By
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August 07, 2026
We often sideline discussions about personal expression in dance and electronic music in favor of more generalized descriptions of atmosphere or functionality. But it should be noted that even the most abstract productions can actually be as deeply personal as any singer-songwriter with their heart on their sleeve. Looking for the echoes of the populist dance music heard on the radio decades ago? Indulging your love of sci-fi and your sense of community found in that love? All of these things are sources of deep emotional resonance, drawing you into the unique world of their creators. And that’s before we get to the actual songs of bleak break-ups amplified through hazy but crushing dub or sweltering sensuality in a jazz house groove. This month brings music with feelings.
8110118
Jiwa Krungu
Producer/composer/multi-instrumentalist Hajar Asyura says album this represents “an age of information overload, of endless demands, and of existential anxieties whilst also having to navigate the physical material surroundings of Jakarta, a city in which overstimulation is an inseparable fact of daily life”—and wow, does it live up to that. Hardcore techno, trance, deconstructed club, breakcore, metal guitars, IMAX-sized drama, and brief moments of almost-respite in a haunted ambience. But really Jiwa Krungu (it’s Javanese for “audible soul”) demands to be taken as a whole; follow the narrative all the way through and, like learning to live in a new city, it gradually starts to make its own kind of sense.
Graca
Nzenza
The loose and limber sounds of batida are mainly associated with Lisbon, but Angolan-born Gerson da Graça Ntiti is flying the flag high in Brussels. On the four tracks here, he builds a consistent rolling, polymetric groove. But sonically and structurally, he really shows range. The raw-edged “Red Alert” and jittery “Airplane Mode” both touch on early grime in their chopped samples and blaring synth tones, while “19_03” and especially the five minute slow-burn “Salvador” show how much subtlety Graca is capable of, with downright delicate structures orbiting round subterranean bass.
Alex Mein Smith
Hem
This EP is a fascinating one to listen to alongside the 8110118 release as it, too, seems to be working out tensions and abstract feelings via unfamiliar electronic rhythms. But rather than reflecting materiality and urban chaos, New Zealander in London Smith’s music has a feeling of interiority, an austere mathematics of emotion. His second release comes almost 20 years after his first, and it really does feel like the product of long and deep thought. Its sounds evoke Autechre and the more minimal end of the Rephlex label’s “braindance,” but his very personal approach puts it in a space all its own.
Tudor Acid
An Early Start
This one is meditative, too, and Bristolian Richard “Tudor Acid” Wrigglesworth has likewise placed himself firmly in WARP/Rephlex electronica territory in the past. But An Early Start is a major departure, an examination of personal memory, inspired by the French house and disco of the turn of the millennium, but as heard while Wrigglesworth was hiking the Northern English hillsides with friends. The bouncing four-to-the-floor and big filter sweeps work startlingly well with his mournful electronica palette, and something very new and very moving emerges from the process.
The Bug/Disfig
“Ladybug 1”
Weaving soft vocals into skull-crushing bass isn’t new for Kevin “The Bug” Martin—it was the basis of his King Midas Sound project from 2008 to 2019, as well as his 2020 collaborative album In Blue with his fellow Berliner Felicia “Dis Fig” Chen. But in revisiting that latter collab on five variations of short new track “Vanishing” he’s hit on a whole new level of sonic completeness: That monstrous bass and Chen’s simple hooks delivered with deadened sadness are bathed in a thick and gritty fog of sound. Imagine 100th Window era Massive Attack, with the overwhelming dissociative onslaught of a My Bloody Valentine live show, then make it heavier. Yes, it’s that good.
ReKab
Subtle Beginnings
English West Country artist James “ReKab” Baker was a “your favourite producer’s favourite producer” type, his warm and rich hardware electro revered by a select few for its lushness and finesse. Following his tragic passing in 2025, friends have arranged the remastering and reissue of four albums of his classic output—for the first time on vinyl. The second volume is here, and sounds freshened-up and more embracing than ever, its emotional depths only emphasized by the context.
