through my own experiences: the suffering and the humour, the fun and the darkness to be Marie Davidson.” It’s an honest document of where she currently stands. As she puts it, “It’s an egotistical album – and I’m okay with that.” She builds on the dancefloor-minded trajectory charted by her previous record "Adieux Au Dancefloor” [Cititrax / Minimal Wave], which drew praise from the likes of Pitchfork (“a project that indicates exciting and near-exponential growth in her ability as a writer and producer”), The Fader and Resident Advisor, and opened up her sound to a new, wider audience, earning support from peers such as Nina Kraviz and Jessy Lanza. The record is informed by a career which has spanned an ambient-influenced album as Les Momies De Palerme for Montreal’s Constellation label (home to Godspeed! You Black Emperor); her synth-disco styled duo DKMD with David Kristian; and Essaie Pas, signed to DFA, and with whom she’s shaped minimal synth and "cyberpunk coldwave” (the Guardian) sounds into a fresh mould, in partnership with husband and collaborator Pierre Guerineau. The sound of "Working Class Woman" is more direct than any of her previous outings. She still mines the same influences, from Italo Disco, to proto-industrial and electro, but leadens them with a gut-punching weight, making for a record that’s more visceral than any she’s released before. It’s combined with her characteristically-deployed spoken text – rather than spoken word, which she sees as a distinct tradition – that carries a more darkly humourous edge than before, making observations on both aspects of club culture as well as more oblique critiques of the modern world. It’s a record poised between dark and light. Industrial heaviness is balanced by Davidson’s words; dark, textured soundscapes are counterweighted by statements or observations which never take themselves too seriously. It’s something that’s encapsulated in the driving momentum of ‘So Right’: it matches pared back lyrics with a melodic bassline and bright synths, her words sketching out a euphoric feeling that chimes with the music. It’s the first single from the record, and comes backed by a John Talabot remix, where he slows down the momentum, creating a mellow pace guided a languorous bassline. In ‘Work It’, she probes her workaholic nature. In her opening spoken line, she declares, “You wanna know how I get away with everything? I work, all the fucking time.” The track is, appropriately, unrelenting: it’s a robotic, jacking groove that’s short but sweet. This track also hints at another influence on the record, which is Davidson's response to her life as a touring musician. Both under her own name, and with Essaie Pas, touring has taken up the best part of her last year and is an experience which she’s found both enriching and draining. Her stops have included Sonar Festival - where she performed her "Bullshit Threshold” show, combining performance, spoken text, video projections and analogue hardware - Primavera, Dekmantel and MUTEK in recent times. On the one hand, her live set is a creative endeavour that feeds back into her music. Playing, and travelling, on her own - which means marshalling a table of gear including sequencers, synths and a mic for her to sing and talk into (as well as transporting them between each of her shows) - allows her to improvise and play each set in a different way to the last. But at the same time, it requires her to project a persona: a demand that can become dispiriting. Another of the album’s early moments is ‘The Psychologist’, carried by a moody techno swagger that suggests a playfulness evident throughout the record. On ‘Day Dreaming’, soft chimes provide a moment of colourful respite, swirled around with a soft-focus ambience. In contrast, ‘The Tunnel’ is an ominous deep-dive into industrial sound-blasts, where Davidson darkly narrates, “I'm in the tunnel with all the other monsters and it's so messy.” And in ‘Burn Me’, she takes a turn at a more straightforward club rhythm, building up drones, an acid bassline and flashes of percussion into a tense slow-burn. Part of her response to these difficult scenarios is to turn to writers whose work offers guidance or inspiration. Recently, this has meant the likes of psychologist Alice Miller, physician Gabor Maté and filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky (in particular, his book Psychomagic). Their work explores ideas of the self and the ways in which people develop; relating their theories or stories to herself, it’s pushed her to explore the notion of therapy in relation to art and dreams. In turn, she has filtered her own reflections through their ideas. She’s always reached outward for the diverse influences that have informed her music, touching on big concepts and musical touchstones alike. But it’s with this release that she’s applied the same degree of focus to herself. The album is the product of a personal process: she looks inward to project a more expansive vision to the world.

