ORIOL
Night And Day
ZIQ275
Planet Mu 2010
11 Tracks. 43mins15secs

Amazon UK: CD | LP US: CD | LP | DLD Boomkat: CD | LP

Born in Barcelona and now sharing his time between Cambridge and London, Oriol Singhji is not one to conceive electronic music as a cold and sterile medium. His debut album, Night And Day, on Planet Mu, is a sizzling melting pot of funky grooves, jazz fusion, electro disco and classic techno with discreet touches of dubstep sprinkled over to give his music just enough of a contemporary edge. It is doubtful that Oriol was even born when the 1980s, and even more so the seventies, were in full swing, but he captures the spirit of it all and cleverly avoids making it all sound cheesy or dated. His tracks are chunky cuts of euphoric electronic music, rooted somewhere between Detroit and Chicago, and drenched in Floridian sunshine, and the whole thing has a shamelessly feel-good factor heard all too rarely on electronic records. Continue Reading »

ITAL TEK
Midnight Colour
ZIQ272
Planet Mu 2010
13 Tracks. 51mins45secs

Amazon UK: CD | LP | DLD US: CD | LP | DLD Boomkat: CD | LP | DLD iTunes: DLD

Dubstep and garage may have originated from London, but both genres have long since expended outside the boundaries of the British capital to be re-interpreted by music producers across the land and beyond. One such artist is Brighton-based Alan Myson, who, under the Ital Tek banner, has been refining a particular form of dubstep through various EPs and a debut album, Cyclical, released primarily on Planet Mu.

Two years on from Cyclical, Midnight Colour continues Ital Tek’s sonic exploration, yet it denotes quite a substantial change of tone. By assembling much smoother soundscapes together and placing them over gentler beats, Myson steps into a much more nuanced and refined universe. Continue Reading »

LUKE VIBERT
We Hear You
ZIQ240
Planet Mu 2009
14 Tracks. 65mins40secs

CD: Amazon UK | Boomkat LP: Amazon UK | Boomkat

Lord Vibert is back, once again on Planet Mu, which seems to have become a semi permanent home for his eclectic blend of electronic music. One of the forefathers of modern electronica, and a long-time friend of Richard D. James, Tom Jenkinson or Planet Mu boss Mike Paradinas, Vibert’s back catalogue spans more genres than these three put together. Ambient, hip-hop, drum’n’bass, library music, acid or funky disco have all been part of his diet, whether he recorded as Wagon Christ, Plug, Kerrier District, Amen Andrews or under his own name, and these are still constant elements of his sound, over fifteen years on from his first releases. Continue Reading »

LEGION OF TWO
Riffs
ZIQ234
Planet Mu 2009
09 Tracks. 65mins23secs

Buy: CD | LP

On one side is Alan O’Boyle, a Dubliner best known on these shores as Decal, under which name he has released music on Planet Mu, Trama Industries, Leaf, Ultramack and his own Decal-Artifact imprint. On the other is David Lacey, a Dublin-based drummer and percussionist with over twenty years experience. Together, they are Legion Of Two, an unlikely combination of dark brooding electronics and live drums who have found in the currently hyper-active Planet Mu a home for their debut album, Riffs.

Finding their natural playground somewhere at the confine of industrial and death metal, Legion Of Two play with various shades of dark and doom throughout and fuel their music with seismic moments of tension, which radiate into heavy discharges of distortion and noise. Continue Reading »

BOXCUTTER
Arecibo Message
ZIQ225CD
Planet Mu 2009
13 Tracks. 49mins07secs

Buy: CD | LP |  iTunes

In the four years since he first burst onto the grime/dubstep scene, Barry Lynn as established Boxcutter as a force to be reckoned with, yet, in recent years, his sound has progressively become more eclectic and rounded, while still retaining much of the caustic streaks that got him noticed in the first place. Hailing from Lurgan, county Armagh in Northern Ireland, Lynn published a first EP on London-based Hotflush Records, one of the first imprints to heavily promote dubstep, in 2005, before moving to Planet Mu the following year. He has since delivered two albums under the Boxcutter banner, and a third one under his birth name, as well as contributed tracks for a number of compilations released by the label.

With his latest Boxcutter slice, Lynn continues to explore much wider sonic grounds and adapt his approach to fit with this expanded horizon. Continue Reading »

SYNTHEME
Lasers ‘N’ Shit
ZIQ213
Planet Mu 2009
20 Tracks. 62mins46secs

Buy: CD | LP

At this point, it’s become standard to assume that any new classic-sounding acid act is, in fact, Richard D. James in disguise. The online chatter about the true identity of Syntheme, coupled with the fact that the latest release under the moniker, Lasers ‘N’ Shit, is an engagingly funky course of acid disco, has done little to quell such suspicions. (And how about those track titles – Thraqqwa? Eqxq? More suggestive evidence). In all likelihood, however, Planet Mu is telling the truth in simply stating ‘Syntheme is Louise Wood from outta Brighton’. After all, this Louise Wood has performed live numerous times as Syntheme; RDJ never went so far as to hire actors to perform as The Tuss.

