Attempting to recreate the golden yesterdays of Jose Padilla’s White Isle sunsets with the tunes of today… 

Varidata / Digital Crime / Schrott Rec.

Digital Crime is downtempo techno with boom-bap beats from Paul Ruddigkeit, under the alias Varidata. Included on a comp care of Schrott Rec. it’s a crepuscular, contemplative cut, constructed from shuffling snare rattle and gentle low-end hum. Eevo Lute-esque gear, it’s a bit of a ringer for Aphex Twin’s Flim, if spun at 33 not 45. 

Art Of This / Manifesto / Electronic Sound

Art Of Noise have been reborn / re-invented as Art Of This. For a big, but typically cryptic, interview with the 3 remaining founding members – Paul Morley, Gary Langan and JJ Jeczalik – pick up a copy of Electronic Sound Issue 122. The magazine is bundled with an exclusive 7”, which on one side re-imagines Moments In Love, and on the other lays out the group’s Manifesto. A sonic collage centred around Morley’s prose, the piece starts out pretty abstract but quickly settles into something much smoother and soothing. The journalist’s voice is multi-tracked, sped up and slowed down, magically, some how extracting poignancy from lyrics that are essentially just a list. 

Cahl Sel / Wishbone / Reflective

Jonah and Billee Sharp’s 1990s US electronica institution, Reflective Records re-emerges with a second EP from San Francisco’s Cahl Sel. Just like its predecessor, the record contains 4 terrific tracks that range from deep house (Blue and Focus), to Detroit influenced techno (Panoptic) and finally ambient. This last tune, Wishbone, is what, end-of-the-day cocktail-wise, we’ll concentrate on here. A sublime shimmer of modular synthesis, which is much more new age, more Ran$om Note’s Music To Watch Seeds Grow By.  

Lucrecia Dalt / Cosa Rara / RVNG Intl.

Columbian artist, Lucrecia Dalt, returns after something like a 3 year hiatus with a David Sylvain collaboration. Cosa Rara is a song of 2 halves. Beginning with Dalt leading a hand drum-driven chant, midway through it swaps the percussion for contrabass and feedback buzz and Sylvian doing his best Mark Lanegan, delivering a moody dose of drug-addled prose poetry. On the flip of the 45 there’s also an interesting Matias Aguayo dub.  

Joy Spheres Rees / Trust The Feeling / BBE

Mancunian producer Tom Harris aka Hidden Spheres has teamed up with Allysha Joy and Finn Rees, members of Melbourne-based band 30/70. An album, Solina, is in the works, but the single Trust the Feeling is already out. A slow, seductive, stripped back shot of 21st Century street soul the song boasts heavy bleep-inspired bass, breathless vocals, plaintive piano and a snaking fusion synth solo. People into Apiento and Andrew Hale’s Open Space should definitely take a listen, 

Pepe Link / Groove Memories / Music For Dreams

With clipped guitar and muted trumpet, Mallorcan producer Pepe Link’s Groove Memories journeys back to jazzy hip hop’s heyday. Sampled, scratched spoken vocals, poetically describing the genre, while narrating this mellow, gentle head-nodder set to a bed of cool, calming electric keys. 

Poppeye / Be My Baby / Super Disco Edits

Be My Baby is a slow, smoochy, soulful something recorded in 1978, by Seattle-based band, Poppeye. Unreleased until now, with a wah-wah licked, brass kissed rare groove, it shuffles and seduces in the style of Starvue, Silvia Striplin and Leon Ware. This is flipped by the more uptempo, but still marvellous swing of Never Gonna Give You Up (no relation to the Rick Astley number). 

Michael Sarian / Glory Box / Greenleaf Music

Argentina-raised, New York-based Canadian trumpeter Michael Sarian has an LP lined up for Greenleaf Music. While the main focus of the set, titled Esquina, is 2 near 20-minute long tracks, he also squeezes in a tidy Portishead cover. Reinterpreting Glory Box, and trading Beth Gibbons’ gut-wrenching blues wailing for his (Birth Of The) cool heartbroken horn. 

Testpattern / Ocean Liner / Yen

Testpattern were Fumio Ichimura and Masao Hiruma, protégées of Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Yukihiro Takahashi and Haruomi Hosono. The duo’s sole solo release, 1982’s Apres-Midi, is a bit of a “holy grail” for folks who collect Japanese electronica. I’ve lived in Japan for 18 years and have never seen an original copy, but it’s just received a domestic repress. Several of the album’s tracks have been compiled or used in mixes by DJs in the West (see Ring Dance, Techno Age and Souvenir Glace), but Ocean Liner is the sunset standout. Slow muted whistling synths summon a peaceful tide, where the waters barely ripple. Too melodic to be BGM, or kankyo ongaku, it’s coda wheezes, a little like a fisherman’s squeezebox.