R&S At Juno Download

Review: The collaborator of choice for James Blake, Airhead has been wisely taking his time to develop on his own terms, sticking largely to his preferred stable at Brainmath to release his unique brand of utterly decayed 21st century beat music. Now though he steps up to R&S with a delicate 2-tracker that sees his burgeoning sound get a touch more full-bodied. "Wait" highlights the man's guitar talents, letting languid notes ring out over a typically deconstructed beat. "South Congress" however echoes Art of Noise and other such elegant experimentalists in its bombastic composition. Highly recommended.

Review: Amidst all the rightfully celebrated contributions to the R&S revival from James Blake and Space Dimension Controller last year, the punishing dancefloor update of the label's sonic template from Hemlock boss Untold was sort of passed by. Hailing from Barnsley, Blawan becomes the latest rising talent to appear on the iconic Belgian imprint, and takes his cue from Jack Dunning, fully embracing the 303 sound that characterised the label in its pomp and delivering three thrilling tracks that further demonstrate the budding potential shown on his Hessle Audio debut. Lead track "Bohla" sets the tone, crafting a menacing rhythmic swing from a titular growl and smudged bass drums, with intermittent upwards swirls of 303 constantly building and dropping off. "Kaz" proves to be brilliantly schizophrenic in its approach, with intricate drum rhythms cascading around whilst acid lines twist in ten different directions across almost seven freakout-inducing minutes. What really impresses with Blawan is an innate talent for unique rhythms and it's most apparent on the abrasive delight of "Lavender", with rattling percussion covered in a thick viscous bassline truffle shuffle.

Review: The latest set of dancefloor weaponry to be culled from Blawan's seemingly bottomless arsenal arrives after the requisite months of Rinse FM teasing and subsequent YouTube exposure. The familiar strains of Black Mahogani's iconic boss are shredded to bits in the Blawan blender, ensuring "What You Do With What You Have" sits worlds apart from recent tracks that have plundered similar territory. A truly incendiary concoction of gnarled out acid lines and cavernous techno stabs, it's the constant rhythmic switching between the two over a trademark thumping drum flex that impresses. By the time the runout groove is in sight, KDJ sounds knackered, which is entirely understandable. "Vibe Decorum" comes poised with equal potency, wrapping a stretched vocal hook around growing layers of drum to snapping point before letting slack and dropping into the main thrust. From here, there are countless dizzying rhythmic swerves urged on by the oddest of numb sounding vocal intonations - such is the intricate nature and detail of his production, it's hard to work out exactly how Blawan conjures up these tracks but long may he continue to do so!

Review: R&S Records warm up on what should be another fruitful year with the first full release from recent addition Bullion, and what a revelation it is! There's always been a craft and ingenuity to whatever the London producer has released, be it that Beach Boys meets Dilla debut or the stunningly inventive and psychedelic almost-album for Young Turks, but Say Arr Ee fully reveal's Bullion's new found confidence in his singing voice. This addition to Bullion's arsenal was first revealed on "Ralph", his contribution to the R&S compilation IOTDXI, and is explored fully on the two tracks here. On the title track Bullion chooses to mask it amidst a typically sumptuous pop arrangement built around oven warm synths, it is however overshadowed by "What Does She Know", which combines Bullion's undeniable craft for hazy electronic psychedelia with an actual song and deserves to be appreciated on a level equal to sometime label mate James Blake.

Review: Having previously impressed the likes of Gilles Peterson and James Blake with their unique live show, experimental duo Cloud Boat pop up on R&S with an impressive debut single. "Lions On The Beach" inhabits the same musical space as, say, Mount Kimbie or Sepalcure, fusing off-kilter dancefloor rhythms with intoxicating atmospherics and the sort of beautiful but unlikely noises (echo-laden slide guitar, distant vocal wails, subtle piano chords etc) that mark out the work of many bass music experimentalists. It's magnificent, but if anything B-Side "Bastion" - a beguiling downtempo concoction just dripping with raw emotion - is even better. As debuts go, this is pretty special.

Review: Only 21years old, yet already bearing his own singular sound and style, James Blake is clearly destined for greatness if this EP is anything to go by. A singer and producer, he's already delighted fans under his Harmonimix alias with his cover of Destiny Child's "Bills, Bills, Bills" and now takes his futuristic vision of R&B further, sampling old Kelis and Aaliyah tunes on the title track, mangling them beautifully. Reverbed and pitch-shifted, the vocals sit over a melancholy and glitchy beat. "Footnotes" uses vocoders with style and builds over time while "I'll Stay" brings out the samples again and chops them in an amazingly robotic fashion. This is very special stuff and despite a penchant for all things 90s R&B it still sounds vitally fresh.

Review: Having spent most of the year pushing the fragile downtempo sounds of his maudlin debut album, James Blake makes a belated return to the dancefloor with a three-tracker for R&S. "Love What Happened Here", the lead cut, is his most floor-friendly concoction since "CMYK". Most importantly, its got some real funk, wrapping his usual mutated vocals and hymn-like melodic motifs around thrilling space funk synths and skittering beats. "At Birth" is a touch more mournful, but cuts through the pianos and fuzzy vocal samples with a solid 4/4 pulse. An excellent EP is completed by "Curbside", a sleazy old skool hip-hop instrumental given Blake's usual twist. Impeccable.

