Various

12th Isle’s first of 2024 is an all-killer-no-filler comp playing to the strengths of the label’s tastes and programming tekkerz, spanning Glaswegian dub zingers, pitching disco, mutant pop and kosmiche dervish

Revisiting the compilation format after 2019’s ‘Inkosi’ set, 12th Isle continue to skew dance music their own way with a bevy of regulars and noobs from all corners of the club map. It begins close to home with Murray Collier (Dip Friso) & Hannan Jones’ extended mix of the soundsystem tremors and dub-jazz-noir of ‘Echo Park’ - like Lee Perry cameoing the Twin Peaks score - and moves ever outwards to new Italian recruit Guizzi on a sloshing conga groover in a very RAMZi vein, to a standout prism of light-bending synths and gooey acidic strut by Berlin’s Der Opium Queen, coming on like 100% Silk-era Ital doing weirdo new beat.

The B-side hails Bristol’s Memotone - currently in a real feud streak - with the keening slow/fast bop ‘Only So Young’ reminding to This Heat and Lifetones, before lo Kindre returns with a gently spiralling kosmiche raga ‘Igreja’, and Toronto via Bangladesh’s Raf Reza sends it reeling into hyper-space with the nimbly coiled skank of ‘Dubfoot’ where toes barely touch the ‘floor.