Arseholes would write about Alabaster DePlume that his music is so unassailable that he should actually mind-produce the next three Bonobo albums (LOL, sorry, did it again!). But hey, try making pretty perfect weirdopop, pretty perfect jazz and pretty perfect beat sketches without appearing strung out in any way. »GOLD« is perhaps the definitive Alabaster DePlume album and still a touch too weird and free-spirited to end up in the next Audi spot.

Die Musik, das Cover, die Kuratoren: Die »Air Texture VIII« weist wie kaum eine andere Compilation in vergangenen Halbjahr in Richtung Zukunft. Satte 18 Tracks spannen eine mächtige Bandbreite von Meiteis organischem Downtempo bis hin zu DINAS Techno-Roller »Skin Shed«. Verantwortlich sind mit den New Yorkern Anthony Naples und DJ Python zwei der derzeit progressivsten Köpfe in der elektronischen Musik. Naples’ cleaner Tech-House wie Pythons Vorliebe für außerordentlich geschmackssichere Reggaeton-Einflüsse mit Hang zum Sentimalen treffen im kuratorischen Sweetspot aufeinander.

Batu, too, has long been unassailable as a Timedance curator and highly selective producer, and the step to album format in the case of »Opal« is a correspondingly well-considered one. With just over half an hour of playing time and 11 tracks, Opal is formally not an album for the hall, rather Batu's harsh sound design flows into a lucid sequencing in which the drum and song-like contributions set the accents, but do not determine the narrative. Best Objekt album since the last Objekt album.

On his self-titled debut, he had the orchestral interludes, he had the songwriting and he had the pathos powers of the Dylans and Cohens, but Bill Fay still remained relatively unknown. In 1972, on his second album, the horns and flutes were gone. On »Time Of The Last Persecution«, Jesus saw himself close but far away from the light, Fay saved on half the instruments and in exchange simply blazed with atmosphere. The demos collected on »Still Some Light Part 1« also date from this time. Guitars, drums, piano, this haunting, faint voice, mediocre sound quality, bad prospects – and everything absolutely brilliant.

The duo of saxophonist Binker Golding and drummer Moses Boyd takes up its own position in the London jazz that has been thriving luxuriantly for a few years now. Their reduced sound with maximum use of space continues the cosmic free jazz excursions of the late John Coltrane with occasional help from electronic production for the present. In their case, this includes more harmonies and stylistic openness to rock. This is also the case on »Feeding The Machine«.

In every photo of him, the two-metre tall giant of a man looks like he's just been in a fight with a bunch of hooligans in the pub. But Blackhaine designs choreographies for Kanye West and dances in videos for JPEGMAFIA like a rubber doll after five eighths of Chardonnay! What's more, the man from Manchester also belts out beats himself that would make Mark E. Smith rise from his grave in complete awe – to spit in the face of the Sleaford Mods and finally tell Johnny Rotten that he looks like a kindergarten punk next to Blackhaine Blokes. If you want to know what it's really like »Up North«, then check out »And Salford Falls Apart«!

Oh, and come on: yes, Burial makes much better music, because it bubbles deep below the surface, but standing up and celebrating yet another new Burial as an emotional feat (and bashing Bonobo at the same time) doesn't feel right either. So at this point, just the usual PSA: the new forty minutes are obviously not as good as the first two albums, but nevertheless do something to you as always. »Antidawn« is Burial's ambient record, drum programming can at best be guessed at, and yes, it grabs my attention.

Digital hall of mirrors. Things are superficially spartan and almost sluggish on the latest »Club Sentimientos Vol. 2« EP by New York producer Brian Piñeyro alias DJ Python. Yet with plenty of semi-concealed dynamics and carefully planed sounds, the fluid artificiality and polished superficiality of which paradoxically ensure well-rested calm and depth. The ten-minute »Angel« in particular, with its slowed-down deep house, lends itself to immersion. The same goes for his slo-mo reggaeton.