Review: Riding high after getting snapped up to remix Mount Kimbie, Klaus' arrival on R&S with an EP proper bolsters the notion of a discernable movement containing the aforementioned Kimbie, James Blake and Airhead, all ploughing a furrow of dubstep-informed experimentalism. As with those other beatsmiths, the music is sparse and tonal rather than hitting in any kind of direct way. It's deep, intricately crafted and intensely pleasant to listen to - yet another wonderkid snapped up by R&S 2.0.

Review: R&S Records gift us a rather fine prelude to Galaxy Garden, Lone's forthcoming album, in the form of the resplendent rave of Crystal Caverns 1991. A true highlight of that set, "Crystal Caverns 1991" is reminiscent of the producer's former glory "Pineapple Crush", though there's a lot more rhythmic intricacy at play here. Kicking off a breakstep beat with those sweet but punchy 90s synths that Cutler is renowned for, the track cuts into a deadly rave motif without so much as a pause in the beat and it's like being back in, er, 1991. Up next, "Vulcan Mill Acid" is equally self explanatory, an alien 303 workout with added cowbell that slips into steel pan territory without any of the wetness of a Jammy xx production.

Review: Lone debuts on the R&S imprint with this six-track release that demonstrates a growing maturity in the new sound the Nottingham based producer unveiled on last winter's impressive Emerald Fantasy Tracks. Shy of that mini LP by only three tracks, the productions that form Echolocations tighten the focus to 90s Detroit and Chicago, though the distinctive melodic stabs that characterised EFT remain - something that's apparent as soon as the huge drop in "Coreshine Voodoo" arrives! Elsewhere "Dolphin" delights via the vast swathes of melodies that wash over the intricate layers of percussion that build and drop with expertise whilst "Approaching Rainbow" is perhaps Lone at his most rhythmically rigid, with mellow bursts of colour and texture arising from the rasping Strafe-esque drums.

Review: One of the more prolific artists in these times, Matt Cutler is back with his fifth album, which is an impressive feat in just five years of releasing music. It's a disregard for pretention that makes Cutler's music work so appealing, whether it be the exuberant 90s house approach on last album Emerald Fantasy Tracks or his earlier hip hop-tempo bump. Galaxy Garden starts off on a more esoteric tip with the tropical electronica of "New Colour", which captures the cheeriness of Plaid, or more recently Oriol on Planet Mu, in its sunshine chimes. By the time we get to "Lying In The Reeds" we're up to a house tempo that harks back to the softer side of early Detroit, playing with melody in a way that made Kenny Larkin stand out early on. It's when "Crystal Caverns 1991" starts up that we reach the most blatant distillation of old-skool; kicking off a breakstep beat with sweet but punchy 90s synths, the track cuts into a deadly rave motif without so much as a pause in the beat and it's like being back in, er, 1991. It would be easy to write off an album like this as derivative, but no-one can listen to the music itself and call it an imposter. Every track reeks of originality, whether it be the surprising track structures, the superbly detailed production, even the evocative imagery that the music conjures up. If you ever needed an album that felt like wide-eyed, innocent joy, this would be an excellent place to start.

Review: It's a rare thing for electronic music producers to make impressive returns - think of recent re-appearances by Orbital or Future Sound of London - but this is different. Like Luke Slater's decision to relaunch Planetary Assault Systems, Juan Atkins's comeback as Model 500 serves as a reminder that when it comes to making music from another dimension, the Detroit native has few peers. The key difference between Atkins's return and Slater's latest vision for PAS is that Control doesn't sound that different to classic Model 500 material. Granted, the production sounds punchier and clearer, but this has perhaps more to do with the production tools than the song craft. Yet at the same time, Atkins is ploughing a furrow that he first explored almost 30 years ago, and it still sounds relevant and vital. Maybe contemporary music's lack of a distinctive edge means that the approach that Atkins developed long ago still resonates, but irrespective of the explanation, "Control" connects on a number of levels, be it thanks to the wobbly bassline, deadpan robo vocal or combination of dreamy synths with niggling bleeps and blips. The same sense of adventure, that feeling that music could transport the listener to another place, still applies. "The Messenger" is a typical Detroit techno groove, its shuffling, jerky rhythm playing host to a small universe worth of effects, tones and riffs, accentuated by sharper modern-day production techniques. It goes to show that Atkins's magic touch is a powerful as ever.

Review: The two opposing ends of R&S's historical spectrum collide on this ten inch as the track that marked Model 500's return to the imprint after a fourteen year absence gets taken apart and put back together in gloriously diverse fashion by two rising talents. It's a near exercise in futility to try and separate these two remixes of Model 500's "OFI" and proclaim one the winner, as both the submissions from Bullion and Space Dimension Controller are teeming at the brink with ideas that radicalise the template of the original. Anyone who indulged in the recent non album from Bullion will be fully aware of this producer's capacity to twist through tempos and rhythms at will and make it all work. That approach is more than replicated on his "Rivertrance Remix" which on first inspection sounds like three tracks in one. Galloping along via a bottomed out kraut groove, Bullion swerves through a collage of dizzying psychedelic sounds and effects in the space of four and a bit minutes which laugh generously in the face of categorisation. The flipside "Evasive Funk" remix from Celtic astronaut Space Dimension Controller retains the austere electro funk pulse of the original from Atkins, Banks and Taylor but sharpens the pace markedly, embellishing the bass with a schizophrenic menace that is matched by the sheer depth of percussive layers and synthesized touches.