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Previously unreleased, Manchester, 1991. Betonska hits hard with their second release travelling back to an essential period of dance music history. A record blending rave, downtempo, ragga, dancehall, and early hardcore/jungle; a crossover which continues to shape and define some of the most innovative sounds of contemporary club culture. Produced by Philip Kirby, with vocals/rap by Martin Merchant (together Two The Hardway). On the A side Graham Massey (808 State) accompanied them on the synths, and Howard Walmsley played the saxophone on the B1 and B2. All tracks were recorded in ’91 in Phil’s house, where “funnily enough Massey co-wrote ‘Army of Me’ with Björk!”. Find more info about it in the text below. The whole release consists of solely ’91 originals: a deliberate choice to not take it out of context. The A side serves two versions of ‘Who Said?’, a mysterious midtempo jam with a jumpy acid line, organic yet punchy drums and a mesmerizing lead synth, played by none other than Graham Massey. The instrumental version has a more elusive feel to it, while the Vocal version tops it off with toasting by Manchester’s very own Martin ‘Sugar’ Merchant. Both tracks were pressed on the earlier test pressing from ’91, but have never been released officially before. The flipside boasts two mesmerizing versions of ‘Hot Number’. Driving protojungle rhythms and Sugar Merchant’s ragga vocals, are fused with secondary vocals by Phil and a saxophone solo by Howard Walmsley to form a seamless and smokey sonic concoction that will get bodies moving. Whilst the B1 surfs on a slick breakbeat rhythm with a deep bassline, the B2 bounces on a 4/4 beat with a pulsing hardcore bassline. To top it off, the B3 and final track in the running order is a deep and dubby downtempo dancehall track. Originally produced in the 90s, but recently finished by Phil, ‘Blossom Street Dub’ has an added synth line and an iconic King Tubby filter which help to enhance a time-warping, headrush effect. This track, alongside the ‘Hot Number (Alternative Version)’ B1 tune, will both be pressed for the very first time on vinyl, having been absent from the original ’91 test pressing.

Twoonky, the brothers duo from Brescia (Italy) formed by Michele and Simone Bornati, is back on Macadam Mambo for a second album. After their brillantissimo ‘Dezzo’ from 2019, which was well noticed by the underground scene, the new opus ‘Ottico’ won’t leave you static. This is the kind of masterpiece that the more you listen, the more you love. At the opposite of grandiloquent music that would have immediate effect, ‘Ottico’ is much more subtile, surfing on a cool wave of styles, a collage of vibes going from 70’s Kraut to 90’s Trip-Hop, where the analog sounds of guitars, synths, distorded voices, saxo, samples and electronics FX match so well, creating an ensemble in the unique mutant flow of the Twoonky’s that makes it so intemporal and so modern in the meanwile. It’s not about being curious, it’s about being open on crossing boundaries, like they are used to do with their unique place called Spettro in Brescia, where all the avant-garde of the electronic scene is coming to perform. ‘Ottico’ could be a kind of representation of the spirit of Spettro, and possibly one of the most interesting release of 2023. We don’t know why, but it’s true, Italians do it better ☺

USインディのガレージ/サイケ・シーンを牽引する鬼才、Ty Segallがドラム演奏に挑んだ最新アルバム『Love Rudiments』が名門〈Drag City〉より登場。元々ギタリスト/ヴォーカリストとして知られる彼がトラップキットからティンバニ、ビブラフォン、シロフォン、パーカッション、電子ドラムまで、様々な打楽器のメロディックな可能性とオーケストラの可能性を深く掘り下げた、パンキッシュで実験精神溢れるパーカッシヴな作品！

Previously unreleased extended single mixes.

Strong debut album by one of China’s most distinctive new industrial/dance music producers, Tzusing, for L.I.E.S.; portraying the Shanghai-based artist’s full breadth of kinky darkroom rhythms and sleazy cinematic arrangements. Under the title 東方不敗, meaning Invincible East, the record wraps an armoury of powerful percussion and native instrumentation around a narrative locus based on a swordsman character in a Jin Yong novel “who must make the ultimate sacrifice to attain knowledge and transform”. Coupled with the artist’s own observations on living in, and travelling around, Asia, it’s an urgent and gripping listen with a versatility and varied topography lending itself to DJ use and soundtracking industrial subterfuge alike. 日出東方 唯我不敗 starts out like ’05 sino grime or dubstep from a parallel dimension; Digital Properties trades in secretive choral code at a killer New Beta momentum which decelerates into the the wind-tunnel chug and pealing cyber-tribal chant of Esther. His signature triplets last heard on A Name Out Of Place wickedly come into play against sheer electric blue synth tone in King Of Hosts; we’re put thru an intense, Americanised club drill in Post-Soviet Models; and Torque Pulsations both literally and physically lives up to its name with a belly and spine-twysting EBM tattoo. TIP!

