Right on time, 2 years after 2023’s 1977, pioneering electronica producer Mike Paradinas has the follow up, 1979, ready. The 15 fresh tracks stick to their predecessor’s template, reviving, refreshing the classic `90s “IDM” sound that, over 3 decades ago, Paradinas helped to create. A soothing synergy of human and machine sirens, the album seamlessly slots in alongside seminal stuff such as Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works 85-92. Constructing compositions from collaged, treated ethereal vocals and symphonic, synthetic drones and sighs.

Some of tracks explore darker terrain. For example, the icy The Next Room, and the ringing, chiming illbient Pulsar, a soundscape that maps similar sinister territory to The Sabres Of Paradise’s Clock Factory. Majadahonda at Dawn also starts spooky but slowly unfurls into something far warmer. Majadahonda at Dusk, its counterpart, is an even serener reprise. 

Standouts are many, half the set, more than several, like the shimmering Yemas and the breakbeat-driven acid flashback Houzz 14. Escorial, again, appears to echo those Sabres. In this case, their anthem Smokebelch II. Radox, named after a famous brand of 20th Century bath salts, is built, appropriately, on soothing, stretched and squeezed analogue bubbles. Floatation fuses slow, crashing beats with old school bleeps and bellowing bursts of rave LFOs. 

µ-Ziq’s 1979 is out now on Balmat.