Anaïs, Stylo G & Lady Leshurr
“Strong Like Lion”
Back in UK dubstep’s 2006-10 breakout phase, its hybrids with grime and dancehall vocals almost made for a whole new party genre in their own right. Virus Syndicate, Skepta with Plastician, Slaughter Mob with Skream, P Money with True Tiger, Newham Generals with Breakage, Flowdan & P Money with The Bug (him again!), Coki remixing Mavado… it was a whole thing. Now, fast rising Lancaster-via-Bristol DJ-producer Anaïs Jan has tapped back into that, updating the classic 140bpm bass-warping for Stylo G and UK national treasure Lady Leshurr to unleash full dancehall ebullience on. We’ve been missing this energy, and this team delivers it in bucketloads.
HVL
Formation
At first, tracks by Gigi Jikia, aka HVL, sound familiar. First, they wear their influences—very early Aphex Twin, Future Sound of London, Berlin dub techno—on their sleeve. And secondly, he has happily stuck to using rolling breakbeats, dub bass, singing acid house synths as his main elements across nine albums since 2018. They will always surprise you, though. Most importantly, the HVL style is built for clubs—specifically, the legendary Bassiani in Tbilisi, Georgia where he is resident. And as soon as you hear it loud, you understand the potent functionality of this formula. Then, when you’re right inside the tracks, you feel the originality of each—the fresh melodies and dynamics hidden inside the rich layering and open dub spaces.
Richard Norris
Re-Make: Re-Model (Richard Norris Remixes)
Richard Norris has been making psychedelic dancefloor electronics for some 40(!) years, yet somehow remains outrageously prolific and as committed as ever to the vibe. This collection of his remixes, solo and with Erol Alkan as The Time & Space Machine, sticks to a broadly Balearic template—slow house tempo, dreamy atmospheres, stretched out song structures, meandering 303s—but he constantly find new ways to weave them into the source material here, whether it’s post-punk (Warpaint), psych rock (Temples; A Mountain of One), folk (Dot Alison; Katy J Pearson), sophisti-pop (Bryan Ferry!), or any number of others.
Posthuman
Gang of 404
UK duo Posthuman love giving their albums science fiction themes, and they also enjoy deep dives into specific electronic genres. Here, those things enter a feedback loop. This is all about entering a deep tradition of mainly Detroit and UK electro that itself revelled in sci-fi inspiration. It’s hard-edged electro, and hard sci-fi: This isn’t the utopian vision of ReKab’s gliding grooves; it’s more about being inside battered, claustrophobic space vessels, encountering inhuman intelligence, twisting around gravitational anomalies. In a funky way, though.
SDF
“Policeman” b/w “Crooked Man Remix”
In his many guises and collaborations, from Sweet Exorcist to All-Seeing I and on, Sheffield legend Richard Barratt—aka DJ Parrot, aka Crooked Man—has always had a strong sense of the absurd. This is the man who collaborated with old friend Jarvis Cocker as A Parrot And A Cocker Too, after all. So it’s not surprising he’s popped up here, remixing an indie-disco song about being accosted by a corrupt copper in North Wales into a jazzy dub house epic. Don’t ask any questions; just go with it.
Alex Nut
The Heat
As a DJ and curator of the Eglo label, Alexander Nut has been endlessly busy in the interzone of soul-jazz, soundsystem, and electronic music for years. But he’s only recently dipped his toes into producing. This EP is essentially all house, and the minute you hear it, you’ll realize it’s very much him. The rhythms and textures lean heavily to the Detroit house of Moodymann and Theo Parrish, but the elegantly composed song structures built around velvety neo-soul vocals from Steve Spacek and Allysha Joy give each track its own unique character that, as in Nut’s DJing, isn’t beholden to any one time or place, but emerges from a rich brew of ingredients.
Echo Juliet
“Feeling Lost”
Got to wonder if Birmingham producer/musician Emily Jones has been feeling the heat of the subtropical new normal English summer: Where recent releases “Lift Your Face” and “Vitamin D” have been upbeat hymns to the sun, these new ones feel altogether woozier. They’re slower, for a start, and the chords and other midrange sounds are a little gauzier. But also, her natural knack for unfolding narrative is operating a little more gradually and subtly. On both the downbeat house groove of “Feeling Lost” and the kind of early-‘90s-Balearic-meets-reggaetón lope of “Pacer,” EJ’s familiar tuned metal percussion emerges from the haze, then weaves back in. It’s deliciously odd; but on a hot and humid evening, it makes absolute sense.
