Aphex Twin's best songs – ranked!

As the 25th anniversary of the release of Selected Ambient Classics II approaches, we take a look at Richard P James’s back catalogue, from disorientating acid-house bangers to dreamy, if unsettling melodies

This epic glitch-fest sounds just as weird now as it did two decades ago. Chris Cunningham’s bizarre music video – complete with a Michael Jackson-style dance number, a foul-mouthed extended director’s version and a small army of women who all have Richard D James’s face – will continue to spawn nightmares for years to come.

Related: Aphex Twin: everything you need to know

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by Geeta Dayal via Electronic music | The Guardian

The month's best mixes: psychedelic sounds, soulful UK garage and sinewy EBM

The latest instalment in the series includes a warm-up podcast by Wata Igarashi, optimistic house by Beautiful Swimmers and beautiful bangers from Mixpak’s the Large

Related: The month's best mixes: Nkisi, Aleksi Perälä and silken Berlin memories

Related: Lullabies for air conditioners: the corporate bliss of Japanese ambient

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by Tayyab Amin via Electronic music | The Guardian

Simon Says 2019 at The Jazz Café on 07/03

Details

• Artist:
  Wah Wah 45s
• Date:
  07/03/19
• Time:
  7:00pm
• Venue:
  The Jazz Cafe
• City:
  London
• Address:
  5, Parkway, Camden Town, London, NW1 7PG
• Venue phone:
  +44 20 7485 6834
• Country:
  United Kingdom
• Admission:
  £10
• Age restrictions:
  No Minors
• Buy Tickets
• More information
• Notes:
  Simon Says – Charity event for The Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

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Dele Sosimi Afrobeat Orchestra at Gorilla on 03/05

Details

• Artist:
  Dele Sosimi
• Date:
  03/05/19
• Time:
  11:00pm
• Venue:
  Gorilla
• City:
  Manchester
• Address:
  54-56 WHITWORTH STREET
• Country:
  United Kingdom
• Admission:
  £11
• Age restrictions:
  No Minors
• Buy Tickets
• More information
• Notes:
  Gorilla – Dele Sosimi Afrobeat Vibration LIVE
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

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Dom Servini + Scrimshire at VAULT Festival on 09/03

Details

• Artist:
  Dom Servini & Scrimshire
• Date:
  09/03/19
• Time:
  11:00pm
• Venue:
  The Vaults
• City:
  London
• Address:
  Leake Street, Lambeth
• Country:
  United Kingdom
• Admission:
  £10 – £15
• Age restrictions:
  No Minors
• Buy Tickets
• More information
• Notes:
  VAULT Festival – Dom Servini + Scrimshire DJ Sets
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

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Dom Servini – Netil Radio Show #13

Listen again here!

Intro – Chillin on the Rooftop
Sigfried Kessler & Serge Bringolf – Agboville
Isaac Birituro & The Rail Abandon – Yesu Yan Yan
GUTS – Kenke Corner
Souleance – Le Sexy
Gyedu Bley Ambolley – High Life
Oliver Night – Make Believe fear BB.James
Dele Sosimi – E Go Betta (Ryan Murgatroyd Remix)
Benjamin Ferreira – No One Could
Spaceark – Don’t Stop
Simon Moloi – Shorty (James Fox Edit)
Whole Truth & Eric Boss – It’s Just
Consumer Rapport – Go On with your Bad Self
Lou Courtney – Somebody New is Lovin’ on You
Preachermann – Familiar To Me
Fabrizio Fattori – Bara-Hum-Ba
Assivplak – Seker Oglan
Alemayehu Eshete & The Polyversal Souls – Feqer Feqer New
SEED Ensemble – The Darkies
Les McCann – Go On And Cry

Starbound – High Waves Of The Sea
Fazer – Pop Up

K.O.G. & The Zongo Brigade – Suro Nipa
Rayana Jay – Do That
HOMESHAKE – Like Mariah
Reggie Boone – Made of Love (A Wallace & Morris North Street Vocal Remix)
Little Simz feat. Cleo Sol – Selfish
Roy Ayers – Chicago 
The Clark Sisters – You Brought The Sunshine (Into My Life)

 

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Wah Wah Radio – February 2019

Listen again here!