During the Tang dynasty (around the 9th Century CE), traveling intellectual Li Yuanming would routinely leave home to write and debate poetry with likeminded scholars across China, isolating his wife Cifu for sometimes weeks on end. Frustrated, she found comfort in the arms of a widowed neighbor, but when Li remained at home for an unexpected stretch of time, Cifu was prompted to develop a method to signal her lover it was safe to approach. She stitched a special green hat that she handed to her husband as he was about to leave town; when Li was wearing the hat, it worked like a traffic signal - green meant go. But this didn't last for long, during one trip Li returned home early and caught Cifu and their neighbor together, and when the local community caught wind of the story, the green hat became an enduring symbol of infidelity. On Tzusing's sophomore album the Malaysian-born artist, who lives between Shanghai and Taipei, meditates on China's complicated history of patriarchal heteronormativity, and how these archaic double standards continue to dominate the culture in pervasive, often invisible ways. Even in progressive circles, internalized male inadequacy and its inevitable projection of possessiveness and aggression has been brushed underneath the rug, so by addressing it head-on, Tzusing attempts to question these structures using a level of aesthetic anxiety and thematic intensity that's hard to ignore. Growing up between Singapore, Taiwan, China, and the USA, Tzusing was living in Chicago when his love of music turned into an obsession. After relocating to China for work, he cut his teeth DJing at The Shelter in Shanghai and began refining his personal musical signature. A slew of EBM-inspired 12"s on Ron Morelli's L.I.E.S. imprint were followed by his 2017 debut album 東方不敗 that was inspired by Jin Yong’s popular 1960s wuxia novel The Smiling, Proud Wanderer, a story about a swordsman who castrates himself to learn a powerful fighting technique. 绿帽 Green Hat builds on that record's themes, deconstructing a different facet of gender as it's perceived within Chinese culture. On '趁人之危(Take Advantage)', Tzusing obscures Daniel Plainview's notorious growl from There Will Be Blood underneath a patchwork of springy percussion and electrified wails. The message is clear: Plainview's character represents the darkness underlying American masculinity, and Tzusing is drawing a direct parallel with China. The history and mythology may be different, but the problem remains. Rhythms do the heavy lifting on 'Muscular Theology', interlocking and falling apart, and connecting fragments of techno, house, and club templates with disorienting FX. The dancefloor can provide an unorthodox space for outsiders to recognize the dissonance in their cultural programming, and Tzusing suggests this not by sonic fusion but by borderless cohesion that sucks the listener in before they're completely aware of the message. And while 绿帽 Green Hat is unashamed to lean into its layered concept, the album never loses its well-rehearsed dancefloor momentum. Tzusing has been through many metamorphoses during his career, but it's here where sounds most eager to unify his interests and inclinations. From the ruthlessly funky hard drum inversion of '孝忍狠 (Filial Endure Ruthless)' and the manic uptempo roll of 'Exascale', to the gurgling combination of wheezing voices and downtempo rhythms on Suda collaboration 'Cloud Tunnel' and the wedding party flex of epic closing track 'Residual Stress', there's a sense that the producer has truly found his groove. It's an album that underscores dance music's often manic uneasiness, smoothly paralleling this with the frenzied stress of infidelity. Fear is a well-worn musical theme that transcends genre, but Tzusing approaches it from a fresh perspective; this isn't blood dripping from skulls, it's rapid-fire thoughts piercing the mind. Now that's truly terrifying.

Reissue of Bass music inspired new roots classic!

Foundational deejay U-Roy recorded The Seven Gold at Michael Carroll's Creative Sounds Studio in Kingston with assistance from engineer (and singer & producer in his own right) Paul Davidson for Prince Jazzbo's Ujama imprint - with the LP then seeing the light of day on the label in 1987. It features the late, great Ewart Beckford appearing on a range of classic Jazzbo-produced late-80s digital rhythms - from the inspired Replay version on 'Holo Gow', to the updated digital take on the Heavenless rhythm on 'Jah Jah Call You' and his take on Horace Ferguson's Sensi Addict in 'Musikal Addick'. The bulk of these rhythm tracks were performed by revered multi-instrumentalist Tyrone Downie (a long-time member of Bob Marley & The Wailers since the mid 70s) alongside Tony "Asher" Brissett - another massively undersung session musician perhaps most notable for laying down the initial Sleng Teng rhythm track for Jammys in 1984.

