David K/My Favourite Robot/Mirko Loko
Fall/Winter Collection (Vision Quest)
Industry wisdom has it that, in order to make money, a new dance music label must be digital-only and tightly genre-specific. So, with its art prints, vinyl releases and vague musical remit, Visionquest is doing everything wrong. Just seven singles in, however, it has already delivered cult classics from Tale Of Us and Benoit & Sergio, and – like Warp or DFA before it – is commanding serious allegiance. With its David K and My Favorite Robot tracks, this sampler furthers VQ's adventures in post-minimal electronic pop, but it's the curveball, Mirko Loko's gaseous, shifting, 14-minute machine-soul meditation, Gloria, that leaves you reeling. It's just beautiful.
Connan Mockasin
Faking Jazz Together(Phantasy)
He looks like the sixth member of the Horrors and sings like a listless amalgam of Mercury Rev's Jonathan Donahue and whiny comedian, Emo Philips. If you can get past the voice, Connan's dusty psychedelia has a queasy charm, but I can't. The Tom Furse remix strips out the vocal. It's a sweet relief.
Joakim
Find A Way (Tigersushi)
Occasionally, Joakim casually drops a lazer-guided classic. His 2006 single, I Wish You Were Gone, is a sad-robot anthem, a disco-punk diamond. Generally, though, he prefers to indulge in esoteric art rock and cosmically warped disco. It's alright, but like James Murphy's Greenberg soundtrack or Soulwax's iPhone app, it's not really what you want. Find A Way is relatively sane, but in its jaunty, refracted, tropical-electro way, it still sounds fussy and overworked. Like David Byrne trying to make a club banger. Apparently, Tiga thinks it sounds like the Thompson Twins, which is surely the dictionary definition of faint praise.
Metronomy
Everything Goes My Way (Because Music)
One of The English Riviera's less ebullient tracks, but further proof that Joe Mount is an unusually elegant craftsmen – a Paddy McAloon for the DIY electro set. A purposefully downbeat declaration of romantic joy, this duet with Veronica Falls' Roxanne Clifford could almost be a postscript to Peter Bjorn & John's Young Folks.
D/R/U/G/S
Connected (Tender Age)
Callum Wright insists that he was in punk bands and that he'd never really heard any dance music, until a couple of years ago. By the sounds of it, he's still processing this brave new world. His debut, Love/Lust, paid sensational homage to Kompakt's lilting emotive trance. This EP is equally indebted to Warp, early rave and Detroit techno. Yet Wright deploys these familiar sounds to create a distinct D/R/U/G/S atmosphere of hot lights, late nights and dark, brooding melancholy. It isn't new exactly, but nor is this easy nostalgia. Wright's music has character.
