February: 18 albums you need to hear this month

Red Rack'em 'Self Portrait' (Bergerac)

Daniel Berman’s second album as Red Rack’em follows ‘Wonky Bassline Disco Banger’, a quirky underground hit which The Black Madonna hailed as her “track of the summer”. A handful of tracks attempt to recapture that same magic: oddball warehouse highlight ‘Tomato Pope’ mixes an infectious vocal refrain with pace-shifting synths, ‘Kos Mich’ boasts Todd Terje-esque cosmic lasers and ‘April Fool’ delivers feel-good disco grooves. But there are some disjointed misfires, too. ‘Mad House’ irritates due to a persistent ringing noise, ‘Hot Weekend’ is quickly forgotten and ‘Sel’ experiments with drums, crowd noise and bleeps but feels clunky. Closer ‘You Used To Make Me Feel’, meanwhile, lacks energy and fizzles out. Ben Jolley

7/10