Building on his background as a classical pianist and composer, British producer Jon Hopkins uses vast electronic soundscapes to explore other worlds. Here, on his fifth album, he contemplates our own. Inspired by adventures with meditation and psychedelics, *Singularity* aims to evoke the magical awe of heightened consciousness. It’s a theme that could easily feel affected or clichéd, but Hopkins does it phenomenal justice with imaginative, mind-bending songs that feel both spontaneous and rigorously structured. Floating from industrial, polyrhythmic techno (“Emerald Rush\") to celestial, ambient atmospheres (“Feel First Life”), it’s a transcendent headphone vision quest you’ll want to go on again.

Please note: Digital files are 16bit. Singularity marks the fifth album from the UK electronic producer and composer and the follow up to 2013’s Mercury Prize nominated Immunity. Where Immunity charted the dark alternative reality of an epic night out, Singularity explores the dissonance between dystopian urbanity and the green forest. It is a journey that returns to where it began – from the opening note of foreboding to the final sound of acceptance. Shaped by his experiences with meditation and trance states, the album flows seamlessly from rugged techno to transcendent choral music, from solo acoustic piano to psychedelic ambient.

'Closer Apart' is the debut album by UK/South African duo Okzharp and Manthe Ribane. Okzharp says 'most of the music came out of headphone moments in hotel rooms, planes and airports in the brief periods of time that we spent together, mainly on tour, in Paris and later Vienna', a city Manthe describes as a 'beautiful dream place'. Okzharp describes Manthe as a ‘co-producer’, ‘she selected instrumental sketches and we developed them together, sometimes just keeping the bare bones or a melody or rhythm, or trying different elements or sounds. Even thought the album was built long distance, the short periods they spent together were the ground zero for creativity, Okzharp recalls 'One particular moment in Milan last year, ‘we had a whole free day before our flight so we visited the Salone di Mobile design show. We were so inspired by an installation there just walking around, listening to the amazing soundtrack. That evening our flight was delayed, so we sat on the floor of the airport terminal putting musical ideas down for 'Time Machine' on the laptop speakers and writing the lyrics. "Tic Toc time, we'll be fine /Airport queues, cerulean blues / Viper trails cross the skies / Lights reflect in your eyes...' The album has a softness and openness that contrasts the tougher sound of the EPs. Manthe explains, 'The new music is a 360 turn, It an expression of my “Lady” side, I grew up listening to Jazz, Classic and Gospel, I am a very soft spoken person, and it resonates with being confident with that. It's been crazy finding balance and finding a smart way to strengthen my weaknesses, I had to trust the process.’ Of the songs she says ‘They are part of the world now, I hope everyone feels motivated and inspired to be more after listening to the album.’

“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).