Seed Ensemble – The Dream Keeper
Rōnin Arkestra – Stranger Searching
Christian Scott – Ancestral Recall feat. Saul Williams
Pinty – Nightcrawler
Jabru – Egress feat. Joshua Idehen
Dele Sosimi – E Go Betta (Ryan Murgatroyd Remix)
Lokkhi Terra meets Dele Sosimi – Cubafro
14KT – The Power Of Same feat Muhsinah (Kaidi Tatham remix)

Casbah 73 – Doin’ Our Own Thing
The Bongo Hop – La Carga
Isaac Birituro & The Rail Abandon – Yesu Yan Yan
Judy Pollack – Still In Love  

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Fatboy Slim review – cut'n'paste rave larges it to arena proportions

Wembley Arena, London
Battle-hardened ravers and their teenage kids gather as the big-beat ringmaster presses play on an update of the acid house era

Had things gone differently, what a marketing executive Norman Cook would have made. Long before producers-turned-rave-ringmasters Guetta and Harris had laid their hands on a USB stick, he recognised that DJ sets in large venues need to be more than just a bloke playing records. In his hands, the process is akin to a rock gig, with a ladleful of circus on top. The opening date of this in-the-round arena tour takes the properties of a rave and magnifies them.

Cook is a force, bounding around a revolving stage, singing along and happily gurning at this roomful of veteran ravers, some of them accompanied by teenage offspring. Occasionally he prods a laptop, causing oddball snippets to divert the big beat or house energy in a different direction, as with the sudden appearance of the “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn” Seven Nation Army chant from Glastonbury.

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by Caroline Sullivan via Electronic music | The Guardian

Teeth of the Sea: Wraith review – sonic dystopians explore ambient brass

(Rocket Recordings)

The trumpets that permeate Teeth of the Sea’s fifth album act like the prophetic horns of Jericho. Laid thick with reverb, they herald the dystopian landscape the London-based trio create through nine tracks of scattering electronic percussion, earthy bass lines and eerie ambience.

Largely instrumental, Wraith plays more like a slab of techno experimentalism than the noise-based maw of their previous record, 2015’s Highly Deadly Black Tarantula. The brutality dissipates on opener I’d Rather, Jack courtesy of Italo disco synths pilfered from Erol Alkan’s Phantasy Sound studio, where this album was recorded. As Wraith progresses, club sounds morph into the jazz horns and dissonant bass of Hiraeth, before taking a breath in the brassy ambience of Burn of the Shieling.

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by Ammar Kalia via Electronic music | The Guardian

Sleaford Mods: Eton Alive review – damning details of life on a frayed isle

(Extreme Eating)
Always recognisable and always evolving, Andrew Fearn and Jason Williamson’s barked social snapshots turn melodic

Sleaford Mods’ frontman Jason Williamson recently revealed that lately he’s been listening to Alexander O’Neal, Chaka Khan and Luther Vandross, although the Nottinghamshire duo haven’t suddenly gone soul or R&B.

However, Andrew Fearn’s backing tracks are forever evolving and are a fair distance from 2013’s breakthrough, Austerity Dogs. The terrific Kebab Spiders is powered by two alternate basslines: one sounds like the sort of thing the great James Jamerson used to lay down for Motown and the other is clubbier, almost Belgian new beat. The brooding OBCT could be Depeche Mode or the Cure, until Williamson comes in and it includes, of all things, a kazoo solo. The highly melodic When You Come Up to Me, meanwhile, would be a lost 80s new romantic synth ballad were it delivered in any other voice. As ever, though, it’s Williamson’s trademark bark – a caustic, observant, irritant, unforgiving mix of John Cooper Clarke and Mark E Smith – which renders the Mods instantly recognisable. They are increasingly, as John Peel said of the Fall: “Always different, always the same.”

Related: 'Life is chaotic!' Sleaford Mods' Jason Williamson answers your questions

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by Dave Simpson via Electronic music | The Guardian

Lullabies for air conditioners: the corporate bliss of Japanese ambient

Inspired by the technological boom of 1980s Japan, a group of composers created beautiful futurist fantasies – funded by housing developers and lingerie companies

In the late 1970s, while Brian Eno was imagining background melodies for baggage claim on his album Music for Airports, music for inanimate objects was also becoming big business in Japan with Get at the Wave, Takashi Kokubo’s 1987 masterpiece given away with Sanyo air conditioning units, or Yasuaki Shimizu’s selected ambient works for a Seiko watch advert.

Bright, beautiful, unashamedly corporate pieces like these appear on Kankyō Ongaku, a new compilation of Japanese ambient music from 1980 to 1990, when the influence of minimalist composers like Philip Glass and Terry Riley met a golden era for electronics. Kankyō Ongaku (meaning environmental music) melded music and commerce, and turned lounge music into an art form.

