The best Electronic Music of Q2-2023

Featuring 40 EPs and albums from April to June

Finally, after my first quarterly round-up this year, here’s the second one, covering music released in Q2 between April and June of 2023. It’s a big one, with 40 albums and EPs and over 3500 words of accompanying text - there’s really just a lot of good music coming out right now! I hope you enjoy reading and might come across something you like!

Maara - The Ancient Truth [Step Ball Chain]

Over the past couple of years, Maara-Louisa Dunbar from Montreal has made a name for herself with raving and trance-y techno-house EPs on labels like NAFF and Kalahari Oyster Cult. Her debut album The Ancient Truth centers on lush and atmospheric broken beat tracks that draw from 90's downtempo while remaining committed to trance-like melodies and arrangements. For a newer producer, this is a decidedly self-assured album that confidently cycles through various styles and approaches while staying coherent and making sure each track slots into the overall narrative vibe of the project.

Opener "Sip From My Chalice" is a silky downtempo breaks track that oozes with warmth and lushness. "Erotics Of Betrayal" is a dark and slow number, driven by fat breakbeats and a brooding, 00’s Bedrock-style reese bassline, over which dry spoken word vocals and wet, echoing vocal pads and chops form a kind of dialogue. "Rough N' Ready" is quicker and somewhat manic, with deep, rolling subs, swift organic hand-drums and percussion, and auto-panned vocal licks. "Just Give Me Time" is a modern drum & bass track driven by a dark reese and ethereal vocal-chop washes, while "Oh I Remember..." is a jazzy, LTJ Bukem style jungle track with trance-gated licks and luscious vowel pads. "Sapphic Rehabilitation Center" finally goes back to the ol' 4/4 and channels big and breaksy trance-house.

While this is a relatively subtle record, there is a palpable latent eroticism and libidinal energy to these tracks that is rare in contemporary music, which - much like our culture at large - tends to oscillate between the extreme poles of either bloodless puritanism or pornographic obscenity. The Ancient Truth suggests without showing, prefers to reside in the dark, fuzzy and liminal zones of the sonic imaginary. Do we need to note down "sapphic downtempo trance" as a new micro-genre?

Karenn - Everything Is Curly [Voam]

If Karenn's music had a slogan, it would probably be "make techno weird again!". Blawan and Pariah’s latest EP continues to develop their singular style with four idiosyncratic bangers. "Feeling Horizontal" channels the energy of a bad trip while still sounding fun and colorful with its rhythmic noise bursts, bell-like lead and slurred and sleazy vocals. "Happy Birthday" is an electro-techno track that frantically leaps around as if it were the frog on the cover art, while "From Hunk To Husk" gets into a pumping, tunneling rhythm that is interlaced with bubbly blurps and beeps.

Lau Nau - 5x7 [Beacon Sound]

Sublime studies for Buchla and voice by Finnish composer-producer Laura Naukkarinen. The pieces here revolve around nimble, Suzanne Ciani styled arp-constructions that continually alternate between sacral, almost medieval harmony and more dissonant and microtonal moments. Despite the frequent nods to early electronic music, this is a record that feels properly timeless. My favorite here is "Pleomothra", a veritable hymn of a track that harmonizes electronic sequences and vocals, layering them together in a series of complex foldings and unfoldings.

Liquid Earth - Deputy Dog [Butter Side Up]

If you are looking for some earth-shattering party bombs to spice up your summer, look no further than Deputy Dog. The oldschool tech-house tracks on this EP are 100% pure, distilled party rocking juice, with big, earwormy basslines, satisfyingly swinging and skipping drums and vibrant stabs and pads. Just listen to the killer groove that "Rim City" drops into at about a minute in. This is the kind of record that will effortlessly rescue almost any dancefloor, anywhere.

Ans M - Cicada Lullaby [Scorpio Red]

The debut album of London producer Ans M arrives with a mature and well-formed sound; thick, intense and richly textured. On Cicada Lullaby, she invokes a rich, sensual and haptic natural scenery that at times bursts into dense, synthetic distortions and contortions. The track "Hypogean" for example makes use of little fragments of warped jungle breaks to achieve an interesting textural contrast with the overall soundscape. There's a strong sense of sonic imagination here that never sticks to any single theme, but continuously explores its own outer limits, making use of a whole variety of different sources and textural approaches in the process.

