RÖYKSOPP - Late Night Tales

One of the most consistent cross-genre artist-curated mix series keeps its batting average mighty high with this installment from Norway's Röyksopp; we'd especially recommend this bespoke blend of mainly '70s/'80s soft rock, electronic ambience and subtly strange slow jams to anyone who picked up earlier volumes by Air and Lindstrøm, as well as Groove Armada's recent Music For Pleasure entry.

"Röyksopp's selections generally live somewhere in a late-1970s/early-'80s setting. The most compelling include Tuxedomoon's 'In a Manner of Speaking,' a showcase for part-time member Winston Tong's portrayal of romantic miscommunication over a stark arrangement of nervous guitar and distant swirls; Vangelis' "Blade Runner Blues," a pure synthesizer realization of the late-night and disconnected melancholy of Blade Runner that steers clear of the pounding doom of its end theme, and F. R. David's remarkable synth ballad 'Music,' which sounds like a Eurovision winner with all heart and inspiraiton and no irony, even 30 years after it was originally written.

There are also choices that merrily trash received ideas of coolness, like 'Stranger on the Shore,' Acker Bilk’s clarinet-lined Easy Listening smash from the early 60s, which is a kind of outlier from the midcentury that nails both big-band jazz and romantic film music. Ready to be reclaimed by the cassette/chillwave generation, Andreas Vollenweider's 1981 track 'Hands and Clouds' is a brief bit of swirling delicacy that sounds like a lost track from the high point of West Coast radio stations like The Wave. Meanwhile, the neo-classical impulses of acts like Johann Johannsson, whose composition of strings and deep electronic bass plus voice of “Odi Et Amo” features here, showcase a further connection at work." - Pitchfork

THUNDERCAT - Apocalypse

Two years ago, Thundercat's debut album The Golden Age Of Apocalypse slowly but surely won over enough of us here to reach #11 on our Staff Best Of 2011 chart, and the pared-down title variation for this follow-up seems fully fitting, as Stephen Bruner's funky fusoid tendencies and falsetto vocal melodies continue to set him apart from any of his 'beat scene' peers, but with a slightly darker, barer tinge to it all this time around, due in part to the passing of keyboardist collaborator and friend Austin Peralta, to whom last track "A Message For Austin" is dedicated.

"The chord this record strikes hardest is an emotional and highly personal one; it’s a record that conveys with exceptional delicacy the transition from relative naivete to a more reflective and worldly view. For most of us, this happens in our twenties: much has been written on the subject of the 'lost years' when we establish, or fail to establish, relative stability, and peace with ourselves. For Bruner, this transition seems to have been provoked by a tragic event, but for most of us, it’ll be something experienced painfully and gradually for the better part of a decade.

Apocalypse is very literally a rewarding and difficult second album, with its roots in tragedy and loss and its furthermost fronds in hope and moving forward, an album that challenges listeners with an incredible level of subtlety, hidden depths and wash of openly expressed emotion. It might even just be the album that best sums up what the Low End Theory beat scene in LA has always been about: the perfect blend of virtuous technicality and cosmic self discovery with a message delivered wrapped in genuine human warmth." - Drowned In Sound

PRINCE NIFTY - Pity Slash Love

A key yet underheralded contributor to many great things about Toronto's local independent music scene(s), from Double Double Land, 6 Nassau, and sound design for the plays of Alex Wolfson to Blocks Recording Club, sporadic live techno supergroup of sorts New Feelings, and Les Mouches/the Owen Pallett band, Matt "Prince Nifty" Smith finally officially follows up 2007's A Sparrow! A Sparrow! with an inimitable blend of guitar pop, R&B-savvy vocal stacking and manic Shangaan/Footwork-like electronic dance touches.

