This is part of a series, currently live-blogging on 3, 4 & 5 January 2025. Read the posts so far.
Frank & Tony: Ethos (Scissor & Thread)
I'm pretty sure Frank and Tony are the guys who laid my patio last year. This is the pair's second full-length album. It's an odyssey into the deepest of deep house. At one point, an acid line drops into a pool of warm ambience, and it feels like the album is floating outside of itself. Smooth, like well-laid paving tones.
Gavsborg: Presents : Select (Edwin)
This is a smattering of unreleased studio work by Gavsborg from Jamaica's Equiknoxx Collective. He's clearly had fun compiling this expertly-produced selection of electronic noodling and dub reggae moments. Worth a listen. It appears to have been released by a company that sells denim jeans.
Ghost Dubs: Damaged (Pressure)
We're staying on a dubby theme with this album, although this time the territory is sparser. It's dub techno, but such are its moment of deep statis, it's a few short furlongs from being a drone album. Volume up, slow down, immerse yourself. It's out on The Bug's Pressure label.
Glok / Timothy Clerkin: Alliance (Bytes)
The chap from Ride teams up with a banger clubby bloke to produce a pleasing musical meander. For fans of Andrew Weatherall and Death In Vegas. In my interview with Glok and Clerkin ahead of this album's release, I warmed to their "distressingly detuned foghorn". I don't think it was an actual foghorn.
Hainbach: Breve (Seil Records)
One for synth geeks. Among his ancient gear used on this album, Hainbach employed a Ondioline, an old analogue synth first invented in 1939, and lent to him my synthesiser restorer Forgotten Futures. The album is slow, lilting, ambient, elegant, and wonderfully healing if you're looking for that sort of thing.
Heavee: Unleash (Hyperdub)
It's like Chicago's Heavee is on a dance mat, skipping from one lit-up genre square to another. There's restless footwork, soulful r'n'b, giddy rave, wonky experimentalism, and rich synth jams. Yeah perhaps it needs more focus, but we're going dancing with Heavee and he ain't letting go of your hand any time soon.
Hesaitix: Noctian Airgap (PAN)
There's a moment in James Whipple's new album, about halfway through Geflatnet in fact, where you might yearn for the 'smoker's beats' era of trip hop. Yeah, daddio, I was down with the kids once. It's a blunty concoction of pristine sound design, and it missed out on my final top twenty by the tiniest sliver of Rizla.
Howard Thomas: Skin Breaker (Sound Signature)
Theo Parrish's Sound Signature's label presents their 100th release. Howard 'H-Fusion' Thomas deals in no-nonsense Detroit techno. It's inspired by the science fiction he grew up with: a pretty neat mood note for an album that is so robotic and so pleasingly alien. All very Detroit: hardware with heart.
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