Lucky Paul
Remixes EP (Wolf + Lamb)
Before they started making slow, deep, discursive house music, New Yorkers Wolf + Lamb used to love Kompakt. The Cologne label's signature sound – anguished airbrushed techno, elegant ambiguous trance – is the obvious inspiration for Gadi "Lamb" Mizrahi and label-mate Eli "Soul Clap" Goldstein's sensational rework of Lucky Paul's Thought We Were Alone. The original is interesting, lurching James Blake-ish bass music, but the remix casts vocalist Milosh's white soul incantations adrift on a surging, rolling sea of synthetic surf. It's simple, but it hits that elusive happy yet sad sweet spot to devastating emotional effect. If this doesn't soundtrack a thousand sunrise moments and/or catastrophic mental breakdowns in Ibiza, this summer, well, there's no justice.
Wild Beasts
Bed Of Nails (Domino)
Another Gilbert & Sullivan operetta by way of Japan (the band, not the country), on which Hayden Thorpe swears he could sleep on a bed of nails with his new Ophelia. Yeah, whatever, Hayden. Give it 12 months and you'll be like the rest of us, writing songs called For Fuck's Sake, You've Got All The Duvet and If You Keep Snoring Like That You'll Have To Go In The Spare Room.
Magnetic Man Feat P-Money
Anthemic (Columbia)
Strange world, innit? Where taking a vital underground British music, like dubstep or grime, and reproducing a chart-friendly facsimile of it, in the hope of crossing over, is nowadays deemed a de facto positive thing. We're expected to take pride in one of "ours" taking on Rihanna and Ne-Yo. Rather than just shrugging at this concession to major label mediocrity. What changed?
Panda Bear
Surfer's Hymn (Actress Primitive Patterns Extended Mix) (Kompakt)
You know how, musically, you quite like all that Panda Collective stuff, but the winsome Beach Boys vocals make you want to rip your own arm off? Good news! There's no singing here. Over 12 dogged minutes, Actress – Brit visionary Darren Cunningham – takes Panda Bear into a very dark place. Like a lot of great modern (dub) techno, on an arc from Dettmann to Perc, it conjures serious soul music from an oppressive, relentless mix of beguiling rhythm and sonic decay.
Teeth
Care Bear (Moshi Moshi)
Do you miss electroclash and crave new rave? Do drunk art students shouting over cheap synthesizers still quicken your pulse? If so, Teeth channel mid-2006 in all its blank, snotty glory. Like Kap Bambino and Crystal Castles, at least 50% of their output will be empty provocation, but this? Spunky!
Tropics
Mouves (Planet Mu)
Once a filthy outlet pipe spewing brain-melting drill'n'bass, Planet Mu has, latterly, embraced twisted, post-everything pop. Tropics' deliciously vague Mouves could almost be a weirder, better Friendly Fires.
