Various
World Life Balance

Vels Trio has been bubbling away for some time on the London jazz underground, wowing audiences with a suitably deep, cosmic and gently colourful take on jazz-funk shot through with musical spirituality. Celestial Dreams is the former Total Refreshment Centre regulars' first full-length excursion and it's very good indeed. After beginning with the Tangerine Dream style synthesizer soundscape that is 'Dormant Days', the talented threesome flits between dazzling, jazz-fired workouts (see 'McEnroe' and the similarly skittish, high-octane 'The Winter Games'), laidback downtempo groovers ('The Wad', the deliciously deep 'May as Well Be'), cuts smothered in vintage synthesizer sounds ('Pop Stuff', the drowsy '40.2') and spacey, quick-fix bursts of energy ('Ceegee').(Juno Review)

Shine Grooves (Hanagasumi, ФАКТУРА) is a specialist in live and experimental electronic music, blending software and hardware in his studio in Yekaterinburg, Russia. On this sophomore full-length he cultivates an otherworldly Space Garden on a distant planet, populated by alien organisms that move to their own extraterrestrial groove. Dawn breaks and the garden slowly comes to life on ambient opener ‘Morning Mood’, setting a promising tone for the day ahead. A kick shuffles in to work on the dubby ‘Tribal Acoustic’, which builds and builds before leading us into the industrious bounce of ‘Japan Sequencer’. This latter, first optimistic and later frenetic, ends the A-side’s warm-up and primes us for action on the B. ‘Tool’ is self-explanatory, a refined, stripped-down dub techno weapon honed for an afternoon’s hard work. After that exertion, ‘Evening Radio’ is the perfect cool-down, its delicately skittering percussion contrasting with sweet, improvised synth melodies. Finally, the ambient ‘Night Reverberation Jam’ is the sound of darkness falling, our garden’s lifeforms settling down to rest before the cycle begins afresh.