Eartheater (aka Queens based artist Alexandra Drewchin) distills foley-filled digital production, a three-octave vocal range, and classical composition into works suspended between obsessively detailed sonic tapestries and almost recklessly romantic and gestural electronica. A body of viscerally emotive live performance stands alongside her recorded output, realized by her fearless physical investment and gut-wrenching vocal sincerity.  IRISIRI, Eartheater's third full-length record, lays out a shifting network of abstract song craft, laced with sudden structural upheavals and collisions of mutated tropes from numerous sonic vocabularies. Modular synth staccato plucks hammer out in arrhythmic spirals over a carefully muzzled grid of pumping kicks - unleashed in unpredictable disruptions.  Technoid stabs mingle with crushed black metal. An icy OS reads poetry against a bed of granular synth swells.  Drewchin's sirening whistle-tone vocals drape over relentless harp arpeggios. Eartheater confounds expectations of structure and resolution before deciding to thread in a sugary melody that snaps us back into some conception, however hazy, of pop songwriting. Guest spots on IRISIRI charge Drewchin's ideas with concordant energies, from the stark imagist poetry of Odwalla1221 on Inhale Baby, to the sheer lacerating force of Moor Mother's unflinching verse on MMXXX. Drewchin's lyrics, strewn with flourishes of wordplay and symbolism, explore themes of her autodidactic experience - playing with the tutelage of the ‘pupil’ within the ‘iris' mirrored in the palindrome IRISIRI. One motif appears as a song name,  C.L.I.T., which Drewchin breaks down into "Curiosity Liberates Infinite Truth." The acronym stands as a microcosm of the Eartheater project in its holistic combination of idiosyncratic spirituality and cheekiness, presented with an earnest confidence that some could consider confrontational. In spite of this lexicon’s maximal effect, it comes from a very personal place as she states, “curiosity has had to be the currency of my education". On OS In Vitro, she reminds us that "These tits are just a side-effect," and "You can't compute her," as if to acknowledge the clouding effect of sexuality and technology in the face of a higher self-significance. In the record’s accompanying video piece, Claustra,  she slides between "the owning of my loneliness" and "the end of the loaning of my onliness”, encapsulating images of self-purifying isolation and the rejection of artistic exploitation with the flip of two syllables. The transmuting landscape of IRISIRI is riddled with evocative poetry and evidence of Drewchin’s development as an artist since her debut in 2015. Drewchin performs and collaborates with art duo and close friends FLUCT. In February 2017, she starred in Raul de Nieves and Colin Self’s opera The Fool at the Kitchen. In April 2017, featured on two tracks from Show Me The Body’s  Corpus I mixtape alongside  Denzel Curry  and Moor Mother. She’s currently composing work for the contemporary chamber orchestra,  Alarm Will Sound, that will debut in May 2018. Her new live set sees her accompanied by the concert harpist Marilu Donivan. 

Always seen with a smile on his face; Inja the poet, lyricist, storyteller and unparalleled master of ceremonies presents his debut album on Hospital Records. His first drum & bass focussed long-player ‘Blank Pages’ flexes his lyrical style with heartfelt sentiment, roughneck flows and quick-fire wordsmith wizardry. All partnered with heavyweight productions from Pete Cannon, Nu:Tone, Logistics, Serum, Whiney and Anile. Inja’s back with partner-in-crime Pete Cannon on ‘War Games’. A funky bassline lays the foundations for this fear-fighting tale. As the breaks roll out Inja’s militant and deep rhetoric puts this track on a new level, with signature percussive flair from the sought after hip-hop beatmaker. Inja’s spoken-word piece for Amnesty International ‘She Just Wanna Dance’ was a viral online hit in 2017. It’s now been given a turbo-charged re-work by Med School young-gun Whiney. Inja’s poignant commentary on the prolific problem of harassment in club culture sits atop a grimey half-time stepper that switches up into a lethal upfront roller. Inja proves he can ‘juk’ any riddim in ‘Samurai’. Serum’s steppy beat and woofing bassline balances Inja’s story of the samurai; slicing through the tune like the lyrical sensei he is. “Even with a white page and black ink, you can spell out more colour than the eye can see.” - Inja

