Album review: Various artists - 'Mary Anne Hobbs Presents Wild Angels' (Planet Mu)

As Radio 1’s champion of electronic music’s extremities, Mary Anne Hobbs proves the licence fee isn’t only frittered away on Jonathan Ross. This compilation strays into beardy territory with the fractured hip-hop of Mike Slott and the Fennesz-esque strummings of Sunken Foal standing out among the forests of Warp-informed electronica. But from Rustie’s rootless ‘Zig-Zag’ recreating the feeling of too much weed and Red Stripe to the garage-indebted playoff between rubbery bassline and skittish 16-bit flourishes of Brackles’ ‘LHC’, there’s enough gut-smashing mid-range dollops to make ‘Wild Angels’ an essential briefing on the current state of bass music.

Louise Brailey

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7 out of 10