Harry the Nightgown return with Ugh, their second album and most ambitious work to date — a fizzing fusion of hyperpop, experimental electronics and avant-pop songwriting. Now a trio, the group features original members Spencer Hartling (aka tp Dutchkiss, founder of Wiggle World studio) and Sami Perez (Cherry Glazerr, Jerry Paper, The She’s), joined by DIY harmony obsessive Luke Macdonald, also a touring member of Cherry Glazerr.

Five years on from their self-titled debut, the band embrace imperfection with open arms, crafting an eleven-song record packed with warped hooks, dense production, and flashes of emotional vulnerability. Released on Leaving Records, Ugh takes cues from artists like Björk, fka twigs, Oneohtrix Point Never, Tirzah and Vegyn, but filters them through Harry the Nightgown’s own playful, fractured lens.

All proceeds will be donated to the Embassy of Ukraine in Japan for humanitarian aid. （we had hoped to donate to the candle master to help with their living expenses, but could not get in touch with him).

A beeswax candle made by a craftsman in the mountains of Ukraine and actually used in a local monastery. It has a high antibacterial effect, and with its warm light, it is also very effective for meditation and healing.

Burning time about 100 hours
Diameter 68 x Height 510 mm

All proceeds will be donated to the Embassy of Ukraine in Japan for humanitarian aid. （we had hoped to donate to the candle master to help with their living expenses, but could not get in touch with him).

A beeswax candle made by a craftsman in the mountains of Ukraine and actually used in a local monastery. It has a high antibacterial effect, and with its warm light, it is also very effective for meditation and healing.

Burning time about 32 hours
Diameter 36 x Height 290 mm

All proceeds will be donated to the Embassy of Ukraine in Japan for humanitarian aid. （we had hoped to donate to the candle master to help with their living expenses, but could not get in touch with him).

A beeswax candle made by a craftsman in the mountains of Ukraine and actually used in a local monastery. It has a high antibacterial effect, and with its warm light, it is also very effective for meditation and healing.

Burning time about 15 hours
Diameter 34 x Height 190 mm

All proceeds will be donated to the Embassy of Ukraine in Japan for humanitarian aid. （we had hoped to donate to the candle master to help with their living expenses, but could not get in touch with him).

This candle is made of beeswax mixed with propolis produced by bees, which was used as a "natural antibiotic" in ancient Rome and has been traditionally used for medicinal purposes in Eastern Europe. Today, it is also known as a supplement that helps with antioxidant functions, and the actual feeling is dense and meditative. The light is twice as bright as that of a regular beeswax candle and has more of the unique sweet scent of beeswax. The only size available is this short one (for the reason that it is just the right size to vaporize propolis well).

A beeswax candle made by a craftsman in the mountains of Ukraine and actually used in a local monastery. It has a high antibacterial effect, and with its warm light, it is also very effective for meditation and healing.

Burning time about 12 hours
Diameter 55 x Height 30 mm

PPU's first long-play LP highlights some of the early beginnings of one of our favorite producers, UKU KUUT. Written and recorded at UKU's home studio in Los Angeles and Stockholm between 1982 & 1989. Some tracks co-written with Maryn E. Coote, famous jazz vocalist who had her beginnings in 1960s Soviet Union. "That's my MOM" recalls UKU, "I remember when I was little, sitting under the mixing board at her sessions". Growing up in studios, UKU's love of music production began early, and over the years he has amassed a vast collection of domestic and soviet electronic gear. In true PPU style this LP is a mix of UKU KUUT's raw cassette demos, forgotten masters and unreleased magic.

