Artist: Araab Musik’
Album: Electronic Dream
Rating: 
Araab Muzik’ is an accomplished hip hop producer, having worked with various luminaries with the genre, but rather than seek to build on that notoriety and deliver the obvious, we are instead treated to the unexpected. On Electronic Dream, Araab Muzik’ hijacks dance-floor classics and injects a healthy dose of dystopia, turning over-produced cheese into dark, slick and biting beats mixed to perfection to create a gripping LP. The album reinvents tracks that would’ve otherwise been consigned to the history books, reforming them into futuristic and mesmerising music that packs punches instead of pop songs.
Artist: Washed Out
Album: Within and Without
Rating:
The core elements of Within and Without are breezy vocals, lush harmonies and uplifting synths, but cheesy Ibiza chill-out this ain’t. Rather, it represents perhaps the zenith of a broad genre, delivering both amorphous, hallucinatory tracks and bold synth-led virtuosity that will grab your critical cochlear and flush it out with musical bliss. ‘Far and Away’ and ‘You and I’ are fine examples of this album’s ability to engage and present music that is the ultimate accompaniment to a sun-kissed beach holiday
Artist: Zomby
Album: Dedication
Rating:
Despite coming to the fore on Dubstep’s benchmark label Hyperdub, Zomby remains one of the genre’s more unusual and underground acts. He achieves this by courting ambivalence and challenging our understanding of what Dubstep actually is, or indeed what it might become. This is important because the genre continues to maintain its position as one of the most progressive of the modern era, having already altered the beat forever. Dedication infuses the more comforting sounds of ambient and electronica into the unsure world of Dubstep, tampering with filmesque soundscapes and solid samples, making this an interesting album and a must-have for those gripped by genre’s ever-intoxicating vision.