September 2025:
Albums
MalibuVanities
French electronic artist Malibu is known for her transcendental performances. When paired with white beams of light that circle her audience, her wordless live sets become deeply surreal. Vanities, her filmic debut album, aims to transport you to that otherworldly state. While it draws from the soothing chords and glittery instrumentation of New Age and baroque music, the silvery pop melodies steal the show. This is weighty, elegant ambient that should be listened to with a proper sub, so that its immersive waves of sound envelop you.
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Paul St. HilairePaul St. Hilaire - w/ The Producers
Paul St. Hilaire (AKA Tikiman) has contributed his sweet, sinuous vocals to dub techno records since his early work with Basic Channel. His latest album is a treat to longtime fans, featuring a host of top-drawer producers. Shinichi Atobe's lurid house bubbles under Hilaire's reverbed vocals; Priori's zippy tech house meets his heavily distorted asides. This is collaborative experimentation at its finest.
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AcopiaBlush Response
Rich with shoegazey guitars, simmering electronica and frontwoman Kate Durman's most plaintive vocals to date, Blush Response luxuriates in rock elements that lingered in the margins of previous Acopia albums. The rawness of the instrumentation, peppered with tiny textural details, distinguishes this LP from the group's signature dream pop. By unpixelating their previous sound, Acopia reach the perfect balance between gut-wrenching drama and understated surrender.
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james KFriend
On her hotly anticipated new LP, Friend, james K sets herself loose inside a carefully constructed assemblage of drum & bass, trip-hop and shoegaze, carving offbeat shapes from the contemporary resurgence of all three genres. The album is crisper, cleaner and more complex than any of her back catalogue, drawing from crystalline pop and rock while maintaining her characteristic enigma. Full of lush, expansive pads and skittering microbeats, these songs sound like half-remembered dreams.
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Sammy VirjiSame Day Cleaning
If you like Sammy Virji's radio-friendly, vocal-heavy UKG, you're going to love Same Day Cleaning. There's a real musicality to the album, which spans garage house, speed garage and more, with the warmth of acoustic instruments occasionally squeezed in. In tandem with some of the UK's most in-demand MCs and vocalists—Flowdan, Skepta, Issey Cross—Virji totally steps up, showcasing songwriting agility that explains the current hype and glut of sold-out shows.
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Apple Music
Joanne RobertsonBlurrr
Joanne Robertson is widely known for her vocal cameos on records by Dean Blunt and Elias Rønnenfelt. But her latest solo album, Blurrr, establishes her as an artist in her own right. Written in between painting sessions and caring for her toddler, the gorgeous LP features drumless guitar ballads alongside contributions from cellist Oliver Coates. Most arresting, though, are the moods she conveys. Achieving a compositional yin-yang, she somehow scores both the euphoria of depression and the grief of joy.
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Kelman DuranScorpio Falling
Dembow experimentalist Kelman Duran makes shadowy music that conjures scenes of sodden tunnel paths at nightfall. Beneath his shrouded pads are distinctly Caribbean sounds, like dancehall and reggaeton. Scorpio Falling, his first album since 2021's Night In Tijuana, is a gritty journey through jazz, Memphis rap and dark ambient with spurts of spritely dembow breaking the meditative lull.
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TitanicHAGEN
Titanic, the avant-garde project from producer and guitarist I. la Católica and cellist Mabe Fratti, returns with punkish elegance on HAGEN. The chords are brighter, Fratti's vocals more dynamic and the ascendent alternative pop swells to new heights. The instrumentation is raw and brash, and Fratti fits right into the mould, her voice bearing visceral emotions with fascinating lightness.
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Bandcamp
Lucrecia DaltA Danger To Ourselves
The past few years have been intense for Lucrecia Dalt. The Colombian artist has experienced several seizures and an eight-second stop to her heart since her last album, ¡Ay!. She also fell head over heels in love. Her latest alt-pop album, A Danger To Ourselves, is full-on haunting, as she whispers through a hall of tip-toeing cello and guitar plucks. Tracks like "stelliformia" carry the immersive lyricism that you'll want to listen to alone in your room. A Danger To Ourselves bristles with the kind of eerie love poems that only Dalt could write.
