A lovingly presented, outer-disciplinary collaboration featuring Ben Lancaster playing Moog, Sean Roche on saxophones, and visual artist Justin Hibbs. The music is a no-nonsense jazz stomper with Sun Ra running through its veins, and an eastern flavour; in two quite different arrangements.

‘Battle of Cannae is a dubby roller filled with crisp percussion and meditative warmth. Next up, Battle of Carrhae is a deep 120bpm bass groover with detailed percussion and rich textures that tie the first side together beautifully. On the flip, Stolen Land, a collaboration with Melbourne heavyweight Pugilist, takes things into club territory. Spacious, weighty and rhythmically twisted, filled with polyrhythmic grooves, a few wubs, and gritty percussive drive. Strap in. To close, Battle of Edessa pushes the tempo to 160bpm — a sharp, hypnotic finisher that shows why Big Hands continues to stand out as one of the most exciting producers doing it right now.’

‘Conceived by Andrea Ottomani in detailed dreams during consecutive nights in late June 2024, whilst traversing a stormy Mediterranean between stops in Italy, Greece, Egypt, and Turkey.
‘The musical mood is longing, melancholic, nostalgic — a kind of saudade, sorrowing with the sense that what is past or lost can never be recovered — but filled with regenerative wonder, or ‘thauma’. Evocative field recordings of the sea, cicadas, calls to prayer and general ambience merge with bells, balafon, and various percussion instruments, seamlessly combining with synths and electronics. To complete the picture, a compelling succession of instrumental and vocal contributions: for a taste check Bint Mbareh’s wailing counterpoint to the brass, in Fuoco Lento, and her spine-tingling verses in A Juniper Tree Whose Roots Are Made of Fire; the snake-charmer waltzes in Sticks And Stones; and the spiritually charged interplay between saxophone and bamboo drum, in Rinascita.’

Electro revivalism, jumpy and sick, very nice.

‘Bisk is back… as cheerfully unhinged as ever… absurd and exhilarating in equal measure. The Japanese producer’s drum programming weaves through knotty thickets of syncopated beats and white-noise bursts, chasing ghosts and dodging potholes. His samples are fragmentary dispatches from far-flung points, and any given musical phrase might shoehorn multiple worlds into wobbly union—free improv with easy listening, kindergarten recess with NASA Mission Control. Beneath each drum hit lies a potential trap door, and his melodies, if that’s what you can call his tangled scraps of electric bass and modal keys, ricochet like pinballs repelled at every turn by shuddering mechanical bumpers’ (Pitchfork).

Six archival recoveries from the Trilogy Tapes spar, including Hotline and other stuff slated for Mo Wax way back when, lashing together ragga, UK garage and hip hop.
As judicious, unruly and fresh as the day it was born.

None other than Blawan on his lonesome ownsome — after collaborations with Pariah as Karenn, and Surgeon as Trade — returning to the blood-drenched scene of his heinous Why They Hide Their Bodies.
New name, new sound; heavier and slower than his Ternesc output. The title track is the banger. Acid techno — deliberate, widescreen and ominous.

Beau Wanzer + Rezzett = maximum worries squared. Five frazzlers for all us nutters in the dance. Borez they izn’t.

Mostly from two cassettes, Douce Torture and Aut Aut, each limited to twenty-five copies, originally self-released in the early 2000s by Vincent E.F. from Turin. ‘A mixture of hardware electronics, guitar and musique concrete-style sampling techniques, recorded on everything from minidisc to VHS tape. With its roots in vintage dub, Krautrock and Italo-Industrial artists like Maurizio Bianchi and Mauthausen Orchestra… and yet strikingly original.’

Text-book BH GBH. A charged, densely rhythmic, super-ominous re-deployment of classic 80s sci-fi noir, shot through with spaced-out effects. Ekman in his best Robert Armanis on the flip.