Incredible free EP here from Debian Blak. The hand-constructed feel of the beats recalls Burial, as of course do the future garage style vocals (especially the vocoded/timestretched voice TISW), but Blak's music comes from a much less bleak place than Burial. It's still pretty damn melancholy, don't get me wrong, but there's a bit more hope, a glimmer of sunshine in there too. I guess another obvious comparison is with man-of-a-few-moments-ago James Blake, but Debian Blak's offering here feels a lot more rounded and complete than a lot of Blake's stuff. My highlight of the EP What We Did puts the future garage cut up vocal style in a space which is dank & musty but simultaneously bright & expansive, sunrise shining in through the windows of a haunted house.

Check it out below, & download from Bandcamp: Debian Blak - A Hint of Menace

Check this free EP from Shankles full of beautiful, futuristic wonky bass soundtracks. The opening track recalls the Machinarium soundtrack for me, whilst the title track is built out of blissful acoustic guitar picking - a little Celtic Cross-esque - & postBurial vocal snips & tape hiss.. Machinarium and Burial are strong points of reference (for me) throughout, as is early Autechre (check the synth-with-reverb on Arcaden, you'll know what I mean). Overall: loving this. Check it:

Here's a lil mix from me for the sunshine, or the rain, depending on the weather. An Untimely tangent through music space with a wonkily soulful vein running through it... hip hop beats, 2 step shuffle, epic house deepness & dubstep pressure! Some old tunes, some new tunes, some tunes of indeterminate age.

Download: Untimely Sound WonkySoul mix

Tracklisting after tha jump....

This was doing the rounds on the old blogs a few weeks back... also heard it on Radio 1 the other day:

Florence & The Machine - You Got The Love (The XX Remix)

I was listening to it at work over and over today and it's just beautiful. It's two step shuffle, cut up vocals and booming bass made me remember how much I love UK Garage! So I thought I'd dig out some gems. UKGarage is a pretty much maligned genre but it was a necessary precursor to Grime, Dubstep, UK Funky, well basically all UK dance music since. So here's my personal mini Garage lesson:

(sorry some of the mp3s are 128s of vinyl rips so not perfect quality...)

First up is this classic psychedelic garage cut circa 2001/02 from Sounds of da Future... MENTA. (Or is it Sounds of da Future by Menta? I've never been sure)

plenty more after the jump...