The word “immersive” has, of late, been hijacked. Now used with conspicuous abandon by everyone from estate agents offering piss-poor 3-D renderings of bang average houses to fancy-dress film screenings, its true meaning has been immolated to the gods of mediocre marketing.

Step forward Engineers multi-instrumentalist Mark Peters, whose new solo album, Red Sunset Dreams, does much to rebalance the scales and restore order for those who like their dives deep and their sound surround. 

Three and a half years on from 2019’s False Alarm, Keep On Smiling comes album number five from Northern Ireland trio, Two Door Cinema Club. Known for having more bounce to the ounce than your average band, their brand of guitar-flecked electro pop has won hearts, minds and sales in roughly equal measure.

You know those people who claim to literally only like the very first music a band does at the start of their career, then kind “Meh” decades-worth of solid later stuff? Ridiculous, right?

The journey of Ross “Hudson Mohawke” Birchard has been truly one of the most extraordinary in modern music. From teenage scratch DJ champion and happy hardcore raver in some of Glasgow’s more feral club environments, in the late Noughties he quickly moved through making rhythmically fractured hip hop.

This month’s reviews take in everything from New York new wave pop to apocalyptic electro to kitsch exotica. There are no genre boundaries at theartsdesk on Vinyl, just a constant desire to play music loud, whether new or reissues, then share what it felt like. Dive in!

VINYL OF THE MONTH

Congotronics International Where’s the One (Crammed Discs)

There’s polarising discourse and there’s polarising discourse, and then there’s Beyoncé discourse. On the one hand, there’s “the Bey Hive”: the very model of a furious modern fandom who will boost her and monster her critics at a microsecond’s notice. There are the commentators for whom everything she does is by definition profound, moral and important, regardless of any hypercapitalist excesses and hanging out with dicators’ offspring.

FRIDAY 22 JULY by Caspar Gomez

Martin Jenkins, AKA The Head Technician, AKA Pye Corner Audio, is all about layers. From the stacked pseudonyms, to the dense, sound-steeped strata of his music, there’s lots going on.

After four years, three releases and a slew of remixes, the identity of spotlight-shunning producer Vyvyan ended up the subject of intense speculation.

There were no obvious clues from the records themselves. Channelling open-armed enthusiasm and rampant eclecticism, the releases were wild rides full of thrilling energy, nodding to the past as they ran full-pelt into the future. Could it be some Berlin-based wunderkind? Maybe the work of an established veteran? Was it Henry, the mild-mannered janitor?

Last days of June 2022, I sit in my writing hut. My liver is radioactive jelly, my nose reinforced concrete, my leg muscles marathon-cramped, and poisoned perspiration rolls down my forehead, stinging my eyeballs.