"While we're on the subject of weird melodies, I'd like to introduce you to Prince Nifty. Experimental in nature, the vocals are free-flowing like Gregorian chant. Avant-garde artist Thomas 'THOMAS' Gill is one of the contributors to his latest, Pity Slash Love, most audible in the keyboards of the album's second track."- Ride the Tempo

ELUVIUM - Nightmare Ending

A return to form for the producer of one of the alltime great ambient/classical albums, 2007's Copia. After an ill-advised journey into vocal music on his last album, 2010's Similes, Matthew Cooper has returned to his instrumental roots on his latest, with the exception of one track featuring guest vocals from Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo. This new album has already jumped to the top of my Best Of 2013 list.

"Intended as a follow-up to 2007′s Copia, Nightmare Ending incubated while Cooper dove down a more pop-oriented channel in 2010 with two EPs and a full-length. Featuring both vocals and something like percussion for the first time, Similes showed that Eluvium’s elegiac movements could be mapped onto the verse-chorus-verse blueprint. This experiment in constraint proved to be the exercise necessary to finish Nightmare Ending, a double album that plays out as the sum of all Cooper has learned through Eluvium. The title could allude to the release that comes after a long period of creative frustration—the feeling of finally getting it all out." - Consequence of Sound

WILD NOTHING - Empty Estate

Clocking in at just under half an hour, the Empty Estate EP is Jack Tatum's second between-LP effort for Captured Tracks, and a welcome teaser for whatever he has planned for full-length number three, ranging from the instrumental drift of "On Guyot" and "Hachicko" to the increasingly electro-laced new New Wave with which Tatum has mainly made his mark to date, best exemplified here by the laidback swagger of "Ocean Repeating (Big-Eyed Girl)" and "Data World"'s insistent toms and needly synth.

"Empty Estate feels like an arrival of sorts, a move from the quieter hum of his earlier work into full-blown pop territory, without losing any of the warmth that has made his music so great in the first place. 'A Dancing Shell' is all pastel synths and soft bass-led funk, with an appropriately bright video to along with it." - The FADER

THE HAXAN CLOAK - Excavation

Bobby Krlic's sophomore full-length as The Haxan Cloak (and debut for young-'n'-bleak English imprint Tri Angle) contains enough growling bass beds, spooky string samples and spacious, heaving beats to satiate anyone looking for another contemporary artist to add alongside such other doomy/dreadful electronic heavyweights as Ben Frost, Raime, Emptyset, and labelmate Vessel.

"Thematically, where The Haxan Cloak was a descent into darkness, Excavation represents the ascent into light that directly follows it. The differences between the two LPs run further than their mood and themes, however; for this second album, Krlic has flipped his approach to composition and sound design on its head. Where his debut was rooted in the raw, natural tones of classical instrumentation, its follow-up deals in electronic timbres and heavily processed effects. As such, Excavation shares many traits with its predecessor while still sounding like a unique proposition; here, Krlic makes no attempt to repeat the tricks of his debut, and creates a hugely worthy successor to it as a result." - XLR8R

"Krlic takes full advantage of the album form, often stretching his songs to more than ten minutes. The result is something truly narrative—this isn't the kind of record you'd play on shuffle. In the title track's two parts, we're taken through a sonorous tunnel only to be dumped into an empty pit of despair, all static and hissing hellmouths. With 'The Mirroring,' those dissociative drones collect themselves back into fire-and-brimstone techno." - Resident Advisor

THE KNIFE - Shaking The Habitual

Seven years after the increasingly influential Silent Shout, The Knife return with nearly 100 minutes of serious play, as even the hookiest tracks here get their parameters totally tweaked and toyed with, stretching out song lengths and upending expectations. To paraphrase the pair, without them electronic pop in 2013 would be a lot more boring!

(The single-disc edition omits "Old Dreams Waiting To Be Realized," a wispy twenty-minute Eliane Radigue-like boiler-room feedback drone, as well as the lyric sheet/comic strip posters found in the 2CD set.)

