If you like what you hear below, this is now a playlist on the Pilerats Records Spotify - follow it HERE, if you dare.

Between Bjork getting her DJing fingers dirty at all those Triangle Records parties recently, and Boiler Room throwing up entirely ambient showcases, it's becoming more and more inaccurate to call left-field (often beatless) electronica 'underground'. So as PC Music continue to showcase brand new flavours of bubblegum pop, it's about time the meaner, colder side of club music had some shine. So we're thrilled that a rouge torch light began to trace the shapes of a sound that's making waves on the dancefloor recently. Here's a small run down of who you should be looking out for, you miserable fuckers.

SD LAIKA

New school grime champ Visionist first introduced the world to SD Laika back in 2013 with the Unknown Vectors EP, a record that I loved wholeheartedly, and attempted to slip its blistered rhythms onto unsuspecting dancefloors all over the city. Shortly after, through the efforts of Robin at Triangle Records, SD released a full length album of the fantastic aggy, flamethrower rhythms that characterised his first releases. He named it That's Harakiri, a Japanese word describing the immensely hectic form of suicide by self disembowelment, and it bodes well for the sonic deconstructions found inside. Gruesome. As Fact rightly point out, this isn't heady, floating miserabilism, it's crime scene clean-up, slamming club music.

Essential listening:

M.E.S.H

I am, really, really excited about M.E.S.H. His new album comes out in two days time and it's likely to be one of the most exciting electronic records of the year, coming together as an information collage, much like Holly Herndon's laptop experiments on her latest record, Platform. The idea of filtering personal data into sound is something that's fascinated me for the last 12 months, a shift towards the acceptance of the laptop and the internet as a place full of intimacy and connectivity, rather than something to blame for our possible disassociation with the real world at large. Sonically it's some of the most banging sound design I've heard, and if you were into that new Mark Fell stuff, you should definitely mark July 17 in your diary.

Essential listening:

Bonus: Tinashe edit, that as far as I'm aware is an old track that M.E.S.H decided to re-upload. I didn't think anybody could tip Arca on the whole R&B remixes thing but this 'Daw Is My Sewer' edit takes the cake:

Black Zone Myth Chant 

One of the most disorientating records I've ever heard, it's a patient listen that only reveals that it's got you firmly in its singular, purple-hued trance come the midway point. Recently it got remixed, slowed down (see: even more fucked up) by the amazing Low Jack, into a two-part brain wobble of the highest order. Make sure to check that out too! Anyway, this record is I suppose the opposite to something like SD Laika, instead of 'Crime-scene-clean-up' violent metallic clashes, it draws on super dubbed-out, lush, heady, swamped-in-reverb explorations into the mind. A slow decent into madness rather than a headlong sprint if you will.

Essential listening:

Bonus: Low Jack's Chopped & Screwed Edits:

ARCA

By now, the world should be aware of the groundbreaking artist's influence on modern day pop production. He, alongside Evian Christ, penned the vast majority of the beats on Bjork's new album, is responsible for the reverberating underwater palace that is FKA Twigs' debut record, and is second to none in terms of visual accompaniment for his music. His aesthetic partner in crime Jesse Kandra deserves just as much praise as the man himself for the outstanding videos and art direction he's provided. What next for Arca who knows, but with DJs everywhere still slipping the almost two year old 2 Blunted into the dance, whatever he does next is sure to be another step into a sound completely his own.

Essential listening: 

Bonus: Jesse & Arca's Trauma Scene: