Honest Jon's At Juno Download

Review: The ever awesome Honest Jon's decision to reissue its back catalogue in digital format gives you a chance to delve back into the amazing album of Chaabi music from the Abdel Hadi Halo & The El Gusto Orchestra of Algiers. The Damon Albarn fronted excursion by Team Honest Jons into Algiers in 2007 has been compared to a film of certain famous Cuban musicians several times over, but the focus should certainly be on the music. Comprised of six lengthy tracks of gripping rhythmic music that sways effortlessly between classical and popular styles, the 19 minutes that make up "Mal Djifni" prove a real highlight, sounding like it could go on forever. This has to be heard to be believed.

Review: "It's like painting with buttons and sliders... Melting and dripping, seeping yourself liquid into the machinery." So said Darren Cunningham when discussing the creation of R.I.P, his long awaited follow up to Splazsh. It's a compelling image that works in practice too. R.I.P creates microcosmic sound worlds within each track: "Holy Water" for instance tumbles in on itself in a melange of shimmering sinewave droplets, while the pitchshifted waves of "Tree Of Knowledge" seem to inhale and exhale like a living being, crumpling inwards on itself to repeat the same motion ad infinitum. And although it uses much the same, occasionally abrasive sonic building blocks as Cunningham's been developing for many years, the pastoral tones of "Uriel's Black Harp" and the Alva Noto styles of "Jardin" make R.I.P a surprisingly graceful album. It may not be techno as many will know it, but Cunningham has never made techno in the traditional sense anyway - and it's clear on listening to R.I.P that he's only just beginning to realise the musical forms that have been swarming inside his brain for years.

Review: Darren Cunningham's 2008 debut Hazyville was a wonderful journey though a myriad of disparate influences, from Detroit techno to glitchy electronica and dubstep. Here we see the Werk Discs chief revisit some of those influences but also tread new ground with his follow up LP, Splazsh. It's a startling journey: every track on here is worth listening to, digesting, and listening to again. "Lost" is one of the more tender moments on the album, with a female vocal draped over a rolling synth line and metallic snare. "Bubble Butts & Equation" would be the perfect theme song should the world come to as sudden and messy end, while "Always Human" has the squelchy leftfield techno sound of Anthony Shake Shakir. "Maze" is one of the album's true highlights, a stunningly simple piece that shows how beautiful electronic music can be when stripped back to its bare bones, while the broken beat of "Purrple Splazsh" once again shows Cunningham's deft touch with sampling. Even the weird, experimental tracks toward the end are deliciously rich and textured, including the superbly titled "Supreme Cunnilingus". With so many ideas crammed into 14 songs it's a wonder Cunningham has ended up with such a perfect little album, but on Splazsh that is not the case. This could only have been made in 2010 and that, above all else, it what makes Splazsh so special. One for the ages.

Review: On its original CD/vinyl release in 2009, Who's Hurting Now met with mixed reviews. While some reviewers reveled in veteran soul and disco singer Candi Staton's return to her Southern soul roots, others felt it lacked the raw power and emotional intensity of her best work. Given another airing for this long promised digital download release, Who's Hurting Now actually stands up brilliantly. Staton's vocal delivery is as sharp and emotion-rich as ever, while the casual musical mix of country, soul, blues and gospel gives the release a laidback authenticity that recalls her early 70s, pre-disco heyday.

Review: When your dad is a well-regarded jazz trumpeter, it's perhaps inevitable that you'll follow in his footsteps. A decade ago, the eight sons of Sun Ra Arkestra member Phlip Cohran did just that, forming The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble. Here they hook up with their inspirational dad for a first collaborative album for Honest Jon's. In typical fashion, they've taken his influences and playing style as the starting point. So, alongside their usual rousing marching funk, we get treated to a string of more experimental compositions. It's these - particularly the emotional strings and cinematic builds of "Ancestral", or the 15-minute space-brass opus "Zincali" - that really stand out.

Review: Inhabiting a space populated by deranged jazz and dub (techno) at its most freaky, Fetch is a slowburning release. "Jam" starts with detached sax solos and rough off beats leading into a tense bassline, with the arrangement evolving over 14 minutes. "Dark" is more succinct, but the mood is similar, as the players conjure up a live take on dance floor techno. "Club" is another rhythm-heavy affair, with a loose, live arrangement set to grinding metal drums, while the trio go back to the freeform approach of "Jam" on "Yangissa". On this occasion, the sounds are more organic and the arrangement even more liquid, with waves of effects seeping out over the unhurried drums.

