Metronomic Underground - Various Artists

Metronomic Underground is the first Patchworks label compilation, presenting Brighton's finest and most abject electronic musicians. A collection of curative seaside tracks to ease the suffering of the inhabitants of broken Britain, the cassette is future-focused, 21st century post punk, drawing on the ghost hardware of coldwave, industrial and what our American cousins like to call ‘intelligent dance music’.

Curated by Brighton EMOM honcho Evey, the album begins in fine style with a track from the man himself: a clattering, monotonous (in the Can sense), bass heavy track with spoken word vocals from Chloe D. The shadowy presences of And The Native Hipsters and Suicide flit through the track, but this is resolutely DIY music of the now.

From here the album progresses to jacked-in, circuit-bent glitch techno and fried, beatific ambience via the kind of chilly synthwave that would make Chris and Cosey proud. There are too many highlights to mention but, in an ideal world, ‘Crush’ by Massive Luxury Overdose would be a hit single and tracks by ZIZO and Barelife would be storming dancefloors around the globe – or, at the very least, making emaciated clubbers twitch uneasily in grimy basements.

Accompanying the cassette is a magazine – also designed by Evey – which presents the artists in all their day-glo glory. The words are a found text: a cut-up of passages from Marshall McLuhan, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and various self-help and business texts located online. It explores the nonsensical gibberish-speak of capitalism and personal empowerment (manifest!) and satirises the ways in which corporate speak is infiltrating and commodifying human relationships.

Metronomic Underground is a state of the nation art document from a once-fashionable seaside town.