April: 8 electro releases you need to hear this month

Zeta Reticula 'EP 6' (Electrix)

UMEK doing the Lord’s work

Last year, Uros Umek reprised his electro-leaning alias Zeta Reticula with the promise of a series of EPs via Billy Nasty’s Electrix imprint. A man of his word, the Slovenian producer’s alter ego is back with four tracks of copper-bottomed electro. ‘Reticulum’ and ‘Solar Analogs’ kick off the EP in suitably bustling fashion.

Both share the same thumping 808 bass drum to set their groundwork, but where they differ is in their choice of melody: ‘Reticulum’ boasts unrelenting chiptune stabs, whereas ‘Solar Analogs’ features a more hypnotic synth palette to get fully lost in. ‘Rotating Protostellar Cloud’ and ‘Circumstellar Debris Disk’ are the EP’s outliers. The former is an Italo-inspired cut of electro, while the latter forgoes drum work entirely and sounds like the sort of grandiose track that Beethoven would knock together if he was let loose on a copy of Logic.

8/10