"Against all odds, Shaking The Habitual is the best work Karin Dreijer Anderssen and her brother Olaf have ever done and a candidate for 2013's best album, period. Think of Public Image Ltd.'s Second Edition, John Lydon’s (and Jah Wobble’s) famously abrasive masterpiece, with coherent politics and forward motion in the grooves. Hell, forward motion in the drones. Think of if Liars’ percussion monsoon Drum’s Not Dead was all it was cracked up to be. Think of last year’s Swans album, The Seer, if it was composed and programmed protests rather than improv goth comedy." - Paste

"With their last album, 2010's Tomorrow, In A Year—an opera about Darwin's Origin of the Species, recorded with Mt. Sims and Planningtorock—The Knife demonstrated their desire to think big; unfortunately, they also fell into the trap of thinking that ambitious, 'difficult' music shouldn't be very fun to listen to. So it's a huge relief to see them diving back into the seas of jouissance with Habitual. From the very first flicker of cymbals and finger snaps that opens the album, they tap into an electroacoustic universe whose glassy, metallic timbres ripple across the flesh, and whose rubbery tones undulate deep in the gut. They've never sounded more in tune with the materiality of sound or the sonorousness of the physical world." - SPIN

VA - Change The Beat: The Celluloid Records Story 1980-1987

As recounted in this promotional short video, it could be argued that Celluloid's unique cross-Atlantic aesthetic was born the moment that French impresario/BYG Actuel co-founder Jean Karakos chanced upon NYC bassist/producer/multi-scene Zelig figure Bill Laswell; Change The Beat is a long-overdue look at one of the few early-'80s labels able to successfully unite the then-burgeoning B-boy movement with both the U.S./Euro no/new waves as well as that era's African diaspora. 

"With a selection that jumped from early hip-hop to deconstructed European disco, and from downtown NYC experimental head-trips to early fusions of world music with funk, jazz and art-damaged punk, Celluloid was truly a harbinger of things to come.

Winding your way through so much unbridled creativity is like stumbling into an avant-garde toy box filled with outrageous oddities, many of them sprouting dangerous, sharp edges. Having bought every Celluloid record I found for decades, I thought I had a pretty good grasp on the label's catalogue, but there's an impressive amount of stuff here I've never heard or heard of.

Blessed by being in the right place(s) at the right time, and having the smarts to take advantage of the considerable opportunities that came their way, Celluloid Records sits comfortably in the file of independent labels that got it right from start to finish." - Blurt

FALTY DL - Hardcourage

NYC's Drew Lustman crafts his third full-length (and first for Ninja Tune) with a sensibility heavily influenced by UK future-garage (using vocal samples in a manner similar enough to Joy Orbison, Mount Kimbie, and early/instrumental James Blake), but with an additional hyper-contemporary edge all his own.

"With new album Hardcourage, Lustman's called it again. It maps his journey from uncertainty to confidence, toward music that reaches outward rather than inward; those two words pushed together as if to boldly ring the fact that facing your fears is no walk in the park. On Hardcourage, it appears he's worked hard to loosen his thrall to jazz-like introspection-- something that often eclipsed his earlier work-- in favor of a newfound openness. And what's come with that hard-won courage is a sense of fun." - Pitchfork

TORO Y MOI - Anything In Return

On Anything In Return, Chaz Bundick brushes aside the Stereolab- and Caribou-like qualities of Underneath The Pine, upping the boyish R&B-pop pastiche element that's been audible in his songs (if occasionally previously couched in compression/filtering) ever since his 2010 debut, Causers Of This.

"In the first three tracks alone, you can find hints of trance and house, R&B and funk, pop and rock. Later, "Studies" mixes a rhythm straight out of '90s-era hip-hop with a melodic structure that recalls pre-Hissing Fauna of Montreal. And "Grown Up Calls" is a fractured pop gem that recalls both Kanye West and WHY?. Bundick is an artist of synthesis, and his music operates best when the stitches don’t show, like on the sub-zero groove of "Say That" or sub-frequency flow of the appropriately liquid "Cola." It’s moments like these that are the most enjoyable, because they’re the songs that fully demonstrate Bundick’s complete skill set." - Consequence of Sound

"I promise not to keep bringing up Pharrell, but the way Bundick's built these elaborate tracks around his own decidedly unspectacular voice reminds me of the way Skateboard P interrupted Jay-Z's godly party-flow on "I Just Wanna Love U" so that he could bust out his terrible Curtis Mayfield impression and somehow sound badass doing it. (Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor is also a good comparison point here; there’s a level of suave/dweeby intersection at work that we mere mortals will probably never figure out.) Bundick’s voice shouldn’t work for these expertly-assembled pleasure-machine tracks, but it does, and the ballsiness of putting that voice front and center only makes the entire thing cooler." - Stereogum

MOUNTAINS - Centralia

Brooklyn duo Mountains earn their name once again with this set of unmoving beauties. Seven slo-fi improvisations stretch over a luxurious 67 minutes populated by Mountains' characteristic blend of acoustic and electronic sounds perfect for the long-haul listener.

"If the likes of Pontiak and Barn Owl conjure scorched plains and endless prairies then labelmates Mountains—the chillaxed twosome of Koen Holtkamp and Brendon Anderegg—are charting boundless ocean depths. Centralia, their third full-length for Thrill Jockey, could easily soundtrack a deepwater Herzog-ian journey in some sort of chuntering submersible. The voyager will be greeted by shoals of goggle-eyed fish, waving fronds, elegant fan-like structures that breathe and eat through tubes and strange, lonely creatures clad in shimmering bioluminescence." - BBC

"Ears still virgin to the inspiring neo-psychedelia of Mountains will find a perfect place to begin exploring their discography with Centralia. While so much ambient- and drone-based experimental music is essentially meaningless, forgettable work that roughly replicates the same sonic recipe popularized by Brian Eno in the '70s, the distinctive melodies and forward-thinking-yet-beautiful experimentalism heard in Mountains' music put them in a league of their own." - Exclaim!

MAX RICHTER - Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi - The Four Seasons

With autumn in full swing, now's the perfect time to listen to the musical evocation of the season in this latest entry in Deutsche Grammophon's Recomposed series. Subtly incorporating ambient elements similar to his own work, Max Richter tastefully reinvents this classic for the modern age with the assistance of violinist Daniel Hope.

"[Richter's] solo work combines ambient electronica with melodic minimalism, and in his recasting of The Four Seasons, everything is up for reconsideration except the classical instrumentation. Sometimes the melody is retained while elements of the accompaniment are reconstituted into a droning or minimalist style: sometimes the rhythm is chopped up into uneven time signatures. Motifs are stretched through repetition in a way that reminds us of the similar construction of much Baroque music. Occasionally revisions practically result in a new melody, as in the opening movement of 'Summer.' [...] It would have been very easy for Richter's Four Seasons to end up a cheap gimmick. Instead it aligns the Baroque and the modern in thoroughly enjoyable and memorable ways." - eMusic

MELODY'S ECHO CHAMBER - S/T

Ever wondered what could have occurred were the late Trish Keenan to have had the chance to record with Tame Impala singer/songwriter/production whiz Kevin Parker? It might have ended up something like Paris native Melody Prochet's debut solo effort, recorded with Parker and certainly bearing more than a small resemblance to both Broadcast's Tender Buttons as well as, to a lesser extent, later-era Blonde Redhead (not bad things at all in our books).

Another A&R coup for the ever-on-the-ball Fat Possum, adding yet another young, fresh-sounding signing to an already-chockful roster (Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Tennis, Yuck, Smith Westerns, Crocodiles, etc.)! 