“The richest place in the world is the cemetery. And it's not because of the jewelry that people might have on. It's because of what they had in their mind that they wanted to give, but didn't have anyone to give it to. That's how I learned that it's not about me, it's about the listeners. It's about giving back. I wanna die empty.” -RP Boo Longevity is promised to no one. We literally live to die, and even great masters perish without saying what they needed to say while they’re among the breathing. Most of us leave this earth too full, and the grim reality is artistic careers are usually short-lived. Chicago footwork godfather RP Boo has fought long and hard to evacuate his mind of all he can throughout his long career, spanning over 30 years since cutting his teeth DJing for the legendary House-O-Matics. While notorious in the streets of his own city, most of his music had been unfairly confined to small white labels and self-released mixtapes until his two LPs of archival material Legacy, and Fingers, Bank Pads & Shoe Prints introduced broader audiences to his sonic history, some of it fifteen years after it was first recorded to a four-track. I’ll Tell You What! is the next step in Boo’s mission to rid his mind of everything it contains, and marks the first time he’s released an album of contemporary material shortly after creating it. The title, a favorite maxim of his, welcomes listeners to sit down and let him narrate in the unforgettable abstract fashion that he is known for. He explores familiar motifs, such as the cosmos, movement, and opposition, using densely interwoven vocals, unpredictable percussion, and evil humming bass as his tools of choice. You could swap many of the tracks on this album with the tracklists of his old mixtapes and aside from some tape hiss, they wouldn’t be too out of place. The level of innovation has stayed the same for twenty years, as Boo’s music doesn’t follow the traditional rules of decay that most compositions do. Layering decades of samples from yesteryear to the present over his commanding vocal cut-ups, he transports the listener to their own realm of the space-time continuum. The main difference between this record and his prior work is now we hear Boo tell new stories about preaching his gospel outside of Chicago, from his experiences frantically touring the globe over the last five years. The words “things ain’t been the same / since I hopped the plane” are repeated on top of engine sounds and rumbling bass on Flight 1235, a glorious paean to his new jet-setting adventures. While he is one of the kindest, most humble people I’ve had the pleasure of knowing, the spirit of competition runs through RP’s veins as much as blood does, something you can’t unlearn when you’ve been making music for Chicago’s footwork circuit for as long as he has. The local culture has served as a shelter from the violence that has plagued the city, pitting kids against each other with their feet rather than weapons. On At War Boo reminds us “we are at war in the streets”, a double meaning to both the mayhem in this world and the sweetness of rivalry on the dance floor. Another battle-themed track Cloudy Back Yard, one of the spacier moments on this album, is an abstract on the state of footwork’s home. Chicago remains the backyard of this art form even though it’s left the porch and traveled to new neighborhoods worldwide. Back at home though, competition among the DJs and dancers continues, and as the man himself says, “with all this hate, there’s smoke, and it’s cloudy”. In addition to giving us plenty of the RP Boo we love, I’ll Tell You What! throws more than a few curveballs into the mix. Footwork has always borrowed from hip-hop, and many vocal tracks are almost condensed raps, dating back to the street chants pioneered on Dance Mania Records in the ghetto house days. On Bounty, Boo grabs the mic and brazenly lays down a full-on verse of terror over a thick atmosphere of his signature sweltering low-end and erratic Roland R-70 patterns. While he’s most famous for his confrontational battle anthems, his melancholy moments are just as powerful. You get the best of both of those worlds on U-Don’t No, with soulful samples finishing his own cocky sentences, one of the most elegant tracks RP has made to date. Deep Sole closes the record out, with the words “It’s always beautiful at the end” looping over waves of hypnotic synthesis, confidently looking death straight in the eyes, and in my mind, telling us that he’s leaving this earth with an empty mind like he set out to do. In the decade I’ve know RP Boo, he’s been a constant source of inspiration, not only musically, but also on how to conduct oneself while moving though this wicked world. Immerse yourself in the environment he has worked decades to create, and maybe you’ll find ways to exhaust your own brain before faced with whatever comes after this life. -Dave Quam

GAS – RAUSCH Rausch with no name / My beautiful shine / You are the sun / This is where I want to be / Rausch with no morning / This is where we burn / The Stars sparkle / In a sea of flames / Horns and fanfares / Fanfares of joy / Fanfares of fear / The wine we drink through the eyes / The moon pours down at night in waves / Careful with that axe Eugene / Personal Jesus / No beginning no end / Eighteenth of Oktember / The night falls / The king comes / The hunt starts / Freude schöner Götterfunken / The long march through the underwood / Trust me there’s nothing / Once upon a time there was a bandit / Who loved a prince / That was long ago / Spring Summer Fall and Gas / There is a train heading to Nowhere / Drums and Trumpets / Future without mankind / Warm snow / Alles ist gut / The bells toll / You are not alone / The murmur in the forest / The murmur in the head / Light as mist / Heavy as lead / Music happens / To flow like gas / A clearing / Heavy baggage / Debut in the afterlife / Death has seven cats / World heritage Rausch / Finally infinite Wolfgang Voigt 2018

“This album is the product of a 2 year process. The LP reflects what I love about the diversity of drum & bass and all its sub genres as well as what I enjoy playing at clubs and festivals.It was crucial to me that this new chapter was a step up in content, sound design and song writing which influenced the decision to include only solo material and even master it myself. Manifest is Mefjus 2.0” – Martin CD, vinyl and merch: store.visionrecordings.nl