Albums
February: 18 albums you need to hear this month
That's the month sorted, then
Matthew Dear 'DJ-Kicks' (Studio K7)
With electronic producers putting more emphasis on classical ambience than ever before, it’s no surprise that Mathew Dear (aka Audion) opts for a similar leafy path on his DJ-Kicks mix by opening with Nils Frahm’s ‘Ode’. But from there on in, the music returns to Dear’s signature synthetic robo-vocoder throb, with the sublime ‘Wrong With Us’ providing a killer early exclusive, before changing gears into hypno-bleep fairly fluidly. Similarly meditative house music moments from Italojohnson and Vin Sol also bring the heat in the first hour, while for the final furlong, he opts for two peak-time Audion exclusives and brings the mix to a close with DJ Khalab & Baba Sissoko’s ‘Kumu’. Ralph Moore
8/10