Review: For their next trick, classic cult label Honest Jon's serve up a collection of field recordings of the Mijikenda tribes, made in different spots in and around Mukunguni village, coastal Kenya. There's 14 in total, and it proves a fascinating listen: first track, the creepily percussive "Ndema" is played to sound like a bat, with shrill frequencies intended to heal the village sick, the chant of "Dena" is haunting, "Matatizo" is fantastic acapella pop, while elsewhere multi drums are utilised to chase away "Pepo Mlume", the devil who poisons the imagination. Essential listening.

Review: Coming completely out of nowhere, this collaborative album between two of dubstep's most revered producers is not only one of this year's best examples of the genre, but some of the best dubstep to emerge since the demise of Shackleton and Appleblim's Skull Disco label in 2008. In a landscape increasingly dominated by the sounds of genre hopping post-dubstep, this album is a timely reminder of the dark spaces dubstep once inhabited; "Jellybones" for instance utilises eastern percussion manipulated to increasing degrees of mind-warping confusion, whilst "Levitation" weaves furious rhythms around radiophonic weirdness, while closer "Monks On The Rum" is a gripping exercise in tension, contrasting cut-glass percussion with a hesitant bass. But for all the structural complexity of these tracks, for example in "Rooms Within a Room", which weaves a brooding string intro and sampled choir around traditional dubstep atmospheres, the pair have never sounded so focused. Essential.

Review: For the uninitiated, Rocket Juice & The Moon is Honest Jon's latest unlikely supergroup - a collaborative hoedown between Blur's Damn Albarn, Red Hot Chili Peppers' bassist Flea and legendary Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen. This debut album, featuring additional contributions from Eryka Badu, Manifest and others, showcases their loose, jazz-inflected approach to music making. With Allen's distinctive drumming and Flea's dextrous, funk-fused bass playing to the fore, there's a definitive post-punk-meets-afrobeat-in-dub kinda feel. With soulful vocals and smart hip-hop raps peppering the loose, Afro-centric late night mix, it's an adventurous but oddly comforting set. Most importantly, it's rarely less than riotously entertaining.

Review: The original version of "Deadman" is a tense, dense affair that skirts on the edges of dance floor accessibility, but is chiefly concerned with setting a tone rather than delivering instantaneous gratification. Admittedly, there are pummelling tribal drums and rolling percussion at the heart of the arrangement, but they act as a facilitator for the eerie textures and the almost detached-sounding vocal intoning "everyone starts from point one, no one Honest Jon's have recruited Roger Robinson and Kevin Martin to contribute a remix as King Midas Sound and their "death dub" version certainly lives up to its title. Dispensing entirely with the already tenuous dance floor link, the duo conjure up foggy textures that sound more malignant than anything the current wave of dub techno producers could muster, and use them as the basis for an eerie, childlike vocal - like the creepy kid from "The Sixth Sense" movie on qualudes. Finally, the crackle remix provides some light relief, with tiny, chiming bells tinkling through an abstract take characterised by soft-focus edges.

Review: Torsten Profrock?s T++ project has continually spread its wings since conception in 2005. Championed by fans of techno, dubstep, experimental and drum & bass alike, his latest EP for Honest Jons (and rumoured to be his last under this monkier) showcases the amalgamation of styles and sounds that has earnt the German such a far reaching fanbase.

If it does prove to be the final T++ release ever, then the alias will have left us with the most expressive and energetic of his works. Adding a real sense of personality, Profrock unearthed a handful of samples of the singer and ndingidi player Ssekinomu, recorded in East Africa in the 1930s and 40s in the label?s vaults for this release. Skilfully, the producer works these snippets into the complex rhythm structures, giving his music a human touch that has never been seen before. Profrock looks to the radical fringe of UK garage for the snapping 2 step vibe in these rhythms that remain central to all four tracks on the EP. This results in a clutch of tracks that take on an immensely tribal and subconsciously innate feel. They morph new structures from the forms of 2 step, techno and drum & bass around which Profrock wraps twisted FX and weighty sub bass to create one whole, throbbing organism.

So with quite possibly his final release, T++ leaves us, rather fittingly, with a record that sounds at once both ancient and modern. It has a totally unique tone, like a form of tribal language that can only speak to and be understood by today?s culture through these sub-heavy, atmospheric sounds.