Ribé & Roll Dann - Klockworks 35 [Klockworks]

Berghain resident Ben Klock's Klockworks label continues to be one of the best outlets for functional, yet smart contemporary techno tools. Klockworks 35 by Spanish producers Ribé (aka Alberto Pascual) and Roll Dann is a four-tracker that plays with different ways of approaching rhythm and texture within a functionalist framework. The first track "Preludio" comes with a big, rolling and skippy reverb-rumble bassline and glistening, glassy spectral pads in the breakdown, while "Pugna" is lighter, cheekier and funkier and the closer "Deliro" is a cool and heavy late-night dubber.

Jan Jelinek - Seascape [Faitche]

Jan Jelinek's latest album keeps the clicky and noisy textures of his signature sound, but rids itself of the welcoming warmth that his early material is known for. Instead, Seascape’s atmosphere is largely one of uncanniness and unease. The album was conceived in the context of an A/V installation in collaboration with Canadian visual artist Clive Holden in which both the visuals and the sonics use John Huston’s 1956 rendition of Moby Dick as their primary source material.

I saw the installation at the "Temple Of Faitche" event in Berlin in April 2023, where Jelinek’s sonics were accompanied by Holdens looped, machine-learning assembled imagery. It was an odd experience, at once captivating in the continuous repetition of the grainy and richly textured audio-visual material, but also disturbing in the juxtaposition between the sharp, mechanically looping images and the dissonant, free-flowing sounds. While I am not sure what message the project was supposed to convey, I did like the feeling of subtle unease it caused in me, a much subtler experience than the trite shock-bravado of so much contemporary installation art.

Tolerance - Divin [MESH-KEY]

If you are a fan of 70's and 80's Japanese music, you will probably already know this one, but for me, this reissue was my first introduction to this cult-classic with a backstory that's almost too good to be true: in the late 70s, a young female dental assistant made two pioneering avant-garde electronic music albums on the seminal label Vanity Records, only to promptly disappear from the music world and to never release anything again.

Despite such a record’s inherent risk of being suffocated under the weight of its own mythology, this music is still remarkable over forty years later because it still sounds utterly alien and reference-less. This is electronic outside made from the complete outside of the genre-matrix within we operate in today, only driven by base human intuition and what the interfaces of the (at the time still novel) electronic music-machines themselves suggested. Listening to this is like taking an expedition into the unknown and ancient pre-history of electronic music.

Mike Parker - Sabre-Tooth [Samurai Music]

Psychedelic techno maestro Mike Parker hones in on steppy halftime rhythms with his debut appearance on the key contemporary drum & bass label Samurai Music. The results of this unlikely encounter are odd, but fun hybrid tracks that step, oscillate and drone about in all sorts of satisfying shapes.

Carmen Villain - Music From The Living Monument [Smalltown Supersound]

This one's a mini-album originally made to accompany a modern dance performance. Very little happens across these five sparse, beatless and spectral pieces, but they excel exactly in what is missing. They are charming in their gaseous hollowness, conveying a sonic image of vast, deserted alien landscapes. I wouldn't know how to dance to this, but I guess that's what professionals are for!

Paul St. Hilaire - Tikiman Vol. 1 [Kynant Records]

The Berlin-based, Dominican-born Paul St. Hilaire is best known for his vocal contributions to many Basic Channel and Rhythm & Sound classics. In the time since, he's remained musically active, lending his unmistakable voice to producers like Rhauder and Deadbeat. His new solo project Tikiman Vol. 1 finds him both in the vocal booth and in the producer's seat. For an artist that is primarily known as a vocalist, the production work here is excellent throughout, drawing from the dub techno sound of his collaborations with Mark Ernestus and Moritz von Oswald, but also imbuing it with a tidier, more modern character. For anyone that's craving more Rhythm & Sound, this is as close to the source as you're going to get.

