This was always going to be a poignant release, as the final Music From Memory compilation worked on by the late co-founder Jamie Tiller. The music contained within is breath-takingly beautiful, doing what MFM does best in digging out rarely heard gems from intriguing musical moments in time and bringing them to the present for flawlessly curated listening. This time out the 13-track LP takes you on a trip through richly textured ambient music made at a time when club culture was developing in Japan and ‘listening techno’ was transcending from bars to dancefloors.

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Fergus Jones peels off his Perko alias for the release of his debut album and “most personal record yet”. Five years in the making, it’s informed by the sparks that fly from creative collaboration and open-minded experimentation, with contributions from artists such as Huerco S, Koreless and Laila Sakini featuring among the tracklist. The music feels like it’s been given plenty of space to breathe, sounding unhurried and often blissful, with diverse sonic territory explored. ‘Heap’ is a standout, which feels like an aural meditation as it gently lulls you into a state of relaxation.

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This 10-track compilation from Mor Elian and Rhyw’s Fever AM imprint is a melon-twisting treat. Describing its contents as “razor sharp mutations for the future”, it features a number of artists making the best headfuck techno and bass cuts in the game right now, including the labelheads linking up on the punchy ‘Cowlick’. Karenn’s opener ‘Calm Down Carl’ is brittle and simmering; Sister Zo’s ‘Eeny Meeny’ is fraught and unstable; Lukas Wigflex & Son of Philip’s ‘Stink Chegwin’ will have you pulling a stankface at its bassweight; while RONI’s ‘Alarma’ flits between anxious and driving. Further contributions are a pneumatic cut from DJ Doomscroll, a scratchy club tool from Lurka, the dramatic sound Peder Mannerfelt, an angular opening sharpening into a pulsating bassline from Naco, and Capuiz’s ‘Unhinged’ closer which is all erratic percussion and disorientating outer textures.

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Ever since we first heard ‘Hornet’ unveiled on Pearson Sound’s The Lot Radio show back in July, we suspected a big release was on the way. Those suspicions were confirmed with the drop of four-track EP ‘Which Way Is Up’ on Hessle Audio. We’ve seen that buzzing opener send dancefloors loopy since and it’s the standout cut here, but the whole EP is top notch stuff. ‘Twister’ is all dynamic layers spiralling apart, while ‘Slingshot’ is heads-down and murky, before the closing title-track brings about a comedown-soothing close.

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Sara Landry cements her place at the top of contemporary techno with a powerful debut album filled with pummeling beats and surges towards spiritual catharsis. Informed by transfers of spiritual energy, the 12-track LP comprises collaborations with artists such as Mike Dean, Nico Moreno,LEGZDINA and Shlømo, fusing robust techno foundations with styles spanning hip hop, trance and pop, including Landry’s own spell-binding vocals.

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If you’ve ever wondered what music Arthur Russell might have made if he’d lived to go to FWD>>, then here’s an album for you. It experiments with answering that question and wider musical explorations through the unique lens Midland brings to queer history. “I was very much in communion with the spirits,” he told us of the process of making the 13-track record, which features samples of influential activists David Wojnarowicz and Marlon Riggs, and work alongside contemporary queer artists in Jonny Seymour of Australia's Stereogamous and Luke Howard from Horse Meat Disco. It salutes those that came before and made what happens now possible, such as partying at Glastobury’s intoxicating queer venue NYC Downlow, in sleekly produced and immersive house, electro, downtempo and ambient compositions.

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OneDa is a force of nature who represents the unbridled empowerment possible to achieve through music. Having grown up in a strict religious household where her queer identity was not welcomed, she’s been exploring self-expression and liberation through music. Her diverse approach blends styles such as jungle, hip hop and Afrobeats in radical anthems of acceptance that also pack the potential to tear up a dancefloor.

