A natural graduate of the artful pop school of Kate Bush, (less gothic) kindred spirit to Fever Ray or a worthy adversary — if less oddball — to a visionary such as Björk, Bat For Lashes’ mark in pop’s hall of fame was indelible even before this, her troublesome third album. And fear not. She hasn’t swapped leftfield paganism for bitch spittin’ as part of a Steve Aoki collab. No siree. Thankfully, she’s opted for what she does best: emotive and emphatic electronic pop music. Opener ‘Lillies’ could be Kate Bush at her most bucolic, while ‘All Your Gold’ is as taut as high-end pop gets. ‘Laura’ makes Florence sound as emotional as Kryten from Red Dwarf, and ‘Marylin’ is synthetic dream pop reminiscent of Active Child. Without straying too far into the realms of cheesiness, this is seriously heartfelt stuff — utterly sublime. Lisa Loveday
Lukid
Lonely At The Top Werk Discs/Ninja Tune
9.0 Lone ranger
LESS applauded than contemporary peers Zomby (4AD) and label mentor Actress (Werk Discs), London’s Luke Blair, aka Lukid, has recently served as the unsung hero of a town called Woozyville; a place (we’ve made up) where house, techno and electronica collide in a cascade of pastel hues, shrouded in lo-fi distortion. Probably in the UK somewhere. Increasingly infatuated with the dark, internalized frequencies of Detroit techno, the dancefloor isn’t the main pursuit for its compatriots who instead wash their sonic canvases with intense shades of emotion. In this case, Lukid — who won previous plaudits with the warped trip-hop of 2007’s ‘Onandon’ — has cranked up the BPM slightly and largely switched his focus to the 4/4, drawing upon drowsy melancholia as his main muse on new album ‘Lonely At The Top’. Overture (skit, even?) ‘Bless My Heart’, however, is a heady dose of languid funk, the disco of Evelyn ‘Champagne’ King wound down into a wonky, stomach-churning com- motion. ‘Manchester’ is an ambient,
monk-chanting interpretation of ear- ly bleep techno, while the title track is a mesmeric soundscape invoking cascading waterfalls and tumbling rainforests obscured through a filter of white noise. For icy wintertime reflection, see ‘Snow Theme’ and for brooding tunnel techno, there is ‘This Dog Can Swim’ — but the beats have been shredded and scattered into a roll of trippy jungle. The piece de resistance, however, is ‘USSR’; simplistic analogue synth notes repeated over a sparse hi-hat and haunting echoes, it unravels into an understated yet intricately beauti- ful electronic ballad of symphonic proportion. By no means the stuff of peak-time rapture, ‘Lonely At The Top’ is techno at its most personal. Delving into the deepest, most intimate realms of human emotion, Lukid uses lipidic texture as his main device — the re- sult, often heart-wrenching, is always absorbing. ADAM SAVILLE
8.5 Ital Tek
Nebula Dance Planet Mu Space-age beats
As part of his incessant refusal to sit still for an instant, Brighton’s Alan Myson’s Ital Tek is back with another LP, following the elastic post-dubstep textures of his nebulous second. After shedding the shackles of woozy hip-hop, here he is heard replacing the languid two-step of 2010’s ‘Midnight Colour’ with cosmic footwork breaks (‘Pixel Haze’), lush Y3K tones over rapid percussion (‘Dusk Beat’) and emotive space-age electronica (‘Intercruise’). Despite deriving a gamut of styles from reflecting the pre-existing work of Ma- chinedrum and Addison Groove — even the electro-pop of Grimes — Ital Tek does display glimpses of sheer original- ity. ‘Glokk’ is exquisite, driving broken beat of the sort we’ve never heard before, while ‘Solar Sail’ is harmonic trip-hop cranked up to 160bpm. Racy from start to finish, ‘Nebula Dance’ is intricate and exhilarating. Adam Saville
Barker & Baumecker’s debut LP for Ostgut is a complete overview of electronic music as seen through the pair’s unique eyes. Traces of a wide array of influences can be found within its mechanical-yet-fluid forms, from the burning embers of garage to the suggestive and skeletal frameworks of IDM gone by. There are as many explosive and im- pulsive tracks as there are introverted soundscapes, all stitched together with a masterful swagger. Where it excels is in its sound design — nothing sounds as if from a standard 808 sample pack; everything has been honed and chiselled for purpose. The overriding mood is one of darkened or chilling doom, but beauty exists in any number of melancholic synths and snatched human vocals to ensure things never grow too hostile to love. And boy, will you do that. Kristan J Caryl
9.0 The Gaslamp Killer
Breakthrough Brainfeeder Killer release
The debut full-length album from LA beat wizard The Gaslamp Killer is the kind of record you can’t second-guess. It’s a pick ‘n’ mix, glitchy, shady piece of work. Samples prickle into focus then slip through your fingers, the thick dub rhythm the album moves to gravitationally yanking the listener in. He’s got a knack for atmosphere: the grating organ on ‘Dead Vets’ is like the ghost of ’60s psychedelia, while ‘Veins’’s choppy strings pierce deep. It’s a listening trip that can be unnerv- ing; with any musical style he goes for — from the blues to psych rock to seedy hip-hop — he manages to coax out the dark side. There always was something of a spark about The Gaslamp Killer’s productions, and on ‘Breakthrough’ he proves himself quite the alchemist. Ta- mara el Essawi