UAN0027 - UAN0027 [UAN]

[Link]

This is the latest in a cryptic series of anonymous records by a self-described anarchist collective. I have no idea who's behind these, but it is good stuff. Fittingly for the label's aesthetic, the music here almost entirely consists of strange, sparse and shadowy loop-sculptures that pay little attention to traditional notions of structure and composition. My favorite here is the fourth track, an abstract, but warm chord-driven loop that somewhat reminds me of clicks n' cuts era SND.

Kate Carr - Fever Dreams [Mana Records]

Kate Carr is an Australian sound artist and producer based in London. Her latest album Fever Dreams plays with sound art clichés, but also transcends them through its keen ear for texture and composition, continually pushing the sound-material forward in service of the overall structure, while also dwelling on individual sounds for long enough for them to reveal their own, singular textures.

Chaos In The CBD - Fabric Presents [Fabric]

Chaos in The CBD do classic, purist deep house better than just about anyone working today. Their new mix/compilation for London's Fabric club is a big grab-bag of lesser known 90's house bombs. Coming as both a mixed and unmixed version, casual listeners can enjoy a great classic house mix, while the unmixed tracks provide DJs and enthusiasts with high-quality digital versions of many sought after Discogs gems. Either way, this one's a must for anyone that enjoys classic house.

Caterina Barbieri - Myuthafoo [Light-Years]

Caterina Barbieri's last two albums have been some of my favorite music of the past five years. While this EP of material related to 2019's Ecstatic Computations does not reach the height of those records, Barbieri is a strong enough artist that even her b-sides are still excellent.

Temudo - Klockworks 37 [Klockworks]

Another killer Klockworks EP. This one's a fantastic two-tracker with very different grooves on each side. The a-side is bouncy, steadily creeping forward with subtle tension, while the b-side is more nervous and fidgety, with a rapidly rolling bassline and warm, pulsing chord stabs. Berlin’s Hardwax record stare says "Lethal, stealthily grooving Techno missiles". That about sums it up.

Victor Moragues - Espill [SUPERPANG]

SUPERPANG continues to be one of the most interesting labels in the field of contemporary computer music. While Victor Morague's Espill is full of the kind of rapid, glitchy and clicky textures that are a hallmark of this kind of music, the album manages to exceed the genres all-too-frequent academic dullness through its haptic, almost ASMR-like textural qualities that are oddly satisfying to listen to. This is an artist that knows how to tickle the ear just right.

Two Sword - Unity Vega [Bandcamp self-released]

This self-released debut album by the new Berlin-based project Two Sword offers a fresh take on contemporary ambient and different strains of global "club" music. The record’s atmospheres and textures are at times dense and manic, at other times wide and enveloping, with the standout being the first track "Two Sword", a deliciously warped and glistening ambient-trap epic.

KW - ALTGR [Ilian Tape]

Konrad Wehrmeister is a low-profile producer that's dropped a number of excellent records under various aliases on his local Ilian Tape label over the past few years. ALTGR is an EP of four breaksy jungle-ambient-techno hybrids. While the rhythms are rapid and percussion-laden, they still retain a nimble lightness that makes them stand out from the crowd. On top, lush and glossy pads and chord-figures create a warm and hospitable atmosphere. Tracks that draw you in without ever having to beg for attention.

Yosh - Show Me [Time Is Now]

The Time Is Now label is a reliable supplier of slick and modern takes on classic UK Garage. Show Me by label regular Yosh is a flawlessly produced four-tracker that channels both the ruffer and the lusher ends of garage. My favorite here is "Point Blank", a track that mixes classic garage swing and bass-pressure with spacey sine bleeps and wide, atmospheric pads.

Purelink - To / Deep [NAFF]

Purelink are back with an EP of impossibly lush late-night ambient dub drifters. Like taking a bath that is both warm and refreshing.