"That Prochet is peddling her brand of Krautrock/dream-pop/electronica isn't exactly a unique selling point in 2012. However—thankfully, joyously—Melody's Echo Chamber is an utterly marvellous listen. Prochet has blended a myriad of sounds without ever getting engulfed by navel-gazing or disappearing up her own derrière. Melody's Echo Chamber is replete with memorable tunes—fully-realised songs—which anchor Prochet's inquisitive ear and desire to experiment." - The Quietus

"It’s easy to ferret out the Spacemen 3 simplicity and static bursts on 'Crystallized,' the bright, girl-group chorus and Bandwagonesque outro guitar shredding of opener 'I’ll Follow You,' or the Stereolab-quality vintage-organ loops of 'Quand Vas Tu Rentrer?' (Prochet sings in both English and French). But the album gets denser and weirder as it progresses, Prochet's high-pitched vocals sounding ever more little-girl-lost among the tone-bending synths of 'Mount Hopeless' and backwards-tracked 'IsThatWhatYouSaid.'" - eMusic

FLYING LOTUS - Until The Quiet Comes

Steven Ellison's last full-length, 2010's Cosmogramma, was an unanticipated favourite of that year—and would go on to be one of my most-played records of the following year as well. (I was uninitiated to his earlier works, although I've since come to revere 2008's Los Angeles with nearly equal fervour.) But despite catching me by surprise, Cosmogramma announced itself to me anything but loudly. It was a good four or five months of owning the record before I truly began to understand the complexity, craft, and sheer joy that lay within it. That's no accident, and, as its title suggests, Until The Quiet Comes is no different.

As Flying Lotus, Ellison builds his music—a simultaneously limping and striding brand of post-hip hop instrumental psychedelia that's peppered tenderly with guest vocals—with incredible care and subtlety. It's not that it isn't loud, vibrant, or throbbing. It manages its share of trunk-rattling boom and colour-inducing sheets of sound. But FlyLo isn't nearly as interested in direct statements as he is in fragments, half-thoughts, open propositions, and the space between the notes (whether that be notes on a scale or, as is often the case in his rhythms, notes between the meter).

That last phrase, of course, is oft used (both seriously and derisively) about jazz, and its inclusion here isn't accidental. Not only is Ellison the great-nephew of the legendary Alice Coltrane (a jazz artist notable for much more than just her marriage to saxophonist John Coltrane), but he is really a musician who represents one of the best ways forward for jazz in the new millennium. More so than many of his contemporaries, Ellison innately understands how to take the central tenets of jazz—the improvisational building in spontaneous directions upon a musical theme—and to then translate it to, for lack of a better phrase, modern music.

(I realize that this is a statement that would no doubt make purists wince. Perhaps it is better applied to the role of Flying Lotus as a listener/beatmaker/producer than his actual playing...but anyway, do with that suggestion what you will.) 

It's not that there aren't great current jazz players (far too many to name here, but Rob Mazurek, Jason Moran, Arve Henriksen to start, maybe...), or that those artists are not doing progressive contemporary things with their music. Nor am I sure that Ellison would like what he does to be called 'jazz.' But I would suggest that there's no better way to approach his music than how one ideally embraces jazz: open to all possible structures and interpretations. Open to endless growth of a performance, even a permanently recorded and captured one.

True to this idea, as great as Until The Quiet Comes sounded at first listen, that's just a hint of how great it has sounded on the tenth. And so I expect it to continue, almost exponentially so.

As with any year, there have been a number of highly anticipated albums in 2012. Some have fallen short, others have ably met the challenge, still more have done adequately. Unlike two years ago, however, I had Flying Lotus on my radar as one of those albums for which I could not wait. Maybe THE album for which I could not wait. But no matter how high the bar was that I set, this record has easily fulfilled its expected promise.

I can't wait to hear how wonderful it sounds to me come the new year. And if there's anyone left who still doesn't believe in the beauty of what computers can bring to music, sit with this album, please. It's magnificent.

CAT POWER - Sun

Chan Marshall—the enigmatic musician who presents herself as Cat Power to the world—had for a long time built a career out of the hushed and dour. The fact that she did both with such radiant humanity and magnetic frailty turned her into one of the most beloved and (ironically, given her famously erratic performances) dependable singers of her generation.

