For Club Use Only is your one-stop guide to the best underground dance music from across the world. Each month, The Astral Plane’s Gabe Meier forecasts the next wave of sounds due to break through into the mainstream.
As the summer turns muggy, the latest developments in dancefloor experimentation are as itchy and claustrophobic as ever. While collective catharsis may be within reach at one of the season’s increasingly common experimental music festivals, aggy moods abound in some of our favorite artists’ work and everything feels a bit more compacted and high tension than usual.
Indulging in a sort of swollen psychedelia, Oli XL’s ‘Clumsy’ marks the launch of the Swedish artist’s new BLOOM label, the new incarnation of his excellent and sadly defunct W-I platform. Texas’ Prison Religion have taken a more confrontational approach on ‘70mg’, compressing gutturals and chopper blades into their distinctly swampy compositional approach.
Tadleeh has embraced baroque textures and hi-tech drum arrangements on her debut for Yegorkah. It’s on the distinctly wooden ‘White Flames On Black Embers’ that the Italian artist shines though, showing off a brilliantly weighted sense of rhythm also exemplified on recent releases from 8ULENTINA, DJ Haram and DJ JM.
Representing everything sweaty and cramped on the mix front are artists like Imaabs and Bogdan Raczynski & 8ball, the former on a shapeshifting self-released entry and the latter on a slippery hour long collaboration for the Disciples label. Both efforts come from distinctly oppositional sonic approaches, but encapsulate a dioramic ethos that allows the listener dozens of potential conceptual entry points. If you’re looking for something more attuned to Summer libation, then head over to DJ Lag’s most recent show on Rinse FM. The Durban gqom king has rightfully become one of the most in demand DJs globally and is sure to provide equal amounts of screwface/hands-in-the air moments.
Tracklist:
Aircode ‘When It’s Said It Is’
Bogdan Raczynski x 8ball – ‘We Used To Corrupt Each Other With Art & Coffee’
Dj Narciso & Nuno Beats – ‘TEXXX’
Gag Reflex – ‘Grave’
GIL – ‘Compact Renewal’
hmurd – ‘Shepard’s Delight (Loraine James Remix)’
London Jade – ‘All Crazy (Leonce Remix)’
MC Rafa 22 – ‘Brota na Base (DJ R7) Lançamento 2019’
Missdevana – ‘Roll The DrumZ (Bubblingbeats)’
MvsterMind – ‘June 19th’
Oli XL — ‘Clumsy’
PRISON RELIGION – ‘70mg’
Scooby Dub & Atodamadre – ‘Estacion En Curva (Deltatron Remix)’
Shenseea – ‘Blessed (DJ Fade Remix)’
Tadleeh – ‘White Flames On Black Embers’
Tre Oh Fie – ‘Walk Thru’
pope w/ kitco sneaker commercial by yb & kareem – edit commisioned by craigslist tv
Xatarra – ‘Naif (Imaabs Remix)’
Xavier & CalvoMusic – ‘If This Is Love Edit’
Zaliva-D – ‘Itself’
Gabe Meier runs The Astral Plane. Find him on Twitter.
Olivea Kelly is an independent artist and designer. Find her on Instagram or at opk.studio.
Read next: Deep Inside: August 2019’s must-hear house and techno