Bee Mask - Versailles Is Not Too Large... or Infinity Too Long [Unifactor]

Bee Mask was a part of the same 00's American DiY ambient-cassette underground that launched the careers of the likes of Emeralds and OPN. Unlike those artists, Bee Mask has kept a relatively low profile, which may also be explained by the fact that he's hardly released any music in the past decade. In lieu of new music, we can be happy that this hyper-limited 2008 cassette release is finally being reissued and digitally released, because both sides here are excellent. The a-side is an intense spectral orgy with Risset-like glassy drones that ascend and descend in pitch like a see-sick see-saw. The b-side is noisy and distorted, but also weirdly lush with its damp and dense, jungle-like vibe. Two intense pieces that are as satisfying as they are alien.

Caldera - Casual Transcendence [Flippen Disks]

Another quarter, another excellent, lush and refined UK-techno EP. Casual Transcendence offers four deep and dubby cuts that play around with nimble midtempo breakbeat-techno grooves. My favorite is "Styte”, a swirling soup of a track that is oozing with warm, swirly pads and silky filtered chords, while the carefully constructed drums maintain a feeling of skippy forward-momentum.

Matthew David - Mycelium Music [Leaving Records]

Mycelium Music is a bright and shimmery ambient album that is heavily textural with its rich, haptic clouds of sounds that gently sway and move across the stereo field. Organic sonic mushroom network music.

0 - 02 [0 Records]

A new entry in the Acting Press posse's strange "0" series. Just as weird as the last one, the a-side is a murky, subterranean loop centered on a dubby chord-figure that steadily loops for well over thirteen minutes with little change or development, with the exception of a few vital reverb and delay throws. A high-pitched, piercing resonance forms an odd, but captivating contrast to the otherwise warm and round mix. The b-side is even stranger, a breaksy and noisy percussive loop-sculpture drenched in tape delay that almost trips over itself with every new repetition.

Mads Kjeldgaard - Musik For Virtuelle Orgler [SUPERPANG]

The title already reveals what's going on here: experimental compositions that make use of digital physical modeling to go beyond the limits of the physical organ. I like Kjeldgaard's compositional approach here, centering on repeating Reichian, almost (proto)technoid, sequences that show off their structural dexterity through subtle means rather than singular big moments. Organ-ambient-trance?

Yaleesa Hall - Cullen [Will & Ink]

Yaleesa Hall first burst on the techno scene in the early 10's with a funky, colorful and perfectly engineered sound that presented a welcome respite from the dark and droning sound that was so popular at that time. After a few years of no new releases, the Amsterdam producer is now back with a strange, but massive-sounding four-tracker centered around distorted, but nimble breakbeat drums and big, grimey basslines that purr and screech as if they were living beings.

Neural Network - Opaque [re:Discovery]

This is an unreleased - apparently it got shelved when the label it was originally intended for went defunct - ambient-trance project made in the mid 90s that's been sitting hidden away in the producer's personal archive for the last twenty-five years. I'm glad it’s finally seeing the light of day, because this is a great album that harbors the strengths of the 90s' trance-y chillout-room scene without succumbing to the corny "consciousness, man" psychonaut-vibes that can often be found on similar records of that era.

Syz - Mindforms [Control Freak]

This one's a mini album packed with lush and dubby ambient and breakbeat techno cuts. "Botanic Receptors" in particular is a favorite here, with its big, extended sub bassline, subtle, steppy drums, gorgeous acid licks and enveloping humid atmosphere.

Io:za - It's Never Too Late [Wonderground]

On this EP, contemporary Romanian house meets 00’s progressive house. The original tracks come with looping melodic basslines, twinkly, delay-drenched arps and melancholic sine bleeps, supported by a lean modern minimal-house rhythm section. But it's the Mihai Pol remix that is the star of the show here, a gorgeous, proggy and playful ride that embodies the subtler end of 00's progressive trance and house in a fresh and novel manner.

Opheliaxz - 11//11 [Bandcamp self-released]

Ambient producer Opheliaxz has been around for a few years now, releasing single tracks on compilations by labels such as Lillerne Tapes. This appears to be her debut full length release. 11//11 is both lush and sparse, gently steering fluffy streams of sound and little textural clouds in slow, circular motions. Warm and oozing late-night soundscapes with some nice percussive moments, for example on "Kookaburra".

