Anders Enge
Love Loser

After two EPs on Pleasure Club, Johnny Hunter returns to the label with his first full length - Dub Is King LP. Fusing all of the styles he has become renowned for through his releases and DJ sets, this album see’s him incorporate dubby techno, spacey electro and UK garage flavours into one eclectic yet cohesive body of work.Created throughout the trials and tribulations of the last two years, Dub Is King LP is a message of optimism, unity and freedom, and is also a deep homage to Johnny's roots in soundsystem culture.

Berlin-based imprint Ecke Records has gone from strength to strength over its past three releases, an inaugural VA followed by EP’s from Squallfront and Data Room, in the process cementing itself as a now go to label for leftfield leaning electronica and each record further draws you in thanks to the uniquely designed full sleeve artwork by Ben Fables. Here we see Ecke deliver its fourth release courtesy of Xantrax, a Marseille-born producer and one half of Squallfront alongside the label-founder. Taking the lead is ‘Tekline’, a murky, unfurling cut fuelled by off-kilter tribal drum work, bubbling bass delays and modulating synth flutters. Addison Groove steps up next on remix duties, reshaping ‘Tekline’ with choppy vocal cuts, dubbed out chord stabs and organic percussion floating atop the originals hypnotic groove. ‘Linetek’ opens the flip, as the name would suggest acting as a counterpart to the lead track, taking a 4/4 approach rhythmically while introducing a similar modulating bass line alongside chanting vocals. ‘0121’ then rounds out the package, an angsty, dynamically unfolding composition laid out over four and a half minutes with droplet synth delays, heady bass swells, spoken word vocals and crunchy broken drums.

Since he started producing music, Berlin-based American sound artist Jake Muir has been obsessed with sampling. His 2018 album "Lady's Mantle" was based on manipulated chunks of vintage Californian surf rock, and its follow-up, 2020's midnight symphony "The Hum Of Your Veiled Voice" was sourced from a wide variety of old records, and inspired by the work of experimental turntablists like Marina Rosenfeld, Janek Schaefer and Philip Jeck.On "Mana", Muir looks back to a misunderstood musical movement. Around 1995, a group of New York producers and DJs - including DJ Olive, DJ Spooky and Spectre - pioneered a genre-dissolving sound by unifying hip-hop techniques with ideas pulled from dub, jungle, ambient music and industrial noise. Badged "illbient", it was a short-lived genre that felt like a high-minded psychedelic cousin of the UK's trip-hop.Muir uses illbient as the springboard for "Mana", utilizing a selection of samples to inform his frothy drones and foreboding atmospheres. He ushers the material into 2021 by diverting it through his own contemporary worldview, attempting to recreate the hyperreal fantasy histories of Japanese RPGs (think "Dark Souls" and "Final Fantasy") and nod to sensual, tactile soundscapes of European industrial labels Staalplaat and Soleilmoon. The result is a magickal, sensory journey that's as physical as it is representational.If the illbient producers were encouraging a burgeoning experimental music landscape to emphasize the tactile feeling of turntablism and sample manipulation, Muir is doing the same with "Mana". Each track heaves and breathes not just with his cultural reference points, but with layered, complicated emotions. We can hear joy, sadness, desire and anguish, obscured by disintegrating noise, hallucinogenic harmonies and sub-aquatic bass. It's electronic music that's rooted not in technology, but in touch.