April: 18 albums you need to hear this month

Talaboman 'The Night Land' (R&S)

Catalan John Talabot and his Swedish friend Axel Boman have a lot in common as DJs and producers: both are masters of deferred gratification, using the subtlest of blend techniques to allow slow accumulation of detail, but ultimately delivering big kicks. Their first collab in 2014, ‘Sideral’, proved they could find a coherent voice in the studio together, but it was just one track – and despite many b2b DJ sets since, it’s taken them until now to cement the Talaboman identity.

What’s most wonderful here is that they’ve brought their differences as well as their similarities into play: Boman’s laid-back sunshiney funkiness and Talabot’s much sharper-edged intensities could in theory be hard to reconcile, but it’s done so naturally over these eight long tracks that a separate musical identity emerges. Whether it’s the weightless dream of ‘Loser’s Hymn’ or the percussive shuffle of ‘Six Million Ways’, the Balearic dream of ‘Brutal Chugga Chugga’ or the sinister ambient ‘Midnattssol’, each track takes you to some very unexpected places.

In the process, each delivers feelings much more potent than a lot of the supposedly “emotional” dancefloor music currently flooding the market at the moment. And as a nice final touch, the LP came delivered with the following message: “Love is all this world needs. Loosen up those tight fists and give your sisters and brothers a helping hand and dance your anger away.” Make no mistake, ‘The Night Land’ will be flourishing for a long time to come. Joe Muggs

9/10