Synthesised vocal madness from Porto’s Jonathan Saldanha, a founding member of HHY & The Macumbas and a sound artist in his own right, operating in intersecting fields of film, sound design and installation works. On his debut for his Horror Vector label, Saldanha works with vocalists Catarina Miranda and Luísa Saraiva, queering their voices through vintage delay units to generate a time-fluxing signature that's utterly psychedelic, like some unhinged Robert Turman, Robert Ashley x Kara-Lis Coverdale threeway. Originally written to accompany Catarina Miranda's ambitious Boca Muralha dance piece, a duet inspired by ancient Greek deities of vengeance the Furies, this tightly-coiled experiment comes off like Steve Reich in a k-hole. Saldanha makes use of a delay to manipulate and control the two voices, freezing fragments and curving them into slippery vortexes. Raw syllables are repeated, intersected and phased from staccato passages into operatic, rhythmic choruses, time-stretching snowballed clusters of ululations. Theatrical but never overblown, the music is boldly unadorned, preferring to highlight the idiosyncrasies of the methodology than resort to extraneous processing. There's little if any reverb: Miranda and Saraiva's voices sound almost obnoxiously dry, which only serves to further harden their impact. Glassy and cloying, the repetition is taken to extreme levels; Saldanha's usual noisy maximalism is nowhere to be found, but his mischievous streak is omnipresent. The vocals bounce left and right like a Reichian call and response, and while complex rhythms do eventually form as he futzes with the loop points, the music starts to dissolve into a spellbinding purr. At times almost alarmingly unadorned, it’s a brave and supremely mind-altering release from a promising new label. The dream is the dreamer!

The self-titled tape by Ulises Carrión, reissued by Counter Culture Chronicles, revisits his elusive Trios & Boleros, a work once privately circulated. Here, Carrión reimagines popular form through a deconstructed lens, where fragments of music and voice are refracted into conceptual gestures that linger between intimacy, satire, and radical sonic experimentation.

Counter Culture Chronicles present the reissue of a scarce recording by Ulises Carrión, originally distributed in private circles under the title Trios & Boleros. Best known as a writer, publisher, and leading figure in conceptual art, Carrión also developed a body of sound work where his investigations of language and structure took on aural form.

This release captures his unique approach to the conventions of popular music. The recognizable formulas of trios and boleros emerge only to be fractured, recontextualized, and reframed as conceptual gestures. Sentimentality becomes parody, melody is interrupted or destabilized, and the listener is pushed to hear not only the sound but the cultural scripts it carries.

More than a curiosity from the archive, the work embodies Carrión’s insistence on communication as a shifting field of rules, signals, and noise. In re-presenting these recordings, Counter Culture Chronicles offers insight into an artist who challenged literary, visual, and sonic forms alike, leaving behind fragments that continue to resonate for their precision, wit, and critical edge.

After many years drifting in and out of each-other’s orbit, ‘Jazz Plates’ finds Ulla and Perila making music in the same room for the first time, exhaling a double album’s worth of gorgeously evocative mood music, gently crackling with a dream-textured haze for the ages. It's remarkably intimate material, linking the duo's own hypnagogic portrait of jazz, in all its hushed permutations. ‘Jazz Plates’ catches the mutual spirits measuredly channelling their shared love of Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, making use of voice, clarinet, guitar, piano, vocals and various non-musical objets - logs, leaves, an aquarium - until they hit their emotional core. Previously separated by an ocean, their first recording sessions in person find an intoxicating play of slow and atmospheric sounds porous to the shifting weather outside, with one plate subtly guided by the sun, and another by heavy rain. Unhurried, etheric, and wistful, the album’s 13 parts wash over the senses with a soothingly meditative resonance that emerges from their “mutual dialogue of our instruments and souls”, as Perila puts it. Distant voices swirl around the duo's dampened instrumentation on opener 'lasting like a grass leaf', as themes duck and dive over plangent ambience. It isn't a capital A Ambient record, by any means, but Perila and Ulla's approach is impressionistic rather than figurative. They form ghostly half-songs around hollow trace rhythms on 'a josh outside the window', coating the breathy romance of modern jazz in a layer of dust, and let the clarinet do most of the work on 'placing in shell parcels' as it slow dances around a reverberant vocal. More than anything, ‘Jazz Plates’ seems to highlight the sensuality of collaboration; you can almost hear the duo trading glances and allowing the mood to dictate the momentum. When they switch things up on the second disc, they pull their ideas more tightly together without losing any of the intimacy. Muffled electric guitar prangs punctuate woody rhythms on 'messages from a floor', as if the two are trying to rethink the logic of free jazz, and on the heart piercing 'cheese homework', blues-y guitar phrases are sunk under a powerful, loping bassline.

For fans of Sean McCann's Recital works to Yusaku Arai ”a two”. Collabolation album of ambient master Ulla & Japanese Experimental musician Ultrafog.

Groggy, engrossing new work from Ulla under their newly minted U.e. tag, riffing to the sublime on a set of (mostly) acoustic reveries that tap into the kind of smokey vapours favoured by the likes of Vincent Gallo, Voice Actor, Jonnine. Oh aye, it’s a special one.