Related: Ambient pioneer Midori Takada: 'Everything on this earth has a sound'

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by Jack Needham via Electronic music | The Guardian

Dele Sosimi talks all things Afrobeat with Tom Ravenscroft on BBC 6Music

Our very own Dele Sosimi, aka the Afrobeat Ambassador, danced his way into the BBC 6Music studios today to have a chat with Tom Ravenscroft and play some of his currently favourite records: fro Fela Kuti to Tony Allen, and from Marcus Miller to Sarah Gure (part of the Dele Sosimi Afrobeat Orchestra).

Listen back to the show here and check out Dele’s back catalogue here.

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Ladytron: Ladytron review – electroclash stomp of intent

(K7!)

If any band was going to bounce back from years of acrimonious hiatus with a soundtrack to our troubled times, Ladytron seemed unlikely contenders. Yes, that Ladytron, from Liverpool, whose heavy-lidded, robo-cool vocals defined the electroclash movement of the early 2000s and who haven’t released anything since 2011. And yet their eponymous return is an immersive, invigorating and convincingly brooding stomp of disenfranchisement.

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by Kate Hutchinson via Electronic music | The Guardian

Dom Servini – Unherd Radio Show #25 on Soho Radio

Listen again here!

Taz Modi – Libra

Duke Pearson – Cristo Redentor

Tensei – Ask Them feat. Yaw & Najite Olokun Prophecy

Liquid Saloon – Gueta feat. Nitai Hershkovits

Digital Afrika – Babalu Aye 

Maajo – Anaata feat. Ismaila Sané

Daniel Manuick – One Nite Stand

Richu M – Sorry, I’m Not a DJ

Afronaut – The Revolution Will Be Digitised (Brukkers Revenge)

Blvck Spvde – Don’t Bury Me

Carolina Araoz – Calma

Manati – Libre Y Feliz

Honeyfeet – You Go To My Head (Edit)

Remotif – No Bones About It

Black Loops, Nikoss & Seven Davis Jr – Remind Me

Paul & Panchez with Alex Moiss – Boiling Hot (I Gemin Remix)

Starlight – Picnic

Georges Ovedraogo – Deni

Rokk – Patience

The Judy Roberts Band – Never Was Love

James Alexander Bright – The Panther

Moods – Awake in the Dark feat. James Chatburn

Origin One – Jah Jah feat. Soom T

LTJ Experience – Trying My Best Love

Gil Scott-Heron – Angola, Louisiana (Casbah 73 Tribute Edit)

Dexter Story – Shuruba Song feat. Hamelmal Abate

Ruby Rushton – Where Are You Now?

Caldera – Sky Islands

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Ecstatic Material review – jamming with play-dough and Angel Delight

Caustic Coastal, Salford
In this collaboration between musician Beatrice Dillon and artist Keith Harrison, sound directs all manner of gloop and goo

This collaboration between experimental electronic musician Beatrice Dillon and artist Keith Harrison – presented by Outlands, a new national experimental music touring network – brings a warehouse space in Salford rumbling to life with an interweaving collision of sound and vision. Speakers circle the room, and in the middle, varying sizes of speaker cones are built into plastic crates with strip lighting scattered throughout. Within the cones are a variety of materials from fluffy powders to sugar-like granules, coloured liquids and not-yet-firm homemade play-dough. As Dillon begins playing through the multi-channel system, the speaker cones reverberate and bounce, interacting with the materials and sending mini powder-bursts rocketing or creating rippling and immersive shapes that move from fluid patterns to gooey pulses.

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by Daniel Dylan Wray via Electronic music | The Guardian

Giorgio Moroder: ‘I don’t even like dancing’

At 78, on the eve of his first ever live tour, inspired by his hits with Donna Summer, the dance music super-producer talks about his 50-year career, the glory of digital recording – and Ed Sheeran

Giorgio Moroder wants to set the record straight. Sat in the living room of his family home in the Italian Alps, which pleasingly features a white grand piano, wall-to-wall avocado shag carpet and dozens of framed gold discs, the super-producer and owner of music history’s most glorious moustache wants to unpick some cliches. First of all, he says, he never really liked or went to clubs. Nor was he ever much of a dancer. And despite his profound impact on, well, both clubs and dancing, he would prefer it if we stopped referring to him as the grandfather of dance music.

“No, and I do not like being called the godfather of disco and electronic music either,” he says, wryly. “It’s better than being called the grandfather, but I still don’t like it.”

I play enough to compose, but with a computer, if you make a mistake you just redo it

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by Nosheen Iqbal via Electronic music | The Guardian

New Wah Wah 45s signing: Isaac Birituro and The Rail Abandon

We’re excited and very proud to present their latest signing, a collaboration between Ghanaian xylophone master Isaac Birituro and Leeds-based producer and singer-songwriter Sonny Johns aka The Rail Abandon.