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Bandcamp
YSBurn
Breezing through laidback trip-hop, luminescent IDM and mellow vocal samples, Burn captures the understated cool that characterised trip-hop's golden era. On "Moth," Janet Jackson exhales through delightfully broken drums. "End" skews slightly darker, featuring a pitched-down vocal announcing that "the end of the world is coming" over sparkling beats. Wherever you end up on this masterpiece, you'll find a goldmine of sophisticated textures.
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Bandcamp
LÉO LA NUITLE DON DES LARMES
On LE DON DES LARMES, Franco-Algerian vocalist LÉO LA NUIT is accompanied by guitar, cello and the swirl of her own harmonised vocals. Written for her newborn child, these lilting folk lullabies are inspired by her Kabyle upbringing surrounded by Algerian chaabi. This is a strikingly beautiful portrait of her wispy vocals, which don't need much enhancement to make you feel like you've fallen into a world in which everything has suddenly and blissfully slowed down.
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Bandcamp
September 2025:
EPs
Skepta, Fred again..Skepta .. Fred
Although Skepta still hasn't released his long-awaited album Knife and Fork, he's put out a flurry of extremely good singles and even stepped in to replace Deftones at Glastonbury with a much talked-about performance. For his next trick, he gives Fred again.., the super-producer of mixed reputation, some underground cred. The tracks are a welcome, sub-blowing display of 140 BPM club music, making even Fred again..'s most dedicated critics struggle to deny their fun.
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Spotify
MaaraRevenge from the Penthouse EP
Maara is an exceptionally versatile producer. Her debut album, The Ancient Truth, reveled in slow, chuggy trip-hop, followed by a motley of cheeky, sapphic singles like "Mind The WAP" and, more recently, "I Wanna Scissor Ft. My Hot Ex." But really, her specialty is in building hypnotic, multi-textural worlds. Revenge from the Penthouse does this by barrelling through shades of progressive house, trance and breakbeats, keeping us completely locked across all five tracks.
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TYGAPAWIMMIGRANT
The connection that Jamaican artist TYGAPAW has to their queerness and home country is written all across their raucous, politically charged techno. On their new EP, IMMIGRANT, they portray the immigrant experience in post-Trump America as oppressive and repetitive. "Black Trans Masculine Experience" gives the floor to Kings-Lee Rose, who discusses the societal isolation of Black trans masculine people before a flood of percussion fills the soundscape. In TYGAPAW's hands, deep feelings are meant to be released through the hips—you'll hear Jersey club, dancehall and techno rhythms skitter across "M32."
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Bandcamp
JSPORTNo Turning Back
From the moment you step off the ledge of its misty opener, No Turning Back situates you in banger after banger. The club rhythms are fierce and unrelenting, speeding through Jersey club beats, dancehall and red-hot R&B samples, all with the iciness of grime. The liner notes couldn't have said it better: "These aren't tracks you play—they're tracks that play you."
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Bandcamp
Sam GokuExplorations 02
Explorations 02 is a frolic through dub techno, fuzzy breakbeats and psychedelic deep house. The rhythms are effervescent and the drums occasionally go hard. But the one trait that stays consistent throughout is the record's glistening aura, made possible by birdsong, muted pads and chiming melodies. This EP is as close to nature as the dance floor.
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Bandcamp
NEW YORKPush
Push sounds eerily familiar. In many ways, it's reminiscent of the late '00s, a time when artists like Chairlift, MGMT and Owl City ruled the radio with glitchy beats that seemed to blast euphoria into listeners' veins. NEW YORK builds on this template with a punkish haze, whispering into the mic as bleeps burst around them.
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Bandcamp
CroftSanctuary / Shifty
On this two-track EP, Nottingham's Croft offers twisted, hypnotic tech house. Metallic dings penetrate the busy soundscape, as plasticky noises contort across shuffling broken beats. These are the kinds of trippy curveballs that force crowds to stick around.