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There’s a lot that can be written about Two Shell and the playful way they present (or don’t) themselves, and through all the misdirection and discourse, you could sometimes be forgiven for forgetting that they make really fucking good music. Their self-titled debut album is a nice reminder, serving up 13 pop-infused, bass-loaded club bangers that brilliantly toe the line between tongue-in-cheek and soundsystem-shaking.

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Nairobi-born, Berlin-based sound artist KMRU drops another hypnotic ambient album that skilfully translates his curiosity for everyday noise into stunning musical form. Traversing between the eerie, whirring drones of ‘canopy’ to the liquid melodies of ‘over a placid river’ and the hazy chords of ‘tend’, ‘Forge’ is perhaps a more typically harmonious example of KMRU’s work, its frequent use of field recordings effortlessly disguised within each track’s rhythm. And yet, there is still an active call for the listener to find meaning within stillness, and attune their ear to the sounds of the world we might otherwise ignore under different circumstances.

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Renowned producer Flying Lotus surprised everyone earlier this month when he dropped his first solo and non-soundtrack project in five years with no warning. Although ‘Spirit Box’ was preceded by the singles ‘Garmonbozia’ and ‘Ingo Swann’, neither could prepare fans for what was to come from the rest of the EP, as no one track is like another.

‘Ajhussi’ is a house track with a deep, groovy bassline, while ‘Let Me Cook’ leans more into hip hop and R&B through a collaboration with Dawn Richard. Meanwhile, ‘The Lost Girls’ is spurred on by a relentless acoustic beat and Indian singer Sid Sriram’s vocals. While disparate in genre, the EP is untied by its bubbly mood.

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The debut release from Berlin-based multi-instrumentalist D’Monk is about as exciting as it gets for a first-time project, as the artist throws everything into one, tightly produced, six-track EP. ‘Shine’ merges gritty industrial machine-crunch techno with hissing hi-hats, soulful chords and electro-funk basslines. At times the rhythm trips itself up, like in broken beat, elsewhere it sits back, resting in its heels and moving forwards without effort.

Two of the tracks ‘U Just Don’t Know What U Do 2 Me’ and ‘Don’t State the Obvious’ were recorded live, “straight from the mixing decks” as the record's liner reads. The title-track features keys from Moses Yoofee, and percussion from Ziggy Zeitgeist and JAB.

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‘3AM (LA LA LA)’ is Confidence Man’s ode to the late-night session. That moment of euphoria after the club and in the afters is encapsulated within this fresh new album. In their recent cover story with Mixmag Janet from the band shared: “We were doing a few sessions with producers and we weren't really getting anything from it because we'd always written everything, just us. And then we were like ‘just give us one cooked session.’” This vibrant release is packed with heart-pumping dance tunes.

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‘DareDeviil2000’ is an album with no skips. As a complete body of work BABii guides us through a range of techno-infused textures and BPMs weaving the listener in and out of these dreamlike tracks. Teaming up with BABii on the production are the likes of Samual Organ (Sega Bodega and Shygirl), Mun Sing, Iglooghost and more, as they help push forth her soft vocals and build that distinctive atmosphere which comes with her work.

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Record label, Eastern Margins, has tapped up a variety of artists to release its second compilation album with the mission to spread the sounds of “alternative Asian culture”. Covering a spectrum of genres from the likes of hyperpop and donk with G3GE’s ‘Gance!’ and the breaks and twangs of gyrofield to J-pop of Tokyo’s PAS TASTA and Filipinos budot from DJ Love. Other global talent that feature on the release include J Love, dj g2g, CLAIR, LVRA plus plenty more.

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Smothered in blissed-out jazz instrumentals and Afrobeat rhythms, London’s Lex Amor delivers her second full-length album some four years on from her last, ‘Forward Ever’. Drawing inspiration from soul, R&B, and her Nigerian heritage, this nine-track release spans a lyrically-touching range of productions that represent “the activity of resilience”.

