The playlist – electronic: Rabit, Angel-Ho, Emptyset and more

Rabit – Pandemic

Rabit, the Houston-based producer who has one foot firmly in the clattering mania of London grime, has just announced his debut album, which will be released on 30 October via Tri Angle Records. Pandemic is the first taste – one that’s like scotch bonnet mouthwash. A voice remarks in the intro that “there aren’t any people”, and we soon find out why. This is the heart of a battlefield – artillery shells are exchanged in chunky rhythmic bursts as machinery whirrs ominously. It turns out to be just a bit of strafing ahead of the all-out assault during the final minute, as Rabit unloads his entire arsenal on the dancefloor. The result is almost cartoonishly extreme; it’s probably the most violent and overwhelming dance track you’ll hear this year.

Angel-Ho – Ascension EP

Rabit is putting out this EP on his own label Halcyon Veil. Angel-Ho continues the aesthetic of Arca, Lotic and others – where tracks sound like a police raid on a double-glazed windows factory – and delivers a ferocious and totally vital set. He’s from Cape Town, and has collaborated across continents with US and UK artists via NON Records, which he described as “a collective of African artists and of the diaspora using sound as their medium to articulate the recurring violence on non-white bodies”. It’s like a conker fight compared with Rabit’s nuclear thuggery, but on any other terms it’s full of violence – whinnying horses and barking dogs freak out amid flurries of gunshot snares.

BNJMN – Skur EP

Creme Organisation, helmed by DJ TLR, is a linchpin of the Dutch electronic scene, one focused on wild synth jams and sturdy techno rollers. (Alumni of the label include Legowelt, Basic Soul Unit and John Heckle.) Now they’re opening up the the sci-fi sounding sub-label Jericho One to go into “a more ominous, techno, breakbeat, bass and dare we say “big room”-oriented area”. Their first release is Skur, by UK expat BNJMN, who has been killing it this year with the cage-rattling anthems Luster and Rattled. This 12-inch features more seething tracks flecked with Chicago house sass. There are previews of the second and third Jericho One releases out there, too – House of Black Lanterns’ lead track Cold sounds like a particular banger.

Huerco S – Railroad Blues EP

Of all the shivery, spooked analogue dance that’s come out of New York in recent years, Huerco S’s has been some of the starkest of all. His beautiful album Colonial Patterns featured tracks that sound as if they were left out in the cold, the melodies almost snuffed out, their beats furred with moss. With the new EP Railroad Blues, there’s now a crackle of heat in their bones – such as on the shimmying deep house of Marais des Cygnes and Transit V (See See Rider), a touch jazzy in its cosmic reflections. It’s coming out on Anthony Naples’ Proibito label, whose stuff has recently returned to Spotify and is well worth delving into.

Emptyset – Signal

An exclusive premiere here for this extraordinary piece by Emptyset, the British duo of James Ginzburg and Paul Purgas. Signal was recorded live at CTM festival in Berlin earlier this year, and involved taking sine waves and beaming them around Europe in real time, before playing back the distorted results. The audio was fired first to the oldest radio transmission station in the world in Nauen, 40 miles away, and then sent to the French radio base Émetteur d’Issoudun, before being routed back to the concert venue. Along the way, the atmosphere and ionosphere break up the purity of the waves, resulting in the scoured, pulsating mutant you hear here. Emptyset are capable of thunderously powerful dance tracks, but this is a brilliant conceptual foray into the building blocks of sound.