Aiden Francis - Overture [Houseum Records]

Aiden Francis has recently made a name for himself with a number of trance-y, acidic tech-house hits. His first album Overture channels similar big and euphoric vibes, borrowing freely from various strains of trance, rave and acid. Despite this penchant for excess, he manages to never make things sound too corny, which is quite the feat (he's also recently put out an Aqua Remix that somehow manages to not sound completely ridiculous, so apparently this man can make anything sound classy). Underground stadium tracks.

Tracing Xircles - First Contact [Candy Mountain]

More big and breaky trance-techno from Tracing Xircles, aka Blue Hour and A-JX, that oscillates between darker acidic moments and lighter atmospheric trance bliss. The b-side has an unexpected remix by modern drum & bass legend D-Bridge that goes real dark with a gloomy reese bassline and steppy, anxious drums.

Eric OS - Futurist [Limousine Dream]

Genie On Earth's Limousine Dream label has become a reliable outlet for colorful and melodic, 90s-inspired house. Eric OS's Futurist EP succeeds at the label’s house style with four fun and satisfying tracks. "Sound Capsule" has a cool guttural vocal-synthesis hook (me thinks it's one of the voice synthesis models in Mutable Instruments Braids or Plaids), while the title track comes with a simple, oldschooly bassline and slowly sweeping, glassy synth motifs. While these tracks are not exactly "futuristic", they do excel with plenty of retro charme.

Packed Rich - Warp Fields [Ilian Tape]

Packed Rich is a young producer and beatmaker from Munich, who here makes an appearance on the city's ever-reliable Ilian Tape label. Warp Fields skillfully makes the rounds between ambient, techno-jungle and "study & chill" instrumental beats. The album has a warm and playful mood across the board, making for an inviting and comforting listen that playfully moves between various styles.

Sterac - Teknitron [Delsin]

Teknitron is another entry in Delsin records’ ongoing reissue series of early cuts from the legendary Dutch techno producer Steve Rachmad. The title track “Teknitron” was originally released under his “Black Scorpion” alias and has been sought after on Discogs for years, so this reissue (and first ever proper digital release) is more than welcome. It’s a bonafide detroit-techno anthem, with shimmering, metallic dub chords that satisfyingly ping-pong all over the stereo field and lead into an extended breakdown that is adorned by lush, detroit-y strings and keys. The b-side "Alastria" is pure distilled techno soul, wide and sweeping in its infinite yearning. They don't make' em like this anymore.

Om Unit & TM-404 - In The Afterworld [Acid Test]

On In The Afterworld, two acid-dub masters get together, and the results are exactly what you'd expect: an album full of lush, pillowy and steamy acid-dub goodness. Acid for saunas.

Adam Pits - Synthetic Serenity [On Rotation]

On Synthetic Serenity, Adam Pits, a key player in the new trance-y underground, goes deep, mixing ambient pieces ("Lost In The Ether") with downtempo numbers ("Sleepness"), lush breaky techno ("Take a Moment") and atmospheric, modern drum & bass ("Delicate Procedure"). A quite varied record that nonetheless retains an atmosphere of honest, trance-y emotions throughout.

Wrecked Lightship - Oceans and Seas [Midnight Shift]

Oceans and Seas moves through a variety of different moods and atmospheres in search of ways to express the nautical through sonics. "Arial" is a lush and welcoming dubby opener, while "Third Law" dives straight into the sea, getting deeper and denser, with a rapid, but sparse rhythm-section and glassy, spectralite pads.

Meanwhile, on "Eon", things get surprisingly dark, sounding like a ship that is facing an onslaught of terrifying waves, with degraded, plastic-y textures and manic, blown-up 808 hits. "Take It Back" is almost dubstep, with its big, wobbly bassline and skipping, steppy garage drums. Closer "Oceans and Seas" is a lush and rave-y electro number with bright pads, occasional hoover licks and a skittish bassline.

Charles Curtis, Alan Licht and Dean Roberts - May 99 [Blank Forms]

Quite the all-star experimental music lineup on this recently unearthed live recording from the late 90's. The two sides here are simple, but skillful extended drone pieces that excel with the same timbral je-ne-sais-quoi that makes Eliane Radigue's music so special. Fine music for fine ears.