Buy from Bandcamp today and you’ll be supporting transgender rights at a key moment when Donald Trump’s administration is set on eroding them

With updates and uploads every second of every day, Bandcamp can sometimes feel like an augmented reality with an overwhelming cache of art that would take multiple lifetimes to absorb in its entirety. However, in aid of the streaming and download platform’s fundraiser today – where all proceeds made from Bandcamp’s sales will be streamlined directly to the Transgender Law Centre, a non-profit organisation fighting for the rights of trans war veterans, trans immigrants and trans POWs – we’ve collated our own list of notable releases from the site over the past month. Donate generously and be gifted with some of the most rewarding listening experiences of the past four weeks.

Derek Carr – Distant Systems

For B12’s sub-label FireScope Records’ eighth release, the team merge with techno purist Derek Carr. Something of a mainstay act for imprints such as Nice & Nasty, Headspace and Psychonavigation, Carr’s latest contribution expounds upon his nous for ardently crafted melody dictated rhythm arrangements. Set to be released in early September, Carr’s sampler track, Artifice 2 showcases classically wayward synth sounds above a progressively bellicose bassline. There’s enough sound sensitivity in this track alone to make Larry Heard blush and, as far as certainties go, is an assurance that the entire EP will be a sound investment.

Buy it here.

Merce Lemon – Ideal For a Light Flow with Your Body

In a recent interview, Seattle-based indie songwriter Merce Lemon revealed the primary inspiration behind her debut LP’s appropriately instructive title was a box of tampons. Channelling acute emotions ranging from overwhelming melancholy to naive optimism, it’s part Tegan & Sara, part Bright Eyes, part Daniel Johnston, part Courtney Barnett and wholly her own. Crucially, Lemon’s lyrical rambling, shaky vocals and delicate guitar picking is like a direct injection of pure comfort.

Buy it here.

Moor Mother x Mental Jewelry – Crime Waves

Lo-fi experimentalist and HIRS Collective affiliate Moor Mother’s 2016 record Fetish Bones was lauded as one of the best albums of the year by The Wire and Rolling Stone. Her harsh dub-toned beat manipulations coupled with laptop-tweaked live instrumentation is stark, noisy and bewitchingly perverse. Her latest collaborative release with Mental Jewelry touches on subjects such as systematic violence and everyday racism with a club-ready production standard. Imagine if Gaika or Shabazz Palaces were produced by Angelo Badalamenti; it probably wouldn’t even be close to Crime Waves’ viscous audial sprawl.

Buy it here.

Epsile – Isogram EP

As the first release proper for Manchester’s embryonic Ongaku Dantai imprint, Epsile’s 4-track EP Isogram appears to act as a warranty of distinction from a label many should keep both eyes on for future projects. Casually marrying elements of footwork, jungle, ambient and classic drum ’n’ bass, Isogram is a professionally produced collection of club tracks that illuminate with warped Amen breakage and Rashad-esque vocal mutations. Thus far, it’s a modest sized roster for Ongaku Dantai, but if Isogram is anything to go by, what they currently lack in size they make up for in arresting quality.

Buy it here.

Aesthetic Kid – W810i

The Sony Ericsson W810i was an integral tool for distributing grime instrumentals upon its initial release in the mid-2000s. Here, East London producer Aesthetic Kid pays homage to part of grime’s convoluted history with this ‘neo-nostalgic’ EP dedicated to the mobile device. Having cut his teeth in the studio with Fire Camp (formerly More Fire Crew), Aesthetic Kid’s production style is accompanied by a healthy quantity of garage with unobtrusive basslines and sweetly saccharine vocal splices.

Buy it here.

Renraku – Gravity Well Compilation

Renraku is a colossal wormhole of a label with very little of its inception documented. And yet this 24-track compilation proves to be a testament to the Minneapolis-based imprint’s verbose, unflinching eclecticism. Gravity Well is an unabridged deluge of club-destructive bangers. From the bass surging of Architek’s Northern Funk to Think Twice’s deceptively minimal Spliff! the collection’s heady concoction of hardcore glitching, industrial house and trap beats is a neurological rush.