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Bandcamp
Jessy Lanza"Slapped By My Life"
Jessy Lanza wrote "Slapped By My Life" while her husband was undergoing cancer treatment and she longed to escape into an emotion that felt miles away from her everyday sadness. This track is pure optimism, carried by a sweet hook ("I miss you when you go") and colourful beats flying by at 158 BPM. It's one for the lovers.
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Bandcamp
September 2025:
Mixes
Kia, Bitter Babe
Kia b2b Bitter Babe - Climate of Fear
On paper, Kia b2b Bitter Babe shouldn't really work. The former loves supple shades of dub, IDM and techno, while the latter leans towards hazy, sensual and high-energy tunes. But this recording from Berlin party Climate of Fear proves otherwise. Across two hours of molten techno, trance and pan-Latin dance music, the duo showcase their command of complex rhythms—and why they're two of the best in the game right now.
Gavsborg
Gavsborg - Kiosk Radio
Jamaican dance music producers don't get the same recognition as their peers in Detroit, Chicago or Berlin. Hailing from East Kingston, Gavsborg carries the torch for this generation. The Berlin-based Equiknoxx founder has spent more than a decade reshaping dancehall with a leftfield sensibility—first breaking through with Busy Signal's charting single, "Step Out," before collaborating with everyone from reggae dub prince Addis Pablo to hip-hop icon Missy Elliott. On Brussels' Kiosk Radio, Gavsborg dropped a scorching mix of dancehall, jungle, zouk and dub, laced with the playful surrealism that defines his productions.
EMA
EMA - subglow/Live 6 per:sona
There's a new generation of dubstep kids in town pushing the sound forward in thrilling directions. EMA, founder of the dub-focused Woozy label, is a key force in the movement alongside the likes of Beatrice M. and Mia Koden. For CCL's subglow series, she shared a recording from her kaleidoscopic set at French festival per:sona. Much like her wider work, it's adventurous and unpretentious, with two hours of tightly wound techno, modern steppers and snarling drum & bass grounded in spooky bassweight.
Short Span (Matthew Kent)
Short Span - Theory Therapy 82
Across its eight-year run, Blowing Up The Workshop tested the limits of the online mix format, giving artists space to experiment and shaping a generation of adventurous listeners along the way. That same curatorial spirit runs through this new Theory Therapy session, which sees BUTW founder Matthew Kent digging into forgotten '00s CDs to piece together a loose set of dubbed-out ambient and downtempo house, with plenty of clicky percussion reminiscent of minimal's dominant era.
Keanu Nelson
Keanu Nelson - NTS Radio (13th September 2025)
Broadcasting from Papunya, one of Australia's most isolated communities, Luritja artist Keanu Nelson offers a rare window into the music and voices of the Northwestern territory. For his latest NTS Radio show, he drifts from ancestral chants and spectral atmospheres to desert rock and jazzy synth pop. The mix moves gracefully between the celebratory and the contemplative, its remarkable range making for a perfect morning listen.
Maito, Kuba'97
Maito & Kuba'97 - Live at Klub Dramatik Festival
Klub Dramatik is part of a new wave of Belgian parties putting the country's scene on the map. The first entry in its live series comes from two locals at the heart of the action: Maito and Kuba'97. Over three hours, they weave understated house, techno and psychedelia with the patience and flow that comes from years spent on the dance floor, beautifully capturing the exploratory spirit that has Belgium abuzz right now.
Spurge
Spurge - Nowadays Nonstop: 06-21-25
For his Nowadays debut during Juneteenth weekend, New York DJ and musician Spurge paid homage to his definition of Black sonic excellence. Featuring a range of mostly Black artists—K-HAND, Bad Brains, Princess Peggie, DJ Spanish Fly—it's a danceable, thought-provoking showcase of Black artistry across noise, ambient techno and peak-time club.
Camille Mandoki
Camille Mandoki - Series 029
Mexico City vocalist Camille Mandoki—who features on Lucrecia Dalt's new album—makes powerful sound art. Her gauzy compositions and choral voice carry serious emotional weight, shaking listeners to their core. Her contribution to local mix series Lapi + Filia is just as poignant, featuring delicate jazz, ambient and folk that evoke introspection and fulfillment.