A new year, label, album and handle for Ulla, a multifaceted artist who has draped our pages with wonder, under numerous aliases and collabs, for almost a decade. On ‘Hometown Girl’ they distill transience and flux into a quiet set of chamber works subtly resembling the room recorded nuance of their ‘Jazz Plates’ side with Perila - here taken a step further into more elusive, low-lit dimensions.

In a mode that’s wistful and melancholic, listening to the album’s dozen discrete pieces feels like leafing thru a journal of hand-written notes, reflecting on the feelings that come with separation from loved ones and displacement from familiarity. Ulla performed and recorded all of the instruments themselves, lending a tangible tactility to layered arrangements of woodwind, keys, strings, drums and voice, lightly speckled with electronics and perfused with open window field recordings. 

They locate a crackling frisson of personality in the voice notes and day-dreaminess of their mottled inscapes, gauzily demarcating lines between past and present selves. In that aesthetic and approach we can also hear similarities to Jonnine’s blue-skied ‘Southside Girl’ or crys cole’s poetic sensuality, often leaning into the domestic surreal.

A frayed, opening salutation ‘Good Morning’ signals a delirious half hour in Ulla’s company, variously swaying to the downstroked jazz swing of a ‘Lavender (NF)’ spritzed with clarinet, whilst ‘Froggy Explorer’ stirs the air like Jan Jelinek on a barely-there tip. The Basinski-esque fritz of degraded loops really snags the imagination along with a twinkling nightlight ‘Ball’, as the album opens out into its most fully resolved songs with a closing couplet of disarming wonders ‘Drawing of Me’, and a blurry ‘Mute’ that feels like Ulla 〜almost〜 reveals too much before retreating back into the shadows.

Ulla returns with ‘Foam’, a surprise new album unlocking variants of ambient pop and looped jazz/dub styles coiled inside a glitched matrix that reminds us of Huerco S’ ‘Plonk’ as well as Ekkehard Ehlers fractal treatments and those incredible, smudged and disneyfied edits of Celine Dion released earlier this year by elusive outfit Romance. It’s an absorbing, quietly significant album for 3XL, on its most substantial release to date. Responsible for one of contemporary ambient’s finest breadcrumb trails in recent years, Ulla leads on from an acclaimed run of albums toward a more filigree style on ‘Foam’. Deploying fragmented morsels resembling glass-cast confectionary with a burbling vernacular, these ephemeral new works dissolve into a supine, shoe-gauzy and jazzed bliss that’s best compared with Jan Jelinek’s efforts in this dream-staged arena, the subs x piano minimalism of Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto’s revered collabs, as well as the memory-frothed echo of claire rousay and Co La’s fractal baubles. Aye, it’s a sound close to our hearts and one weft with a certain sort of magic that sparkles on the nerves and imagination with delicacy. Intending it to “feel like a keychain”, the album follows a logic that’s almost algorithmic with its haphazard mutations, but which ultimately displays a more human pulse on pieces like ‘foam angel’, weaving forlorn brass around jazz samples and Ulla’s disjointed voice murmuring unintelligibly like some cyborg liz frazer speaking into the sublime. Effusive solo keys and strings cascade like petals on ‘song’, where familiar leitmotifs become wind-dispersed like seeds. We’re snagged on the bittersweet tang of ‘popping out’, and the unexpected dance between marina’s jazz guitar lilt and the aerosoul thizz on ‘sad face’, while the tongue-tip sensitivities of ‘blush’, and ‘for your love’ sound like Rihanna produced by a Systemisch-era Oval. As tangled and complex as it is filled with improbable ohrwurms, ‘Foam’ is unlike anything we’ve heard from Ulla before, and it just might be the weirdest ambient/pop dislocation of the year so far.

Being somewhere, while being somewhere else
A place I look for in other places
A moment on repeat
I made this music as a way to hug myself

All music performed and written by Ulla E. Straus

Ulla Straus is a Philadelphia-based ambient artist who has released a number of masterpieces of acoustic dub/ambient music under the direction of Huerco S. collaboration with Pontiac Streator on West Mineral, a label that is now recognized as a sacred place, caused quite a stir. This album was released in 2020 under a different name from a new label [Experiences Ltd] started by uon, a special guest DJ who is an important acoustic dub act at [West Mineral]. It's so beautiful and so deep, you can sink into it forever. This album is built around chant sampling and piano, and is a further exploration of the world of "Big Room", a masterpiece ambient cassette released last year on [Quiet Time]. Mastered by D&M and amp; cut to perfection. Limited to 400 copies. Don't miss it if you like "Mono No Aware" or "bblisss", not to mention [West Mineral] works!