The lead single taken from this project is the uplifting Yesu Yan Yan, which was actually the very first song Isaac played to his new musical partner. A perfect marriage of brass, reed and wind instruments, backed by abundant percussion, a resonant bass-line and The Kalba Birifore Choir, it is also the opening track of the album and fittingly so, as it translates to “welcome!”
 You can listen back to the show here.

Yesu Yan Yan has been premiered by Tom Ravenscroft on his BBC 6 Music show, and it will be released on February 22nd.

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One to watch: Roses Gabor

After dazzling cameos for Gorillaz and SBTRKT, the Londoner is about to step into the spotlight with her debut album

For those interested in the delicate, immersive end of UK dance and electronica, Roses Gabor may already be familiar. The north-west London vocalist has been around for a while now, her powerful vocals finding a home on tracks with SBTRKT, Machinedrum, Shy FX and Gorillaz.

The child of Grenadian parents, Gabor (born Rosemary Wilson) was always interested in music, growing up on a healthy diet of soca, Stevie Wonder and Capital FM – though her favourites were Mary J Blige and Michael Jackson. It was only after a chance encounter with a member of Gorillaz while working a nine-to-five job at a bank that her first collaboration (Dare) took shape.

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by Tara Joshi via Electronic music | The Guardian

Panda Bear: Buoys review – indie experimenter finds the slow lane

(Domino Recordings)

Noah Lennox, whether on his own as Panda Bear or with his Brooklyn band Animal Collective, has a knack for meshing lustrous electronics into densely textured, hallucinatory scenerios, aided by his brightly lit, boyish coo. The latter’s seminal album Merriweather Post Pavilion turns 10 this year and was an epic feat of indie experimentalism that hasn’t, wrote Pitchfork recently, been surpassed.

No doubt that anniversary was at the back of Lennox’s mind when he made Buoys. His sixth solo album is remarkably more muted than his previous work. Lead single Token and its Lemon Jelly-like sampledelia throws back to Merriweather, a spiritual successor to the joyful rush of My Girls, but otherwise Buoys offers a sort of deconstructed R&B that focuses on repetition and restraint.

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by Kate Hutchinson via Electronic music | The Guardian

Cosey Fanni Tutti: Tutti review – industrial pioneer slogs on

(Conspiracy International)

Cosey Fanni Tutti is one of those musicians, like Michael Rother or Tony Allen, who is seemingly ruled by a rhythmic energy, one that beats through their brains and to which their music constantly returns. For Tutti, this is a steady 4/4 beat of around 125 beats per minute: an insistent rhythm hovering near high-tempo, simmering with tension that never quite breaks. Amid the noisy abstraction of Throbbing Gristle in the late 1970s, it sounded through Hot on the Heels of Love; it’s there throughout the synthpop romances she made with husband Chris Carter; it sat beneath Carter Tutti Void, the collaborative dub techno album the pair made with Nik Void of Factory Floor in 2013. And like the heart of a deathless supervillain, that pulse beats on in her first solo album since 1982, originally written in tandem with her Art Sex Music autobiography.

Related: Cosey Fanni Tutti: 'I don’t like acceptance. It makes me think I've done something wrong'

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by Ben Beaumont-Thomas via Electronic music | The Guardian

James Blake: how the producer became black America's favourite Brit

His collaborations with Travis Scott follow those with Beyoncé. How did the DJ from Enfield become so well-connected?

For an artist whose sound is steeped in isolation, cutting a forlorn figure on icy electronic laments that shiver with loneliness, James Blake arrives at his latest album Assume Form as one of the best connected people in popular music.

At some point over the last decade, while journeying from the fringes of London’s dubstep scene to the epicentre of American rap and pop, it became easier to list superstars the acclaimed producer-songwriter hasn’t worked with. Beyoncé recruited him for Lemonade. Frank Ocean called on him for Blonde. Drake has sampled him and Kanye West declared him “Kanye’s favourite artist” before a few ultimately ill-fated 2014 writing sessions together. Bon Iver, Chance the Rapper and Jay-Z are other studio sparring partners. Blake is up for two Grammy awards in rap categories this year, alongside rappers Kendrick Lamar, Jay Rock and Future for their track King’s Dead, taken from the Black Panther soundtrack.

Related: James Blake: Assume Form review – lovestruck producer turns dark into light | Alexis Petridis' album of the week

Related: James Blake: Assume Form review – a big, glitchy, swooning, hyper-modern declaration of love

Related: James Blake speaks out about struggle with depression

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by Al Horner via Electronic music | The Guardian