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Album review: El Michels Affair -‘Yeti Season’: Big Crown kingpin proves he’s a 10th dan at soundtrack funk magic

Yeti Season? Pretty stunning. Leon is a soundtrack music 10th dan; an absolute master of the craft. Slip Yeti Season onto the decks, you have the most diverse, exciting, retro-soundtrack waiting there for you; there maybe no one better at this kind of the thing in the world right now. One moment R.D. Burman with Piya his Lata Mangeshkar, another Lalo Schifrin, another Piero Piccioni; all are here, ten short films in themselves, these tracks, scenes from a film so ace you have to make it. In your head. Pick yourself up Adult Themes, grab a giant bucket of popcorn, make it a double bill. Absurdly brilliant. Buy.
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Album review: Conrad Schnitzler – ‘Paracon: The Paragon Session Outtakes 1978-1979’ – more solid-state wizardry from the Kluster genius’s archives

Outtakes these nominally may be, but a decade on these tracks would have all seen a parallel life in the 12" and the like; a format which was only just starting to find its viability Stateside at this point in the Seventies. And remember not just that these ten tracks are culled from a year or more's intense creative fire, but that those sessions gave birth to three albums. It's an album for intense post-dusk savouring, soundscapes to fall sideways down the rabbit hole into, deep and otherworldly sonic immersion from one of the greatest electronic music brains.
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Album review: New Bums – ‘Last Time I Saw Grace’: Ben and Donovan reveal an unexpected treat

Last Time I Saw I Grace reveals more depth than the two single drops really hinted it contained; yeah sure, there's cracking moments of that raggedy-assness, but the run of wider-screen psych-country and other tracks are deft and prettily arranged, less ... excellently thrown down than you might expect. It probably isn't the kind of album that throws you back against the wall at some party downtown for a ruby-red lipped snog; but it very much is the kind of album you end up on a spontaneous road trip with, or hanging with on a rainy Sunday, and realised you had deep feelings for all along.
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