Buy it here.

Martin Glass – The Pacific Visions of Martin Glass

Forthcoming on the estimable Kit Records, Martin Glass’s The Pacific Visions of Martin Glass is assured to quell even the most assiduous of minds. While only two tracks have been released thus far, the subtly Balearic nature of Okinawa Fantasia and Sound and Vision play out like a panoramic window of Glass’s future sounds. Pairing with the equally niche electronic label, Dramatic Records, this first set of recordings are a crucial development of the Kit collective’s ever-burgeoning makeup.

Buy it here.

Moses Boyd – Absolute Zero

Drummer Moses Boyd has rapidly become one of the most significant names to garner an esteemed albeit modest reputation out of London’s new wave of jazz experimentalists. Like his contemporaries – Yussef Kamal, Ezra Collective and Shabaka Hitching – Boyd is an exceptional talent, cross-pollinating genres from traditionalist jazz tropes to electronics to contemporary hip-hop and grime mutations. With Absolute Zero, he hones his playing style towards the latter of these influences. Absolute Zero is a frenetic frisson of junglist drumming and polyphonic synth work. It’s a multidimensional chasm of cool.

Buy it here.

TRANSGRESSION – HATEFUL DEMONSTRATION

“A collection of queers – screaming, yelling and refusing to be silenced,” goes Kentucky-based hardcore punk four-piece TRANSGRESSION’s bio description. It’s certainly a felicitous portrayal for a band that sound like Rival Mob or Stick Together at their most nefarious. Lyrically, TRANSGRESSION elucidate misrepresentations of love, hormones and gender dysphoria. “I don’t hate my body, I hate what you expect it to be” they bawl on New Fame, “‘Have you had the surgery?’ Fucking become nothing. ‘How are the hormones going?’ Fucking become nothing. Fuck everything you expect me to be.” A sore yet celebratory collection of songs.

Buy it here.

One Master – Lycanthropic Burrowing

American occultist black metal outfit One Master return with a typically pernicious follow-up to 2015’s Reclusive Blasphemy. And while Lycanthropic Burrowing may not be the most avant-garde of black metal’s resurrectionist faction, it’s undeniably combative in sound and frequently paired with technically fertile guitar play. It’s naturally lo-if in production standard akin to that of early Darkthrone and in return is wilfully devoid of any ambient soundscaping, which riddles most of black metal’s second wave of artists’ sounds. Instead, One Master’s latest offering is simply sensory bludgeoning that fails to let up.

Buy it here.

Pop Makossa – The Invasive Dance Beat of Cameroon 1976 - 1984

There appears to be a greater attention in documenting afropop and African disco’s past endeavours as of late. Soundway’s impeccable compilation Doin’ It in Lagos was one of the more recent examples that aimed to chronicle Nigeria’s contribution to boogie and pop in the 1980s. And now Analog Africa have collated Cameroon’s own interpretation of prototypical disco with Pop Makossa. In the Douala dialect, makossa refers to an ‘effortless movement.’ And with additions from unsung superstars such as Bill Loko, Nkodo Si-Tony and Bernard Ntone, this 12-track comp is a passionately effortless journey through Cameroon’s disco archives.

Buy it here.

Conduct - Takai EP

As part of London’s Blu Mar Ten Music collective, Conduct’s Takai EP is a deep meditation of glacial synthlines and scholarly drum ’n’ bass. It’s refreshingly deficient of any break sampling with an intentional aim to focus almost exclusively on developing the duo’s percussive grooves. In return, each composition forges these sterile audioscapes rooted by stippling polyrhythms and gently croaking basslines. And while the prosaic nature of contemporary drum ’n’ bass music may cloud the notoriety of many of its modern day producers, Conduct are sure to be one of the genre’s more progressive acts.

Buy it here.

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