The playlist: electronic – Panama Brown, M.E.S.H. and Hilde Marie Holsen

M.E.S.H. – Epithet

Here’s further proof that the Janus crew in Berlin are making some of the definitive statements in today’s electronic avant-garde. Avoiding stiff-collared conservatoire pieces and milquetoast prettiness, M.E.S.H – like Lotic, Total Freedom and other Janus acolytes, as well as peers like Arca and Holly Herndon – uses the syntax of trap and techno, but in garbled futurist statements. Epithet is another bunch of tea leaves to parse for meaning: there are startled sirens, placid twinkles, shuffling bursts of breakbeat, and pounding drums that sound like bailiffs battering in your doors of perception. All the violence and instability of digital culture is laid bare.

Panama Brown – Theme from Panama Racing Club

Legowelt is the Dutch producer who looks like Napoleon Dynamite’s socially capable brother, and who has made hundreds of vintage synth jammers. I-F is the Dutch producer who basically invented electroclash. Together, they are Panama Brown, and they have made a dancefloor smash. The chords are a bit reminiscent of Heatsick’s eternal grooves and invite copious amount of that finger-pointing dance you do when you’re drunk; the bassline is pure Testarossa testosterone, all 1980s swagger and determination. Your secret weapon for any ad hoc summer DJing you might be called upon to do.

Hilde Marie Holsen – Plagioklas

From the wee Norwegian label Hubro, which has housed excellent avant-jazz talents such as Moskus, Huntsville and Splashgirl, is this new release from trumpeter Hilde Marie Holsen, who also uses electronics to sketch out her odd landscapes. In this piece, a trumpet improvisation emerges out of twitching static as if picked up by a radio held up to the sky on an icefield. Holsen’s wandering melody is utterly wondrous, and met halfway through by an electronic tone that mirrors it exactly, then strays on its own course – eventually both are caught in an apocalyptic smudge of noise. Exceptional, and there are only 200 vinyl copies, so don’t sleep.

John Chantler – Still Light, Outside

This Australian expat used to help curate the programme at London avant-garde music hub Cafe Oto, but is now living in Sweden. By the looks of his Instagram half his life is spent romping across the countryside, experiences perhaps fed into the other half making tremendous work in Stockholm’s Elektronmusikstudion – the majesty and uncaring wildness of nature fills his new album Still Light, Outside. It was born first from recordings made on the church organ in the Church of St John-at-Hackney, filtered through the Swedish studio’s equipment: the result is massed chords given even more gravity as euphorically seething noise gathers, dissipates and then finally envelopes the pipes.

Joel Graham – Geomancy

The Music From Memory label got a mention in these pages last month for its reissue of New York pioneer Vito Ricci, and now it has dredged up another killer bit of proto-techno. Joel Graham recorded this in 1982 and self-released it on cassette, and along with the likes of Laurie Spiegel’s Drums and Charles Cohen’s Dance of the Spirit Catchers, it’s proof that techno and house were often stumbled upon almost accidentally, long before the clubs of the US midwest got to nurturing it. An analogue synth pulse sets up a minimal strut, joined by some ghetto snares and then, suddenly, the kind of chords that open up a sunrise in your head. Don’t head to an Ibizan pool this season without it.