There is music that sounds special, and there is music that sounds like nothing before. Hoya falls into the second category, of course, because what could a theremin player with a background in theatre and a drummer trained in transcultural abstraction work do that could be squeezed into any fixed frame of reference? Yup, nothing really. Fhunyue Gao and Sven Kacirek sometimes venture towards minimal music, feverish (free) jazz, humorous noise and dull dub, but first and foremost open up their very own musical space. You’re much invited to join them there, just don't forget to leave all your previous knowledge at the cloakroom beforehand. Kristoffer Cornils

Drum'n'bass was never gone, of course, and thus is not necessarily celebrating a comeback. For some time now, a bunch of artists besides Djrum and dBridge have been trying to give the familiar sound a new look. Rarely has this sounded more gruelling than on Fixate's self-titled debut album on the genre institution Exit. Rap interludes, wild polyrhythms, rough-edged tech-step borrowings - it's all there. And we’re only talking about the first quarter of this album, which then goes on to take completely different paths. Drum'n'bass was never gone, but it has been reinvented in one fell swoop. Thanks for that. Kristoffer Cornils

I think »Plonk« is the most descriptive album title since Bleep Techno was coined. Most of the many, many Huerco S side-projects roared like a lion, but »Plonk« plonks down directly in the first half and creates a weightless version of Drill. After that, it gets a bit more spherical and predictable, but with this dubby ambient stuff, Huerco S is still nobody's fool. If someone were to remark that at a minimum the closing piece could have been on the Bonobo album, I would ultimately be exposed as a hypocrite.

Iannis Xenakis would have turned 100 this year, and of course this has to be celebrated somehow, even if many events surrounding the composer's work are surrounded by the stink of musealisation. With the comprehensive box set Electroacoustic Works, however, the Berlin label Karlrecords proves how wonderfully unwieldy his work remains. Sure, especially the early work including the granular synthesis original story of Concrète PH may belong to the canon by now. The late work, however, still hurts the auditory canal and the brain, and pieces like S.709 make the Merzbow catalogue sound like lullabies in comparison. Someone has to create that first, but probably only Xenakis could. Kristoffer Cornils

Here we go: The future of techno lies in Africa. We already know that since Hakuna Kulala Records, Nyege Nyege Tapes and the Arabstazy compilations. But »Frigya« (Shouka) is special! Over eight tracks, percussionist Imed Alibi and producer Khalil Epi explore the Tunisian rhythm and sound world and transfer the traditions into a colorful, bass thumping firework of polyrhythms and North African melodies, which should disrupt every club worldwide and submerge it in complete euphoria.

Isik Işık Kural has recorded 13 very fragile vignettes for »In February«. The glassy dream-pop-ambient-sleep chamber instrumentals fit perfectly into the discography of RVNG Intl., Kate NV, Visible Cloaks and this makes them good landmarks. Above this Işık Kural's breathy voice, which sounds a bit like Devendra Banhart has gone through ego-death and suffered a fainting spell after transcendence. A real firefly album, music box music for grown-ups.

The perfect album in our LOL age, where there's nothing really to laugh about any more: sincerely sad and introverted, Jake Xerxes Fussell played himself into exactly the place where the chest hovers over the beer glass. Emo music from the rural US, or even country-folk, for wandering off into the distance with a tight but well flushed throat. On »Good And Green Again«, Jake Xerxes Fussell dares to express real, unclarified emotions and makes them impressively palpable, only with voice and guitar. »We all marchin' around very well« is probably the most prescient line of 2022 thus far, achieved, of course, solely through the way Fussell delivers it here.

There’s hopefully already someone writing a book or two about the story of Jeanne Lee, but in the meanwhile this reissue of her solo debut, out of print since the 1970s (yup, the Discogs median will absolutely make your skin crawl), could mark the starting point of a broader exploration of the work of the lyricist, singer, choreographer and composer, who has worked with Anthony Braxton as well as with John Cage or Pauline Oliveros. Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? And so does Conspiracy. There’s traces of spiritual jazz as well as an air of a poetry slam in a smoky New York dive bar, of avant-garde music and pure bliss. It is, in short, the best record you've never heard. Kristoffer Cornils

A release that at first glance was not to be expected from International Anthem. The Chicago label has not been entirely uninvolved in dusting off jazz in recent years. On »Recordings from the Åland Islands« jazz has almost disappeared, only to be glimpsed as echoes of a distant past, as piano chords on »Stureby House Piano«, as Coltrane's trumpet on »On The Other Sea«. As if jazz were wafting like a breeze across oceans to the Finnish Åland Islands, where Jeremiah Chiu and Marta Sofia Honer stand with their equipment and capture it. Now it's no longer the same, transformed, having nothing left of its origin except its auratic magic.

Kendrick Lamar continues to rap at Pulitzer level with variable flows and complex storytelling. The mirror-image concept of the double album works, because after the darkness of »DAMN.« he not only reveals his traumas here, but also works through them in a positive way, now seemingly capable of self-love. Although it's not all bull's-eyes, »Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers« impresses with some of the best beats of his career and surprising special guests like Beth Gibbons. Despite the crown of thorns on the cover, Lamar seems to have shed his messiah complex.