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Uruguay’s Lechuga Zafiro debuts on TraTraTrax with ‘Desde los oídos de un sapo’, a 7-track record with heavy use of field recordings collected in countries from Chile to Portugal. By using recordings taken from materials like metal, glass, and wood, as well as animals including birds, pigs, and frogs, Lechuga Zafiro, compiles a chaotically-pieced together experimental project with the familiar feeling of a club music record.

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The latest edition of Woozy’s ‘.5’ compilation series brings together nine female and non-binary artists who work across soundsystem culture. The Dublin-based label enlists the likes of No Sir, Jossy Mitsu, Introspekt, and Ila Brugal, each bringing bassy club cuts to the table – from eye-watering breaks to hazy dubstep.

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It’s difficult to argue with the opening declaration on first track ‘Lachrymose’: “I am going to be a star”; TAAHLIAH’s debut album is indisputably, undeniably a star-maker. While, at her own admission, the Glasgow-based musician has made a name for herself with “slick and sexy dance music” — ‘Gramarye’ puts songwriting at the centre, a transition that allows for a vulnerable, uninhibited chronicle of her innermost thoughts and desires. Take the fist-to-your-chest balladry of ‘Hours’ and the catchy ‘Angel’, complete with finger clicks along the chorus line — can we say we aren’t fending off the urge to get a lighter out and bob along to the synth build-up on ‘Heavenrise’? But there is still a commanding, cheeky club edge within the record’s depths — take the all-out Eurotrance on ‘Dawn’, and the fiendishly captivating vocal on ‘Boys’ that has rightfully become a go-to for any sweaty basement DJ wanting to crank up the temperature. But all in all, the record showcases what TAAHLIAH does best, taking the deeply personal and giving it a universal buoyancy and humour that has led to her becoming one of the UK’s most exciting musicians.

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With a title shared by John Broughton’s all-encompassing history of UK council estates, frustration and isolation of the UK class divide is an expected focal point of Low End Activist’s new album ‘Municipal Dreams’. But while the Sneaker Social Club honcho returns to Blackbird Leys, the deprived estate he grew up on in Oxford, following it acting as the core inspiration for his 2022 debut ‘Hostile Utopia’, his second album focuses less on the juxtaposition between the estate experience and the affluence of the nearby city centre and instead acts as an to-the-bone biography of life on the estate. While there are moments of unease and derision, with the disjointed kicks and cavernous bass of ‘Self-Destruction’ and the frenetic, scattered breaks of ‘Just a Number (Institutionalised)’ which is inspired by the cyclical misery of the juvenile detention system – there are also molecules of rough-edged tenderness, take the effervescent twinkle found in ‘Hope III’, or the expert way LEA takes what could be a harsh, compressed bassline, but reshapes it with an almost warming quality when accompanied by a soft, trickling synths on ‘Innocence’. An honest portrayal of poverty in the UK, at a time when it’s sorely needed.

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Has a remix album ever been so intrinsically linked to its source as much as ‘Brat and it's completely different but also still brat’? Could ‘Brat’ have existed without the steady array of reworks that accompanied it? Is this remix album more “Brat” than ‘Brat’? In a literal sense, a good chunk of the tracks that debuted with Charli XCX’s long-awaited remix album this month were already secured within the ‘Brat’ zeitgeist through their initiation during the height of “Brat Summer” — the lines from the Lorde-featuring ‘Girl, So Confusing’ are arguably even more quotable than the original, and ‘Guess’ with Billie Eilish has been the recipient of ‘Brat’’s only UK number 1 single. Though in a spiritual sense, it was the demonstration of ‘Brat’’s reworkability that made the record into a monster — showcased no more so than on off-the-wall new additions ‘Rewind’ featuring Bladee and a ‘Club Classics’/‘365’ mash-up from bb trickz. ‘Brat’ may be an album, but ‘Brat and it's completely different but also still brat’ goes further… embodying ‘Brat’’s core mood.

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