Neimad
One Strobe, Fog Ambient EP

The immaculate Omar S resumes his Side Trakx series: released on his own Detroit imprint FXHE Records that he has been running for more than a decade now, Side Trakx Vol 4 is comprised of three rather soulful pieces.

Cult Berber musician Hocine Chaoui is a musical whirlwind, a tornado that sucks up and spits out electronic, folk, rock, world, afro, tribal, trance, electro and country music at high speed. This is a remastered version of his Ouechesma album which was drawn from Oriental Music Production's archive of regional Algerian cassettes. It was made on traditional instruments with his own unique vocal chants and a glut of mad effects and drum machines. The beats are incessant, dense, physical. The vocals add another layer of intensity and the whole thing is as wild and crazy as it sounds.

140g black vinyl housed in a glossy sleeve with artwork printed inside and out. Download code included. Fresh from the release earlier this year of his compilation of lambent, analogous ambient and atmospheric music for the esteemed Late Night Tales compilation series, Floating Points’ first album in four years, Crush, twists whatever you think you know about him on its head again. A tempestuous blast of electronic experimentalism whose title alludes to the pressure-cooker of the current environment we find ourselves in. As a result, Shepherd has made some of his heaviest, most propulsive tracks yet, nodding to the UK bass scene he emerged from in the late 2000s, such as the dystopian low-end bounce of previously shared striking lead single ‘LesAlpx’ (Pitchfork’s ‘Best New Track’), but there are also some of his most expressive songs on Crush: his signature melancholia is there in the album’s sublime mellower moments or in the Buchla synthesizer, whose eerie modulation haunts the album.