Various
P.U.P. Volume 2

After excursions into leftfield disco and folk-jazz meditations, Vhassal is Prins Emanuel’s third longplayer. Whereas his first lp oozed youthful carelessness and euphoria and the second one takes on a more visceral note, this album breathes hope and sentimentality. It will come as no surprise that the part time fruit picker from Malmö became a father in the meantime.Still, Vhassal feels like a natural follow-up to predecessor Diagonal Musik. Essentially, it’s minimalism with plenty of surprises and the album showcases a delicate mix of instrumental proficiency and a keen sense of space. The medieval dance tempos are garnished with drum computers, and despite the synthetic sounds of the machines, all the songs have a very intuitive and organic feel, striking in some way as a culmination of PE’s previous albums.'Vaffan Sparks Du...' opens with a repetitive knock on the door, after which a drum machine driven lullaby creeps through the cracks. It’s fragile, wispy, enchanting and a definite moodsetter: this is sentimental adult music, in true Jj funhouse fashion. And so is 'Vhassal', a delicate, dubby trip that swirls through the room like a laser through smoke. The baroque, cloistral atmosphere is so thick that you can actually taste the smoke. 'Lazarus O’ E' closes off the A-side with icy foghorns. Is this a medieval lament or a hymn to sprouting snowdrops in a wintery landscape? We’re not sure, but if the Titanic houseband had synthesizers, this is probably what they would’ve sounded like.Side B kicks off in a more cheerful way with 'Vhist', a searing sliver of goosebump melancholia with beautifully bent robotic whistling. 'Girra' sounds like an instrumental lifted off some Estonian children’s choir 7” on Melodiya. It’s a deceivingly simple ditty with a far-off romantic sound that seems to reach euphoria, but then rapidly declines. 'Saker Som Sagts Och Gjorts' irrevocably shakes off the negative feelings by filtering the sound of a summery moonlit night in the French Provence through your speakers. It’s an apt prequel to the closing track, for which you should dim the lights, peak through the blinds and lay back in your ultimate easy chair. 'Principen' is the perfect soundtrack to sip a final scotch, whistle along and shed a tear to yesterday. A better future lies ahead, somewhere.

Egypt EP by Doldrums

The second album on Ilian Tape comes again out of Munich city. Skee Mask doesn’t spend a day without making music and the dedication, attention to detail and architectural approach really make this album an absolute trip to listen to. It’s the sound of a peaceful and energetic place. It’s smoky and cosy. It’s where Skee Mask spends most of his time. He lives for the music and we are really happy that this freak became a core member of the Ilian Tape family. This album is made for true lovers and hustlers. Turn it up loud!

The dance floor as devotional is a trope as old as the club itself. But, with her new album, Jesus Was An Alien, Perel subverts the stakes of our collective communion: Who are our arms raised to? Who are we seeking salvation from?“Jesus Was An Alien is a discourse about whether Jesus was an actual alien,” she explains, “but also a social debate about what is and implies religion today.” She offers up her provocative second record – her first on Kompakt – as a soundtrack for the listener’s own journey through the intricacies and ironies of modern belief.Picking up on the themes she brought to her debut, the 2018’s LP Hermetica on DFA, Perel has created ten tracks rich with spirit and allusion. Her influences are myriad, from the indie dance hitmakers of the early 2000s – Hot Chip, Simian Mobile Disco, Justice – to rave compilations that predate her ascent to the DJ booth, to more abstract inputs. Living with synesthesia, she says, “I feel emotions and colors piling up inside me, then there’s a triggering sound or event that opens a valve. My tracks are color streams that tell a story.”Jesus Was An Alien is not just multicolored – it’s multi-lingual too, slipping in and out of tongues in a single track, sometimes dispensing with words altogether (the ecstatic breakdown of “The Principle of Vibration”). The album features Perel’s voice almost entirely but for her special collaboration with Canadian songwriter Marie Davidson on the title track.