Climb Downhill 2

Keeping the possibilities for Brukkage reliably wide as we enter the album sphere, we're proud to present a heavyweight long player from Japanese maverick Kohei Matsunaga, aka NHK yx Koyxen.

Keeping up with Matsunaga's past work requires a diligent detective, mangling his aliases like he mangles his sound but always coming up with provocative, rave re-arranging goods for labels like Diagonal, DFA, Pan, L.I.E.S. and right back to Mille Plateaux, WordSound, Important and Skam. If that sounds like a lot of name-dropping, it's simply to paint the picture of a long-serving polymath whose wares can attract the most critical ears, and as such it's a privilege to release a new album of his works.

On this new record he brings that unmistakable flair to a towering 13 tracks of side-swerving dance abstraction. From airlock electro reveries and music box malfunctions to blunted beatdowns thrown down dusty corridors, this album splits the difference between a suite of full-blown productions and the sketch-pad sonics of a mixtape. The hip-hop influence looms large, but it's pinged through oscillators oscillating at freak-frequencies and interrupted by creaky gates in need of a good oiling, upended by slippery pools of sonic interference. Consistently sick and never stalling, this is everything we needed from an album on Bruk, even if never could have predicted goods as cracked and precious as this.