No one else finding earnest, life-affirming uses for Judah + The Lion & The Calling songs in 2025. No choice but to salute.

Not spotless by any means (for one, you can pinpoint the exact reference point for that first wish song, and as it turns out this New Sincerity Soundcloud Collage shit ain't easy!) but look, I'm a perpetually isolated fuck-up with a closet affection for pop chart flotsam and a tendency to go on absent-minded LiveMixtapes download sprees. Sorry but this is the only music that makes sense to me currently.

A heartwarming story about inclusion and solidarity: it doesn't matter whether you're man or woman, rich or poor, whether you pray to The Fall or the Stones - you too can be an asshole.

I mean kudos to these guys for figuring out how to keep the Drum Trax era going for a brief minute while everything else either fell into the full-on "deconstructed club" pile, disappeared into irrelevance or got into techno. It all teeters on the right edge of dark & heavy, and everyone composes themselves well - a lot of the offerings pick up on the reggaeton streak on the previous label comp and emphasize it, meanwhile WW5's siren fleet means business, something hard & ... read more

The Grind does not break the rule about British bass music b-sides instantly vaporizing from memory when they're not being listened to, no matter how decent and dubby they are. That A-side though? Hoo boy. Convinced that if you erased Erstwhile Rhythm and its muffled cobblestone piano line from history James Blake is assistant store manager at a Dunelm somewhere in Enfield instead.

What a difference a year makes, apparently - Erelitha is as invigorating & tremorous as this label's 2015 Summer Jams comp is clunky & ugly. Enough bassy, glossy dembows to make you wonder why only now music outlets are stroking their chins and wringing their hands about "Latin club" as a concept. It's not faultless - that Missy Elliott edit is kinda lame - but the lineup does an admirable job threading the needle between reggaeton inflections and ... read more

Never quite got around to having the customary reverence for BUFO even at the height of my Hessle fandom - chalk it up to being a shut-in. Fango's "Admire" aside I still need to warm up fully to the first half's house-isms (although thank fuck it's lusher, more humid, more percussive than the beige warehouse workouts that characterized his Fabriclive mix) but the skippier and breakier it gets the more he really starts cooking. God knows the last time I was genuinely ... read more

Pushing a funeral pyre out to sea, trying to keep the flame alive as YouTube compression mutates the smoke and sparks. Possibly the only "rock" album this year to feel like anything as 2024 starts inching towards the finish line.

Far be it for me to moan about people wishing for more Fleshless hands and less interludes - let it be known I am also impatient and need immediacy all the goddamn time - but is that really all that matters to you? Everything happening right now? Do you complain about birds walking on ground because they're more majestic when they fly? If anything this is spiritually carrying the mantle from Durutti Column's serene untethering of rock over into a post-vaporwave, post-lumpy CGI ... read more

Taking on an almost tonic quality this morning. Real match made in heaven - Malibu's poptimist ambient (sorry) leanings and Dark0's hyaline club-trap rub off on each other and meld into the dusky hovercar ambience, zipping between forlorn trunk-rattlers (some of which would later be included on ZERO2), soundtrack swells, pop acapellas morphing into something more longing, and 21 Savage. Keep your ears peeled for a Dua Lipa x Omni Trio mashup too (it's less of a stretch than it ... read more

Have listened to this enough that the original's lock-step drums feel out of place. God knows I'm not an expert no matter how many restored DatPiff links I click on but surely this is neck-and-neck with Technic's flip of Love You Down for the dreamiest, most drop-dead gorgeous Baltimore club track?

Getting the Cruzer tracks over with first - I've heard Ice Rink too, man, as well as it feels like 500 other tracks by people who've also heard Ice Rink, and the Rainforest Mix's Jersey-isms are unconvincing when they're not clunky (turns out you can't always fix something by slapping a Think break on it). So the points go to both Reflector Packs, which are also kind of obvious in what they crib from - the Classical Curves strain of sheeny grime bass funk whatever - but more importantly ... read more

Honestly the platonic ideal of a nu-jungle release. Not overly concerned with recreating iconography or anemic 'modernization' (bar the clumsy attempt of footwork on Vertigo), no on-the-nose retrofetishism or posturing - just shows up and does its job, creates its own languid ambience and lets the pads wash over you without beating you over the head with their prettiness. Wish We Didn't is the closest we'll get to a modern Finest Illusion, just with the ecstasy made laidback - maybe the best ... read more

At once both airy and antiseptic. Sounds like what refrigerated bottled water tastes like. The elements in play aren't going to shock anyone familiar with this stuff - the drums scuff and scrape as they always do, and the melodies are ripped straight from the grime playbook, haphazard quasi-orientalism and all. And yet it's buffed to such an extreme that the sheen takes on its own quality, a chilly freshness that crosses over into near uncanny valley territory.

I'm taking the Swandive hype at ... read more

Don't care who you are, if this isn't the soundtrack to your October 31st then I don't know what you're doing.

Will admit that the b-side is a non-presence - last.fm tells me I have listened to Shook 3 times and it may as well be 0. Still, the song itself? Goddamn stunner, and any avant-teen phase that didn't involve stumbling onto this is an avant-teen phase wasted. The last bit of the track is a masterclass in minimalism; all that's added is a pitched-down vocal and some 909 handclaps and yet it sounds like the rumbling thunder of the 2 minutes beforehand has escalated into lightning bolts striking ... read more

Ex-techno producer and Different Circles alumni (in fact hearing him do a guest mix for Mumdance's show was how I found out about this) ditches the austere bass for shimmering French touch hooks stripped from their original dancefloor contexts and left to dry out on a particularly hot day. If it sounds like a test run for bigger and better work down the line then it passed with flying colors, constantly glimmering and invoking washed-out house wistfulness without being on-the-nose about it - ... read more

Power be to Corpmane/OT: The only person in the world to have made a Radiohead mashup that doesn't sound like everything hateable about late 2000s indie blog detritus. Maybe a bit too reliant on the "let me put a regional club genre beat under this" trick and it's not always a smooth trip but the first two tracks are transcendent and like most Organ Tapes stuff they came as angels with their arms reaching out and promising to replenish my soul when I needed it the most. Failing that ... read more

There once was a time where my life, consisting mostly of school and Zombie Survival sessions with the curtains pulled shut, was soundtracked by the windswept gravitas of Harmony In Ultraviolet and Ravedeath, the grandness of which was perfect for a precocious teenager to project onto. Nowadays even with the former albums perched in my 90+ ratings I find myself gravitating towards the warm, dreamy, fuzzy, bokeh-smeared vignettes on here more as I roll open my bedroom window. Is it ... read more

Hey remember when this guy used to make blown-out break punk instead of whining about socialism on Twitter? First track might as well be a mission statement, slinky bass and distorted rat-a-tat-ing doing the bare minimum of preparing you for when the Amens blast you back through the wall. Most of what comes after doesn't even bother, its drum armadas being backed up by synths blaring out lines closer to malfunctioning alarms than melodies. Maybe when it inevitably ditches the barrages it walks ... read more