Brighton’s Third Kind are celebrating their tenth birthday in September 2023. To celebrate the occasion, the label released three new typically diverse gems, with further exciting projects expected to surface later in the year.

Portland Vows – Plastic Alice

Plastic Alice is the first of two new releases from Aberdeen-based modular electronic musician Bob Plant. Its seven delicate, ruminative tracks ponder the existential (post-existential?) philosophical question that bothers us all from time to time: what if I’m already dead and nothing is actually real? Plant describes this as “a soundtrack to that imagined disappearance”, and this collection has a very corporeal presence even if it can’t offer definitive reassurance that this isn’t all a freaky dream. Wafts of gentle, half-heard melodies and gauzy wisps of electronic texture cling to pieces like ‘A Friend Or Relative’, while a powerfully resonant searching quality emerges through the haunted strings of the dense (yet minimalistic) ‘Neurology’. The album concludes with the firm and resolute synth melodies and squalling strings of ‘Tangled Again’, carrying a weightiness, certainty and acceptance. Plant’s other Third Kind release is the similarly bewitching ‘Witches Of Hopsas Woods’, which will be released in September.

Plastic Alice by Portland Vows was released July 14.

Trium Circulorum – Uranium EP

Probably already long sold-out, Uranium is a follow-up to German drum ‘n’ bass producer Martin Hansel’s recent Third Kind release Boodoo Khan. Released as a lathe-cut three track single, Hensel offers up vibrant new mixes of two album tracks – ‘Uranium’ and ‘Enter Boodoo Khan’ – which both isolate the mysterious, ritualistic rhythmic energy of the original pieces but transform them into urgent, powerful and thrilling new shapes. Hansel got so immersed in the idea of reinterpreting his own work that he went on and remixed the whole of Boodoo Khan for a digital version of the physical release. The lathe-cut release is rounded out by a mix of ‘Uranium’ by labelmate Fisty Kendal, who reduces the sub bass and hopscotch beats of the original to a twitchy, nervous cut full of deep, shimmering synth work.

Uranium EP by Trium Circulorum was released July 21.

Fisty Kendal – Price Match!

Price Match! is a follow-up to one of the earliest Third Kind releases, and catches the wonderfully obtuse electronic producer Fisty Kendal (Stephen Cousins) in fine form. Unplaceable and restless, this precision-sharp collection switches seamlessly between the liquified electro shapes of ‘Coolin’ With The Renegades’, the semi-acoustic lo-fi techno of ‘Dead Crow Blues’ (a collaboration with Croydon’s Superman Revenge Squad) and the semi-cynical askance look at the ramifications of AI on the rapidfire pulsework of ‘Softmax ‘98’. The highlight here is the dreamy ‘You Know, For The Kids’, which skews its own sublimeness with humorously juxtaposed samples of interviews presented in such a way as to highlight the lonely love life of an electronic music-making nerd.

Price Match! by Fisty Kendal was released August 4 2023.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2023 Further.