May: 8 electro releases you need to hear this month

Radioactive Man 'Luxury Sky Garden' (Asking For Trouble)

For his fifth studio album, Radioactive Man (aka Keith Tenniswood) has raided his legendary live sets for inspiration. He’s also taken the unusual approach of mastering and cutting the entire record himself. ‘Luxury Sky Garden’ is pure, unadulterated Radioactive Man. There’s no flab or self-indulgence; just raw-sounding electro distilled through a dizzying range of influences. There’s jazz spliced with big-beat theatrics for ‘Steve Chops’, two-step wrapped around space-age electronica on ‘Deep Space Habitat’ and tough-as-old-boots breaks masquerading as electro on ‘Bonnet Bee’. The LP’s final third finds Tenniswood at his most daring: ‘Sonic Portal’ is all frenzied melodies and drums, ‘Jommtones’ feeds jungle motifs fed through a prism of electro and ‘Serving Suggestion’ adds Kraftwerk-like synths to crooked hooks for a show-stopping finish.

8/10