After so much pretentious shit, now the full dadcore cosiness. The new Kurt Vile album is called »(watch my moves)«, contains as always the most unpretentious song writing and Kurt Vile – as already observed by P4K – in his current Lou Reed-like brashness simply seems like the Dalai-Lama version of Bruce Springsteen. I don't know how you get to be so completely yourself, but when I grow up, I wanna be like Kurt Vile.

The album with the 3D snail queen on the cover does not deceive. On »Pripyat«, Marina Herlop makes artificial art-pop on the basis of a classical piano education. The result sounds like a mixture of Jenny Hval, Kate Bush and SOPHIE, the next Pitchfork Editor-in-Chief practically sprouts from the ground on the first beat of the album. And the tension is simply very, very well done, as well, arising from the juxtaposition of arca-esque glitchy club music and picturesque dramaturgy in the more classical elements (voice and piano).

An actual real new album by Dutch grandmaster Michel Banabila, who rose to fresh fame in the wake of the rediscovery of Fourth World music sometime in the mid-2010s. »Echo Transformations« is for everyone as well who still love their John Hassell, Andrew Pekler and Steve Reich. Marimbas and distant birds let listeners know right away where they are. But that's not why this album is here. It's because MIchel Banabila succeeds in translating these much-used ethno tropes into driving grooves, giving his sound an urgency that has nothing to do with the interchangeability of some of the exotic ambient releases of the last ten years.

A track like Falling 4 U may invite comparisons to Erika de Casier or even PinkPantheress, but Nalan's debut album takes a completely different turn than their D'n'B'n'R'n'B sound usually does. On I'm Good (The Crying Tape), the singer and MC, who is also known as slimgirl fat and a member of the Gaddafi Girls, uses a variety of different beats as a basis to find the right lid for every pot and turn the whole thing into a self-contained thing thanks to her vocal performance, which ranges from soft crooning to syrupy sleaze and freestyle house anthem throwbacks. If only someone had given Drake and Beyoncé this record on the borderline between hip-hop beats and club-adjacent grooves, we would have been spared a lot. Kristoffer Cornils

Already after a few weeks in the new year the mass has already been read for German rap in 2022. The fact that OG Keemo would make the narratively most unrivalled German rap album in history with »Mann Beißt Hund« could already be predicted after the pre-release of the first tracks, but the matter-of-factness with which Keemo cements at least three perspectives together into a block prism, in which there are neither reliable narrators nor socio-pedagogical well-actually-s, is almost unique international. Of course, the rejected Kendrick comparison has to come somewhere at this point, but – warning, cliché – the cinematic attention to detail which Keemo uses to measure every square inch of his neighbourhood on the opener alone is really only found on albums of the magnitude of »Illmatic« or »The Infamous«. And that's just the first three minutes. Gulp.

Park Jiha makes music that is difficult to describe and easy to understand. The hard facts: using instruments from traditional Korean court music such as piri (a flute), yanggeum (a kind of zither) and saenghwang (the imposing recorder pictured on the cover), as well as glockenspiel, Park single-handedly builds complex compositions that have the sonic quality of a synthesis of digital production processes and Fourth World aesthetics and the musical-rhythmic parameters of minimal music, jazz and post-rock. Always to the feel, always right to the heart. Unique, in every respect. Kristoffer Cornils 

All the more so since, as expected, everything can be smoothed out again quickly with the new Shinichi Atobe album. »Love Of Plastic« is one of the more brittle records in a perfectly styled discography, but there is still hardly anyone who captures house and techno in its natural elegance as readily as the Japanese. Remarkable how a reduced but emotive approach creates completely timeless music every time.

This is the kind of reissue that pops up once in a blue moon. A lost album, hunted by many, for many years, that now has actually been reissued. Tia Blake recorded »Folksongs & Ballads« in just one day in the late sixties and it contains nothing but covers. She performs them with plucked guitar and a voice that is bright and present and at the same time shy and enraptured. To this day, bands try to find that vibe, very few succeed. »Folksongs & Ballads« is just as big as the biggest folk reissues of the last 20 years, the Jackson C. Frank debut, or »Painting A Lady«; Sibylle Baier, Anne Briggs.

No matter how the two originally found one another – UK-based producer TSVI and London-native Loraine James link their laptops on »053« for a five-track ride on AD93. The piano strums over grime beats, the pads dream themselves into hi-ho-happyland and, with »Trust« at the latest, heave around bulging bags of tears! In between, they stock up on Ritalin. Prophylactically, of course – after all, Jungle chops crash on angel's locks here. Not even the record title stays straight!