Home to the headquarters of the influential Boomkat, which more than just a store has birthed much of today’s most exciting and informed musical writing, Manchester has in recent years been a teeming hub of electronica with a head, body and a vision as plural as its own. Without judging itself a scene, despite the inevitable aesthetic and emotional affinities that are established, it is in an urban mosaic of names like Demdike Stare, Space Afrika, Afrodeutsche or Iceboy Violet that we find Sockethead tcp Richard Harris. Painter, producer and member of the dj crew Return To Zero who in self-imposed prophetic isolation in a caravan in Glasgow in the year 2018 gave initial shape to his debut album – Harj-o-Marj. Released by Mancunian YOUTH, which ZDB’s Mark aptly says is “one of the most interesting labels in recent years”, Harj-o-Marj is a pained kaleidoscope of out-of-phase languages with a very British sensibility and inspiration. Panoramic born of solitude where we catch a glimpse of jungle shards, caromed soul, screwed hip-hop, the memories of Skam’s future and that ineffable feeling of weird britannia from Graham Lambkin to Gazelle Twin. Sort of a living compendium of much of the music propounded by the mythical city store, in a collage of fractal beats, processed vocals, samples with no definite origin, and a general atmosphere of regret that glimpses, nevertheless, a luminous way out. Pay attention. BS