Just taken out of Regal Records' smithy, the ninth blood&tomato-spotted wand from the young indipendent label wisely run by Rob Dimension and Seb Skankandbass, mainly focused on almost unknown new levers of the scene, celebrates the arrival of Dub Motion in Regal's court, who introduces his sound by means of a Mephistophelian tune, "Lucifer": just after a creepy dim beginning, which could come from Darth Vader's nozzle while he's snoring - that a touch of horror trash that doesn't mar the track! -, the clappy jumps and the sub-bass buzz get blended by a sort of croak, which could ideally echo the one by huge prehistoric frog which bio-antiquarians baptized "Beelzebufo ampinga", commonly known as "Devil Toad" or "Devil Frog"! The same croak appears on the following track "Red Stripe", but this time Dub Motion prefers to mix it with frightening bells, visceral convulsions and injections of sonic solutions from heavyweight dub chemists. Recently featured on the Hospital podcast by S.P.Y., Dub Motion's amazing sound collected the support of many known producers and djs such as Crissy Cross, Xtrah, Cyantific, Logistics, Jubei, London Elektricity, Random Concept, Nu:tone, Unknown Error, Dimension, Wilkinson, Fred V & Grafix.

Born two years ago, Clive Psylence's label Mars, aimed at trying a resurrection of liquid and soulful dnb by armouring the sounds which featured its dawn, already managed to involve great names of dnb scene such as Mute & Mako, Klute, Random movement, Edward Oberon / Paul T. Its next sonic bullet's been shot by another dynamic duo of brilliant liquid phunk boosters-and-boasters, who already paired together for some past releases: Julian Flowers aka dRamatic and James Maltby aka dbAudio join forces for a couple of juicy gems. On "Days Runnin Out", it seems they built an authentic time machine for the sounds they whisked in order to make listeners' mind whirr: classy flowing piano, interrupted melodies, synth breezes and a deep black female soulful voice to assist your flight got launched by means of contemporary solid jump-up rhythmical pressure. The sonic complicity by Total Science, who accepted to remix it, on "Far Away" is quite clear: they enhanced the sonic journey, aided by deep male vocals by Grimm this time, with improvements to computational bleeping consolle and percussive turbines. Enjoy these trips!

Sometimes the unspectacular looking releases have got the richest musically content to offer. Ashbed is the Electronic music project of David Tatlock, who hails out of New Waterford, NS, Canada. In his earlier years he has been often supported by Nightwaves zine-editor and Synthpop supporter (... and Chain D.L.K. author...) Gary Flanagan through some compilation appearances. Also some of Flanagan's reviews on his early demo recordings have been throughout positive, although Ashbed's music is for the most part far away of Gary's preferences. 'If We Should Part' is filled with haunting and dense athmospheres, the music combines darkest Electro with Noise, Dubstep and Ambient. Skinny Puppy gets often mentioned, but also Controlled Bleeding, Gridlock, Scorn plus I would add the ominous textures of projects like Little Sap Dungeon as being quells of inspiration for Mr. Tatlock. Mostly his tracks are drowning into Downtempo-like sick and noisy sound-walls. 'So It Goes' is such an example, which adds a monotonous Dubstep-rhythm to lead the track. 'In Between Dreams' stands for a clearer, more Puppy-an Dark Electro-inspired tune. Also thanks to the inclusion of vocals this one is a nice addition to fans of this beloved genre. 'Third Coming' then brings back the abstract, Experimental-infiltrated side of David, and this style still leads most tracks of this album. Also 'The Hidden' or the title-track are dwelling pretty much in obtrusive synthesizer sound-drops, plus the drastic rhythm section brings both near to a Gridlock-like experience. While I would recommend here and there adding a bit more clearance in his song structures, maybe too with a consideration to present more vocals like on 'In Between Dreams', I am generally quite impressed by the efforts of Mr. Tatlock. Regarding the above mentioned artists for possible comparisons it should be quite clear, that this album won't satisfy meaningless dancefloor attributes. Ashbed could need a bit more exposure by press and listeners for a better out-coming, while the talent is without doubts presented on here.

Thirty-six hours on a train could become a so mind-altering experience for the most inveterate traveller that you can easily argue it could be a prodrome for mystical experiences and result into a safe-conduct for any kind of barrier, which locks any door of perception. Jacob Burns, former bass player with Scottish band Damn Shames and one of the youngest force of post-punk experimental band Cindytalk, was none the worse for such a train travel across India (hopefully not for a delay or I could surmise this record could have been more harsh and bloody furious than it is...) and maybe he couldn't imagine after he stepped down the train, the sensorial feast he experienced inside Tundla Station could be so inspirational. According to his own words "the arches of the place were alive with birds, flicking off the walls and the top of the crowds, delicate bodies who seemed drawn up, in ever more numbers, to the vaulted roof, where they were coming into roost. The host of them were all singing, in a high, pure pitch that was contained and multiplied by the masonry of the station into an incredible noise, loud but not painful". The second source for inspiration Jacob poured into "Starlings" was his toing and froing over East London Line. Both of these two excitements astonishingly merge on this one-track album, whose 9 parts are easily recognisable while sliding on impressive sonic interbreeding between tweets and chirps on one side and mechanical clattering, puffing brakes, jumps on rails and other typical noises the ear usually grab during a train journey. An appetizer of "Starlings" already delighted eardrums of all those who bought the July edition of The Wire Magazine's Tapper CD, who could confirm the remarkable way this sound designer followed to encapsulate two of the most proper juggernauts and inspirational sources for many contemporary electronic jugglers: transport and birds!

This entrancing operation of sonic prophylaxis comes from American sound designer and minimalist sound artist Richard Cartier, mainly known for his brisk activity within his label/artistic platform LINE, who signs his second release under the Pinkcourtesyphone moniker, whose title "Elegant & Detached" tautly describes its main features. Richard seems to pour sonic splits of echoed female voices, sonic objects and other listenable entities into pools of seemingly flat and looping close frequencies, whose "flambe" treatment with light distortions could remind that underlying wind on membranes of abandoned microphones or the typical noise of jet engines when the surrounding atmosphere gets remarkably rarefied, so that you could imagine that each track is the resounding of some lunar module while wandering out of orbit in a void, which gets occasionally filled with rings, quavers, pitched echoes, repetitive airy melodies, background radiation, dull thuds, silenced clangors, imaginary porpoises ("Sans Motif/Closer To Here Than You Care To Be"), squawks ("Petraglyph (for Ranier)") or even barking birds, as those one appearing in the astonishingly cinematic journey of "An Awaiting Room (for Tati)/Starts Fell" - maybe together with some hints in "Sans Motif/Closer To Here Than You Care To Be" the one which recalls some hallucinated audiotrips with ironic and iconic sonic clues by The Orb more than other moments of the album -. All these sonic appearances sound like wavering in amniotic solvents and belonging to a sort of encrypted and somewhat tricky code many listeners could understand. His long-lasting entrancing journeys could be approximately associated to that cerebral branch of ambient which had a certain rush in the 90ies and first year of new millenium (I could mention some stuff from Kim Cascone's Silent, Bent Recknagel's Syrup, Lagowski, laudanum sonic juice by Todd Gautreau's Tear Ceremony or even Robin Storey's Rapoon) as well as to the vague daydreaming of some ghostly womanizer.