Her body of work has shown her to be a master interpreter (on two terrific covers albums, especially the austere 2000 album The Covers Record), a very capable blue-eyed soul singer, and, above all, a peerless chronicler of despair. It's that last trait which, so grand an asset for so many years, began to feel like a weight under which Marshall was going to be crushed, both in her career and even her own life. Indeed, the one thing that this talented artist seemed to lack entirely (and need desperately) was a sense of fun.

2006's The Greatest began to turn the tide slightly, as did the follow-up, Jukebox—albums wherein a certain levity and casual grace started to mix with her already well-crafted foreboding nature and heavy heart. A positively exuberant cover of Dylan's "Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again" on the soundtrack for the film I'm Not There pushed her even further into the realm of gleeful. As horns raced and Marshall teasingly slurred through the Bard's brilliant couplets, I doubt I was the  only one thinking that this was the kind of song that would've turned The Greatest into a record truly befitting its name.

And now we've got Sun, an album that—in its own sly way—really does live up to its title. There may not be a horn jam to rival her take on "Stuck...," but I take no small pleasure in saying this is easily the funnest Cat Power album to date. If that sounds like a bit of a joke in itself, fair enough, but this is neither damning with faint praise, nor is it a suggestion that she's suddenly become Lesley Gore. Throughout, Sun remains a Cat Power album, concerned with self-examination, fate, love, rights, and all things messed up in the world. But there's simply no mistaking the joy and abandon with which she throws herself into the material.

Behind real hooks and full-blooded dance grooves, tracks like "Ruin," "3,6,9" and "Manhattan" are sung with the kind of peace that Marshall has never really shown before. It's not extroverted joy so much as an inner contentedness—the album projects this so consistently that one can even excuse the occasional use of auto-tune or kitschy eagle screech sample.

And when the record arrives at its penultimate statement, the 11-minute "Nothin But Time," we find Marshall (alongside the undying Iggy Pop, no less) wrapped in a series of mantras that best reflect where she seems to be right now: "You wanna live! You ain't got nothin but time. Your world is just beginning..."

Is it a ruse? Perhaps, but while it's none of our business, I'm guessing no. Because as warm as Sun makes one feel upon listening to it, none of it feels forced or insincere. In this way, it's still a classic Cat Power album—still a window into the soul of a person who's never been especially good at faking anything. And whether or not this is just a phase or truly a new life that's "just beginning", it's a moment you'll want to share with her.

BEAK> - >>

Having already self-released 2012 full-lengths from his Quakers and DROKK collaborations, Geoff Barrow has had an especially fruitful past year in the studio; this follow-up (if you don't count their crucial role as Anika's backup band) from Barrow's live-off-the-floor trio with Matt Williams and Billy Fuller, though, is an especially striking, darkly menacing effort, full of off-kilter oscillator wobbles, pristinely recorded Silver Apples-style drum primitivism, and vocals muffled to the point of indiscernibility.

"The groggy post-punk fidget of Bristol's Beak> is erected on antiquated, simplistic, intentionally demanding limits. The trio write in the studio, record in one room at the same time, don't do overdubs, and use outdated digital recording rigs that have as much capability as a 24-track tape machine...The result of their labors is masterful second album >>..., a perfect mix of robotic human rhythms intertwining with humanized electronic textures: krautrock grooves melt into This Heat avant-punk minimalism, and Devo performs through a mouth full of cottonballs and a stomach full of Codeine." - SPIN

"[This] trio’s Neu!-like pulsations are boosted by droning synths ('The Gaul'), crunchy guitar ('Wulfstan II'), suffocating bass ('Kidney') and disquietingly distant vocals ('Deserters'). Menacing and paranoid, this second album makes satisfying sense in 2012, and even leaves you grateful to live in a chaotic world." - NME

VA - LateNightTales Presents Music For Pleasure

Just as Belle and Sebastian were recently handed the DJ reins once again by LateNightTales for a second spin, so too has Groove Armada member Tom Findlay (whose group had already curated a 2008 mix for the label), here opting for a set of the sort of '70s/'80s soft rock/blue-eyed soul hits (and album cuts) that were recently reappraised during the 'Yacht Rock' craze of the mid '00s—as lovers of pretty much every featured act here (Hall & Oates, Bobby Caldwell, Ned Doheny, 10cc, ELO, Boz Scaggs, Gerry Rafferty, Robert Palmer...), we're not complaining in the least!

