PICK OF THE WEEK
Jin Choi
Dig Your Own Out (Archipel)
Minimal techno's moment may have passed, but its core DNA – restraint, space, absence, abstraction – continues to spawn new mutated lifeforms. Where classic Tresor techno was all gurning punishment, modern mnml is more about poetry, poignant melody and sonic shadow play. Here, "100% music nerd" Jin Choi dabs dulcet piano and what sounds like the wounded, plaintive howl of a dying stag around a muffled beat to create a nine-minute ghost of a track. It is sad and beautiful. Remarkably, it's also a compelling invitation to dance. In audacity and soul, it knocks everything else – yes, even Kylie – into the proverbial cocked hat.
ALSO OUT THIS WEEK
Robyn
Dancing On My Own (Konichiwa)
People like Robyn, don't they? She has a residual aura of credibility. It's baffling. She might have good hair (Billy Idol's old quiff, currently), and a singular dress sense, but she makes quite terrible music. This is the usual cheaply manipulative, curiously leaden Euro electro. It's how the Knife would sound were they driven, not by integrity and ideas, but cold hard careerism.
Kylie
All The Lovers (Parlophone)
Talking of people who enjoy a mystifying amount of public goodwill, Kylie's back. With a tune that makes Robyn sound like Atari Teenage Riot. An attempted homage to 80s synth-pop (yes, blame La Roux), this sounds, in all its reedy functionality, like an unsuccessful British Eurovision entry, or a Dollar B-side. Yes, that good.
Von Spar
trOOps (Italic)
The less you know about Von Spar the better. Logically, there's no way that an "artist collective" influenced by krautrock and Fluxus trying to make an important, if opaque, point about mercenary armies could be this much fun. But they are. Equal parts Fujiya & Miyagi, Lindstrom and pop song, the fabulously arch trOOps is a minor cosmic disco classic.
Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs
All In Two Sixty Dancehalls EP (Greco-Roman)
Blood Pressure, featuring Roll Deep's Riko, is a vigorously daft thunderclap; hardcore, in a "where were you in 92?" not Fugazi way. It's Garden and particularly That One, however – sweet electropop tunes driven and destabilised by wonky Zomby-style blips – that will quicken your pulse.
Solomun
Sisi (Leena)
Curesto, the stand-out track here, is like some vintage piano house tune heard through a thick fug of medium wave static, memory and regret, that slowly sharpens into a grave, elegiac, string-led "moment". It is but an Alexis Taylor vocal away from being the best thing Hot Chip have ever done.
