Denature France Vinilo y CD

Review: Viken Arman is Alone Together on his superb new album for the French label Denature. The artist himself is obsessed with freedom and his sound sits somewhere in a nether region between house, jazz, hip-hop and minimal. Carefully layered and precisely structured as it takes listens on a colourful and kalaedescopic journey through different moods and grooves with plenty of worldly influences, it's the sort of deftly designed album that works both at home and in the club and packs in plenty of profound moments of emotion.

Review: The Alone Together Remixes EP breathes new life into Viken Arman's acclaimed 2023 album and has standout reinterpretations from Acid Pauli, Session Victim and Mano Le Tough. Session Victim first infuse 'You With Me' with their signature soul and craft a rhythmic, percussive journey. Acid Pauli blends 'You With Me' and 'Lonely Raver' into a surreal, experimental trip of modular rhythms and dreamlike textures and deep house master Mano Le Tough offers a wonderful take on 'Vibrations'. It is a pulsing club workout designed for peak-time with plenty of lush synth textures. Importantly, each remix is sympathetic to Viken's original analogue warmth.

Review: As fans of the Berlin-based live trio formed around producer and songwriter Edmund Kenny will know, Light West has been a long time coming - six releases and three years on the road, or thereabouts. Finally turning their attention to a longer project, there's a windswept, worldly feeling underpinning the full record, which calls upon myriad influences to realise the complete Kerala vision.

Invoking artists like Matthew Dear in terms of vocal delivery, not least on the Bolero-hued 'Amsterdam' and the laidback, hushed minimal tech-blues of 'Phoebe', from beginning to end we're given guitar driven house grooves, immersive ambient, chunky basement beats and darkroom, techno-infused rumbles. The overall result being a long form outing that the confirmed faithful will feel was well worth waiting for, and newbies will struggle not to fall in love with.