"The mix is subtitled Music For Pleasure, which for Findlay apparently means rock ballads from the '70s and '80s. 'It's very much a 'concept' record: blue-eyed soul, yacht rock,' he says. 'The vibe was very much tunes that I used to blast on the tour bus. I love that music in a very wrong way; it's music to hug to!" Findlay made slight edits to many of the tracks to better suit the mix's continuous flow. As with every edition of LateNightTales, the mix features an exclusive cover from the curator—in this case, Findlay teams up with producer Tim Hutton as Sugardaddy to reinterpret Ace's '74 single "How Long." - Resident Advisor

VA - Personal Space: Electronic Soul 1974-1984

Mandatory listening for anyone with a soft spot for the rhythm-box workouts of Sly Stone, Timmy Thomas and Shuggie Otis, Personal Space is a private-press soul/funk excavation of the highest order, and a solid front-to-back listen that has graced our store's P.A. on many a sunny afternoon so far.

"At the spine of this astounding collection is the ostensibly unburdening effect of affordable studio technology—synthesizers, drum machines, high-quality recording—as manifested in private soul music from the mid-seventies to the mid-eighties. As the liner notes lament, so little of this deeply affecting and forward-looking music ever saw release, and so little of what they did ever found any kind of audience. In the canopic jars of these recordings, however, they are preserved and sealed—as they once were in small studios, home studios, basement studios, bedroom studios—and their misshapen forms are allowed to move into the future by themselves, of themselves." - Soul Sides

FRANCIS BEBEY - African Electronic Music 1975-1982

Long revered by African music aficionados, the late Francis Bebey was Cameroon's renaissance man, a journalist, novelist and musicologist whose zest for life and studied playfulness with language and instrumentation is apparent from the moment opener "New Track" bubbles into being.

"Brought up on Western styles and instruments, and educated at the Sorbonne and NYU, Cameroon's Francis Bebey studied Spanish classical guitar and led jazz bands before finding his way back to African traditional music as a researcher for UNESCO; he was in his forties when he began recording his distinctive brand of Afropop, publishing more than 20 albums before he died, in 2001, at the age of 72. The anthology's title is slightly misleading; this isn't so much 'electronic music' as it is idiosyncratic, border-hopping jazz fusion that happens to use synthesizers and rhythm boxes. But who cares? Whatever you call it, it's brilliant." - SPIN

ACTRESS - R.I.P

Darren Cunningham's third full-length (and second for Honest Jon's) sees his approach stay static-ridden and sidechain-prone, sinking into deeper, darker ambience than on previous efforts despite intermittent resurfacing into beat-based technoid territory.

"R.I.P is, without question, far removed from the twisted techno jams that comprise 2010's Splazsh and Actress' debut album, Hazyville, but the genre's influence is nonetheless dominant. Instead of blatantly nodding to the great Detroit veterans or, say, the German minimalists, however, Cunningham inverts techno and dives further into its deep cavern of possibilities than ever before. Only after he's reached the tunnel's end does the producer return, emerging with a sound that favors visceral textures and supernatural moods over outright rhythms and melodies." - XLR8R

"R.I.P increasingly floats free of mind/body exigencies to create a record—closer in spirit to 'sound art' than anything you might hear in a club—that revels in a sublime sense of unearthliness, from 'Ascending''s inverted beats and cloud-mist textures to 'Marble Plexus,' which sounds like god's own techno party heard through a wall, and on to sulphur-reeking cuts like the excellent 'Shadow From Tartarus' and 'Tree Of Knowledge.' The whole thing glows like freshly mangled spaceship parts found in the desert at night." - The Stool Pigeon