This is the first in a new monthly column that will look at new music beyond the usual round of albums and singles, sharing the latest DJ mixes, digital releases, radio shows, recorded conversations, documentaries on music and any other ephemera. The sheer volume of cutting-edge music online means that it can be, even for the most faithful digital trawler, a challenge to keep up – so I, along with Tayyab Amin on alternate months, will be skimming off the best bits. This month’s column features ecstatic rave breakbeats from the US, fizzing bassline bangers with big licks of Jamaican dancehall, Afrofuturistic UK techno, Colombian sound design, and more.

Eris Drew – Her Damit podcast

In the midwestern US, there’s a devoted network of DIY rave crews that have their “techno Christmas” at the afterparties around Detroit’s annual Movement festival. It was at the gay party Club Toilet that I first heard Eris Drew play – punctuating chaotic jungle breaks with R&B melodies and garage grooves, she was a revelation. A trans woman from Chicago and resident DJ at Smart Bar, Drew calls her sound The Motherbeat. When I interviewed her earlier this year, she described this as “the healing energy contained in music that unlocks the body and forces the body to move. There’s an urgency in the music I play – I’m soaring, looking into the sun as I dance.” For this summer’s upcoming (but currently postponed) Her Damit festival near Berlin, Drew recorded a podcast that taps into this celebratory feeling.

Sharda – mix for Crack magazine

Bassline is a dance scene that has thrived in the UK while staying under the radar of the wider pop cultural consciousness. It was born in clubs such as Sheffield’s notorious Niche – that nightclub and its reputation are now only memories, but contemporary producers continue to draw from its rolling, euphoric sound, sprinkling it into a wider pool of sounds: R&B, grime, bashment, jungle, dancehall and happy hardcore; rubbery basslines, banter-laced lyrics and cut up piano grooves. Murlo is one such example, and a club music polymath: DJ, producer, visual artist, and boss of Coil Records. The label’s new recruit Sharda has recorded a high-octane mix for Crack magazine – packed with original tracks, including a killer collaboration with Jamaican dancehall vocalist Shanique Marie titled Wanna Know for Manchester label Swing Ting that feels like bingeing on sherbet Dip Dabs in the dance.

Afrodeutsche – Break Before Make; live set on NTS with Nkisi

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Part of a new wave ... Afrodeutsche, aka Henrietta Smith-Rolla. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

Based in Manchester, Afrodeutsche is a producer and DJ of Ghanaian, Russian and German heritage whose debut album, Break Before Make, is out now on legacy UK rave label Skam. Inspired by Afrofuturistic electro and techno, her sound feels part of a new wave of club music – less greyscale 4/4 for time-melting marathons, and more funky Afro and Latinx polyrhythms packed with sinister glee. In the latter half of Non Worldwide co-founder Nkisi’s latest show for NTS Radio, meanwhile, Afrodeutsche plays a live workout of percussive club tracks with the host.

Lucrecia Dalt – Pli

<a href="http://lucreciadalt.bandcamp.com/album/anticlines">Anticlines by Lucrecia Dalt</a>

Colombian musician and vocalist Lucrecia Dalt’s approach to sound is elemental. Using textural snatches of nature, machinery, voices and musical recordings, the former geotechnical engineer uses the earth as a sound palette and source of metaphors, creating music that references historical events, human emotions and potential new worlds. It’s apt, then, that her sixth album (and first for RVNG Intl) is titled Anticlines, after a rock formation that has its oldest strata at the core – for Dalt, to reach out and touch a sound, aesthetic boundaries must be blurred or crossed. She also has a monthly radio show on Red Bull Radio – where, full disclosure, I also work – called Pli. Drawing on poetry, music and conversations, each episode explores a different theme, like “alienated voices” featuring abstracted vocal performances, or songs about architecture.



Nina – Secret Thirteen

When Hamburg club Golden Pudel almost burned to the ground in 2016, the hearts of house and techno fans across Europe sank – a rinky-dink bar coated in stickers and graffiti that looks out on to the port, Golden Pudel played its part in bringing Helena Hauff’s evil electro to the international club and festival circuit, and has a reputation for friendly dancers who love tough music. Another side of the club, though, is its willingness to play experimental strains of dub, and resident DJ Nina’s recent mix for Secret Thirteen demonstrates this. In the mix’s official blurb, a mid 20th-century abstract expressionist visual work is recommended as a companion piece to the music: an opaque stacking of fine lines, bold and faded, by Kazuo Nakamura, a Japanese-Canadian painter who once said that “scientists and artists are doing the same thing ... This world of pattern is a world we are discovering together.” In her mix, Nina paints patterns of steely ambience that vibrate with tension. This is one for the headphones.

Various artists – Patina Echoes

<a href="http://timedance.bandcamp.com/album/patina-echoes">Patina Echoes by Various Artists</a>

Bristol’s musical legacy has been dominated by breakthrough 90s trip-hop acts like Portishead, Massive Attack and Tricky; by dub and reggae, with the city’s strong Afro-Caribbean roots and community dances at the Trinity Centre; and drum’n’bass, championed by Mercury prize-winning Roni Size and the Reprazent crew. Since then, young producers who started going clubbing during the mid-to-late 00s dubstep and post-dubstep waves have been making techno beats that riff on the dub principles of space and bass, and one of the best outfits doing it right now is label-and-party Timedance. This month saw them release their first full-length project, Patina Echoes, a compilation of new tracks by artists from Bristol and those from further afield who share their vision.

