Following her acclaimed 2023 release Flood City Trax, a dreamy, lo-fi take on footwork inspired by the crumbling rust-belt city she calls home, Nondi returns to Planet Mu with her second self-titled album, Nondi… While Nondi… retains some of the hazy, nostalgic atmosphere of Flood City Trax, it pushes her sound in bold new directions. I made this album to capture the sense of freedom I used to get from music when I was first discovering it all, Nondi says. Its meant to be cute, fun, kinda weird and emotional — but most of all, its a presentation of some of the prettiest tracks Ive made. Though she hasnt really experienced club culture where she lives, her impressionistic productions evoke the surreal, lingering sounds of a night out — the melodic haze that hums in your ears as you drift off to sleep. Lo-fi and melodic, yet fluid and free, her music carries a sense of flight and intuitive logic. Nondis influences range widely — Actress, Aphex Twin, footwork, and the stranger edges of dub techno are all felt, yet she hallucinates them through her own weathered, dreamlike lens. Her tracks often build from clashing loops that evolve and transform organically, or from familiar genre elements reshaped by her instinct for misty, heart-wrenching melody. Some moments stay closer to genre, like Broken Future 175, a drum-and-bass tear-out that dissolves into lush, blurred chords, or Just Hanging Out, a bruised and beautiful take on 2-step. Lead single Tree Festival feels like a blown-out fusion of rave energy and sped-up new-age bliss, while Death Juke drifts through off-beat vocal samples, pulsing drums and 8-bit FX, reminiscent of early Steve Reich reimagined through a Game Boy. Nondi… is a uniquely moving and exploratory album that expands her sonic world even further. Lo-fi yet luminous, playful yet profound.

Planet Mu

Planet Mu welcomes new signing Rev also known as 26 year old Raymond Hu from Chongqing in South West China, a city best known musically for its thriving rap scene. This scene initially inspired Raymond to produce music, but unable to find a satisfactory vocalist/songwriter to complete his sound, he started to build his own by cutting up, reordering and editing mostly feminine pop vocals instead of working with a rapper. Its a process with an element of chance, a proxy that balances the familiar and the uncanny. In turn, these characteristics carry across to Revs artist name too. He says Among my friends Im often called Lai Fu (来福), which is the direct phonetic rendering of Rev into Mandarin, and in Chinese it literally means Get Lucky. But also, Rev is short for Reverse, playing something backwards, an editing technique he uses, where the sound of the familiar and uncanny mix. Revs six track Planet Mu debut Stay, Nomad is sparse and deeply felt, composed with a graceful sense of weightlessness and space. Rhythms crack and bounce around melody, effects and reverb which suck air in and out of the sound design, while vocals thread through this mix like eerie holograms. Opener Mind Game which was on the Planet Mu 30 compilation and also appears here with a mind-bending remix from Chewlie, starts with a naked piano, opening up into something that glows with disembodied vocals yearning over dub-like phrases, that lift and dissipate like fireworks. In contrast, first single Stutter builds up slithers of choir-like and chipmunked vocals into strange shapes over fuzzy piano, until saw-like drums cut in half way through giving the serene mood a fearful, nervous edge. We hope you enjoy this new EP as much as we do.

Ship Sket is 26 year old Josh Griffiths. Originally from Dorset, hes lived in Manchester for seven years and forged his own path within the citys welcoming and close-knit music scene, arriving on Planet Mu this autumn with his debut album InitiatriX. Sonically the album is a homage to the UK styles that Josh loves: dubstep, grime, drill and rap, but on an emotional level its about spirituality, fetish, and latent darkness hidden by outward appearances. Josh says about his process I like happy accidents, messing around and resampling, and kind of seeing how far I can push stuff before it disintegrates in front of me. Not so much deconstructed so much as derailed; Ive heard my tunes on a club system and gone wow that mix sounds bad, but the tune is still popping. My approach is a lot more stylistic than it is technical. InitiatriX is a smeared mix of distorted pop, underwater drill, dubby musique concrète and the downright dada. There are dramatic string passages and naked piano; Josh drops from twitchy electronics to blooms of distortion, found-sound and lo-fi drum patterns and sometimes all those things at once. I do think of production as a divine practice because it is a mass-channeling of creative force. Putting together a track is drawing down energy and organising it into the best possible shape, like a huge elaborate puzzle. Sometimes the tracks will write themselves, and that is a beautiful feeling. This approach to writing is manifest throughout InitiatriX. Take Vendettas Theme (ft. Charlie Osborne) - a pounding drill beat covered in a layer of filthy distortion with demonic vocals rapping about spiders, alchemy and isolation - the vocals and sample chops forcing their way through the songs web of grit; or the subtle intensity of Mimikyus slow paced and ornate strings, cast against repeated cute bleeps and incidental details to form a hypnotic club tool. Permanent Kigurumis lonely melody, cloaked in a haunted atmosphere, rubs against explosive drill drums and a vocal snatch whispering Just Like You. Ship Skets music is strange and beguiling, rough and sensuous all at the same time.

Anyone with a passing interest in footwork and juke will know of Traxman. Corky Strong has a long history of deep involvement in Chicago house, first releasing on the legendary Dance Mania label in the mid nineties, and since then splitting his productions between ghetto house, juke and footwork, releasing alongside Steve Poindexter and Fast Eddie and the late DJ Deeon and DJ Rashad, including an seemingly endless supply of self-released juke edits of whatever direction his deep knowledge of Black American music takes him. The third volume of Da Mind Of Traxman is his first since 2014. In the intervening years hes kept things rolling, DJing regularly, releasing lots of music, becoming a grandfather and being a mentor for younger artists coming up in the scene. This new album was crafted with the help of fellow Planet Mu artist Sinjin Hawke, who took on A&R duties to collate the best from hundreds of tracks dating back to 2005. Sinjin holds Traxmans status in high regard; This album series is important and holds real documentarian value—working on it feels like the modern equivalent of curating a piece of Miles Daviss catalog in the 60s and 70s. Volume 3 showcases Traxmans uncanny ability to take old music into the future without losing the feeling and energy of his samples and influences. He knows how to add a hi-definition modern chassis with the skill of someone who deeply and intuitively understands the craft of dance music. These are some of the purest, most innovative ideations of Chicago footwork.