So, assuming that we’ve got the debut full-length form the 24-year-old Wood on our hands, let’s get down to business: this owns. Continue Reading »

ITAL TEK
Cyclical
ZIQ203 CD
Planet Mu 2008
11 Tracks. 55 mins 33 secs

iTAL tEK might well have chosen a daft name for himself, but the music here suggests he is a man who means serious business. The doleful atmospherics of Cyclical are undercarried by many of the same rhythms as the staples of the dubstep sound, but that is largely where the similarity with that work ends. Where others might veer towards rude boy dance hall bass-bins, Alan Myson, the man behind iTAL tEK, is working in a different direction entirely. Infusing his tracks with a depth often rare to the genre, he manages to lift his music well above the basic common denominators of the scene.

Burial might have won the garlands for this kind of sad-eyed examination of urban desolation already, but too often dubstep has found itself rooted in the sound of the club, leaving little to take away when the kick wears off. Continue Reading »

VENETIAN SNARES
Detrimentalist
ZIQ211CD
Planet Mu 2008
10 Tracks. 51mins27secs

One thing that Aaron Funk, the prolific Canadian musician behind Venetian Snares, cannot be accused of is boring the listener. Since first taking on the sometimes staid world of electronica in the late nineties with a battering ram, he has gleefully been launching assault after assault with his reconstructed drum ‘n’ bass sounds. Detrimentalist, like the many albums to have come before it, barely takes time out to breathe, such is the manic wellspring of energy at the core of the record. And whilst the dizzying aural barrage will deter the tender, there is a delightfully over the top vivacity at work in his music that at the very least ensures attention. Continue Reading »

MRS JYNX
The Standoffish Cat
ZIQ207 CD
Planet Mu 2008
13 tracks. 58mins27secs

IDM, electronica, ambient techno – everyone has their own name for the music that shaped the electronic music scene of the 1990s. Everyone too has their own list of the heroes who dominated the scene, whether it be Aphex Twin, Autechre, Black Dog or one of countless other artists to have come to prominence in that era. Yet everyone also has their own theory about when IDM fell apart, and when the scene’s death was officially confirmed. For some, it was the slipshod meanderings of Aphex Twin’s Drukqs that drove the nail into the coffin, proving that Richard D. James, the movement’s leading voice, had finally lost his way. For others, it was the recondite nature of Autechre’s Confield that proved electronic music had lost its pulse and drifted into the obscure realms of academia. But whatever the moment, whatever the cause, few now would dispute that IDM as we once knew it is a dead movement. Continue Reading »

MEAT BEAT MANIFESTO
Autoimmune
ZIQ202CD
Planet Mu 2008
10 Tracks. 50mins38secs

Meat Beat Manifesto have been on the music scene long enough now for the term veteran to seem almost painfully apt. Yet after ten albums and more than twenty years spent riding the choppy waves of contemporary music, they have somehow remained on the outskirts of things while like-minded artists have lapped up the applause. One need only think of what happened to Orbital after the brown album to see the vastly different trajectories the two superficially quite similar bands have taken in the last decade and a half. Indeed, while the Hartnoll brothers were almost instantly deified following their first appearance at Glastonbury in 1994, MBM moved to Trent Reznor’s Nothing Records and promptly slid out of view. But several records have followed since, and while the Orbital bandwagon has long since shuddered to a halt, Jack Dangers remains, his status assured through longevity as much as anything else. Continue Reading »

μ-ZIQ
Duntisbourne Abbots Soulmate Devastation Technique
ZIQ190
Planet-μ 2007
17 Tracks. 59mins58secs

It’s no secret that Mike Paradinas’ alias μ-Ziq has reached legend status in the world of experimental electronic dance music. Even Paradinas himself labels his μ-Ziq work “classic” on the Planet-μ website, and rightfully so. Along with Richard D. James, Luke Vibert, and other luminaries, μ-Ziq’s prodigiously playful releases have guided electronic music through a plethora of different styles, from the ambient techno of 1993’s Tango N’ Vectif to the rapid-fire drill n’ bass of 1997’s Lunatic Harness.

In 2002, Paradinas released Bilious Paths, his first μ-Ziq album on his own label. An exhilarating victory lap, it showed that μ-Ziq could continue to be a relentlessly cutting edge force, while still building upon a classic structure. Continue Reading »

LUKE VIBERT
Chicago, Detroit, Redruth
ZIQ157
Planet Mu 2007
12 Tracks. 63mins07secs

A true veteran of the UK electronic scene, Luke Vibert has, in the last few years, finally gained the recognition he deserves. His first dispatches saw him go from the ambient textures of his debut album as Wagon Christ to a much more acute and varied sound, infused with hip hop, soul, electro, techno, acid house and drum’n'bass. Distilled under a variety of pseudonyms (Wagon Christ, Plug, Kerrier District, Amen Andrews, Spac Hand Luke to name but a few) these have progressively become the staple diet for his fans. Yet, it took for the man to focus on one of his until-then somewhat overlooked strengths, acid, with his monumental YosepH (Warp, 2003) for the world, or at least electronic followers, to finally take stock and listen. Continue Reading »