Some June highlights

It’s been a quiet month in the worldwide record shopping stakes but I’ve got some major hauls coming in over the next couple of weeks, including that Gamelan consignment so I can come good on the promised primer very soon. Below is a quick summary of some of the best stuff of the last few weeks:

Graffiti Rock – Raydar Ellis (Fat Beats, New York)
Hip hop keeps turning out that classic ‘95 sound with all the usual references intact. This ode to the writers rises to the top.

Vomit – Parallel Thought feat. MF Doom (Fat Beats, New York)
Dark and Doom-worthy, Parallel Thought strings together a disorientating beat that lurches around the steady vocal with an uneasy push/pull dynamic.

Reality Check – Verbal Threat (Fat Beats, New York)
Primo. And it’s one of his best since AZ’s “The Come Up”.

Sides Of Space – D5 (Hard Wax, Berlin)
10 minutes of blissed out free falling Detroit-style techno somewhere between classic Ron Trent and Carl Craig.

Digitalis – Zombi (Missing Link, Melbourne)
As the name suggests, devotees of Italian prog soundtrack maestros, Goblin, and specifically their synth-heavy score for Dawn Of The Dead (“Zombi” in its Italian release).

Bedre Tider – Gorilla Angreb (Missing Link, Melbourne)
Good old fashioned punk rock from Denmark, innit.

Losing The Will To Survive – Findlay Brown (Pure Groove, London)
Confusing its Richard Thompson with its Doobie Brothers, this is a fantastically assured debut, disconcertingly (un)familiar.

Five Minute Wonder – William (Pure Groove, London)
The best one this month from the usual glut of angular UK bands with a bunch of Sonic Youth LPs lying around their Depford bedsit.

Fools With Money – Luke Toms (Pure Groove, London)
Marvellously eccentric Brit songwriting in the finest of traditions turning Beatlesesque pop upside down with a Victorian twist.

Waters Of Nazareth – Justice (Pure Groove, London)
Inescapable this summer in all likelihood, this really does mangle early Daft Punk into impossible shapes. Especially impossible if you’re Daft Punk.

Pinheiros Message – Reminder (Reckless, Chicago)
Unwieldy Portuguese raps that could be lifted from a Baile Funk track against a brutally hand-crafted beat. Taken from the album on Eastern Developments by Joshua Mikah Abrams.

Flechte – Datasette (Small Fish, London)
Crunchy electro like a less nimble Windowlicker, retaining plenty of classic techno elements.

R y F1 – Damian Schwartz (Vinyl Club, Ibiza Town)
It’s been said before but Sleeparchive’s guiding sound is all over this. Damian Schwartz, like his sometime labelmate Alex Under manages to invest the sound with considerably more groove though.