April: 7 bass & club releases you need to hear this month

Herva 'Hyper Flux' (Planet Mu)

Italian producer Herva returns with his second Planet Mu release of cut-up, jumpy house. Of his previous work, ‘Hyper Flux’ draws the most similarities to 2015’s ‘Kila’, but the new record finds him working with lots of live instruments – there are all sorts of bleeps and bloops, but there’s also fuzzy lo-fi ambience and explorations of various other spacey themes. The album opens with glitchy percussive ticks, but quickly warms up. ‘Nasty MF’ pairs glistening bells with a choppy house rhythm that get steadily more heated as the song progresses.

The deep grooves of ‘Lly Spirals’ reorient a light, fast-paced beat that sounds like a car cruising down some suspended highway, while ‘Meta Wave’ utilises a sound that’s reminiscent of neon burning in a strip mall, amidst clear, flutey soundscapes and more scratchy textures. You hear a lot about ‘futuristic’ bass music nowadays, and many visions of what’s to come club-wise seem dark and dissonant, but Herva manages to take the discord and put more of an optimistic spin on it.

8/10