Originally released on tape in 2019, 'Big Room' helped establish Philly's Ulla Straus as one of the key figures in the post-"bblisss" wave of nu-ambient practitioners. Interchangeably glacial, gaseous and liquid, it's a rare downtempo tome that never shies away from sensuality and raw, messy emotionality. Gorgeous material: essential listening for anyone into Jake Muir, Perila, Shuttle358, Oval, Pendant or Space Afrika. 'Big Room' is a technically advanced record that never dangles its prowess in your face. Ulla's sound sculpting is remarkable, but the key to 'Big Room' is not her processing skill, it's her open-hearted emotional honesty. And if contemporary ambient and experimental music has been pocked by the Instagrammable nostalgia drip and hacky tacked-on PR narratives, 'Big Room' succeeds because it offers us a clear, demarcated alternative. Ulla doesn't need to shoehorn in a grandstanding press release or video footage of an elaborate modular setup to get our attention, the music does all the heavy lifting, drawing us in with clouded bathhouse textures and soft-focus dub rhythms, chiseled digital hiccups and levitational synthesizer loops. From the opening tones of 'Nana', with its sloshing pads and subtle glitches, to the dislocated wind chimes and blurry electronics of 'House', there's a resounding faded texture to Ulla's music that helps set a picture perfect mood. 'Big Room' is an album to lose yerself in - Ulla's able to dial in an aesthetic that goes beyond the surface level, piercing not just the production elements but the writing itself. Using relatively few elements, she's able to bridge the gaps between dub techno ('Net'), Mille Plateaux-esque processed glitch ('Past'), glowing Eno-influenced ambient ('Billow') and breathtaking arpeggio-led kosmische sounds ('Sister'), linking each track with her diaristic subtlety and careful choice of processes. In a forest of withered ambient mediocrity, 'Big Room' is a lonely, pristine evergreen - we just can't recommend it enough.

On the rare occasions that Ultramarine’s story is told, the duo’s fifth album, 1998’s A User’s Guide, tends to get omitted from the narrative. Radically different to anything the duo released before or since, it has remained a slept-on, timeless and inherently futurist classic ever since.

Unavailable on vinyl since the year it was released – in part because the label it originally came out on, New Electronica, folded shortly afterwards – A User’s Guide was the result of a conscious decision by Ultramarine members Paul Hammond and Ian Cooper to change their working methods and the “sound palette” that underpinned their work. 

Out went the partially improvised hybrid electronic/acoustic sounds and the collaborations with guest musicians they’d become famous for. They were replaced by painstakingly created electronic sounds and textures, metallic motifs, spaced-out chords, rhythms rooted in contemporary techno and drum & bass culture, and nods aplenty to pioneering music of the period, from the post-rock atmospherics of Tortoise, and the hazy dub techno of Basic Channel, to the tech-jazz of Detroit, the minimalism of Berlin, and the musically expansive warmth of Chicago deep house. 

It may have taken a year to create – part of which was spent developing this head-spinning new sound – but the results were undeniably unearthly and effortlessly forward-thinking. Over a quarter of a century may have passed since it first appeared in record stores, but A User’s Guide still sounds fresh and modern – a remarkable achievement given the relatively sparse and basic equipment used in the making of the album.

As this first vinyl reissue conclusively proves, the material showcased on A User’s Guide has lost none of its sparkle in the 26 years that have passed since its release. For proof, check the head-nodding IDM bubbliness of opener ‘All of a Sudden’, the queasy, lopsided tech-jazz of ‘Sucker For You’, the locked-in beats and mind-mangling motifs of ‘Zombie’, the ghostly, out-there electro of ‘Ambush’, the Autechre-esque ‘Ghost Routine’ and the triumphant closing cut ‘What Machines Want’, a classic of minimalistic, jazz-flecked techno futurism.

Fully remastered from the original DATs by Jason G at Transition Studios, the 2024 vinyl edition of A User’s Guide thrusts Ultramarine’s most overlooked album back into the spotlight. This WRWTFWW edition also features brand new contextualising sleeve notes, complete with new quotes on the production process from Ultramarine, by dance music historian Matt Anniss (author of Join The Future: Bleep Techno and the Birth of British Bass Music, and founder of online electronic music platform  Jointhefuture.net ). <iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 472px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1271662071/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://wrwtfww.com/album/a-users-guide">A User's Guide by Ultramarine</a></iframe>