Forest Drive West returns to Mantis with a double pack of crooked, finely chiseled rhythms and porous, tactile atmospherics. Hovering comfortably between the distinct energies of drum & bass and techno, Joe Baker has helped define the creative upsurge in crossover tempos and tones with a practice that focuses on mood and presence rather than genre tropes. His first releases appeared 10 years ago on influential labels like Livity Sound, Rupture and Hidden Hawaii. He reconvenes on Mantis after delivering the first release for the Delsin series back in 2020. The scope across these eight new tracks is steeped in Baker's trademark restraint and subtlety, but equally he explores a broad scope of energies and tempos. From ambient, spacious downtempo and slow-motion, heavily dubbed drum mantras through to crisp, techy drum funk and dancehall-coded swagger, the range within the distinctive Forest Drive West sound is more versatile than ever. It's a range cemented further by the guest appearances on the album, as Patrick Russell comes on board for snarling, D&B-coded workout 'Uromastyx' and DB1 lends his chops to mesmerising closing breakbeat trip 'Planes'. Exquisite sound design with a mysterious streak binds these various approaches together. With club impact matched by spatial immensity, Mantis 1920 furthers the surefooted, intentional sound Baker has been shaping out as Forest Drive West for the past decade.

Delsin invites you to submerge into the prismatic electronica of Xenia Reaper. Across nine tracks of exquisitely rendered sonics, the shadowy producer engages in the time-honoured craft of introspective sound manipulation, folding gaseous pads into dissected breaks and running heavyweight machine pulses through achingly beautiful synthesis. Xenias work makes a striking impression, and theyve left a breadcrumb trail of self-released transmissions on their own Xenoplex platform alongside a more forthright appearance in 2024 on the always-essential INDEX:Records. The sound is sharply realised, modernist music that revels in the finegrain detail afforded by technology, but never at the expense of warmth and charm. Its nuanced electronica for deep listening, but it also hits on an instinctive, physical level. For Nept Polarisation, an exacting selection process took place to comb through the prolific swathes of material coming out of the Xenoplex studio. It was primarily written in their Eurorack system and Max For Live between 2020 and 2025. You can hear the shifting, expressive flair of modular manipulation and the advanced acrobatics of Max sound design throughout, with needlepoint rhythmic interference puncturing through blissful cloud blooms of melodic ambience. Bending and folding through non-linear structures according to their internal logic, Xenia Reaper offers up a three-dimensional sound world with more than enough presence to hint suggestively at the soundsystem.