Mr Fingers’ Leev Ur Mynd - AKA genius at rest and play
Larry Heard’s genius lies in making it all sound so easy. Listen to those first, classic Mr. Fingers records - Mystery of Love, Can You Feel It, Washing Machine et al. - and the music sounds absolutely inevitable: just a couple of simple synth patterns, a melodic wash and the gentle tick of a drum machine.
It sounds very much like you could do it. But, as countless deep house producers have spent years demonstrating, you couldn’t. What Heard does is special, the closest I have experienced to musical alchemy, taking a handful of earth-bound ingredients and turning them into gold.
The Prince-ly titled Leev Ur Mynd, Heard’s first new album as Mr Fingers since the two Around The Sun albums in 2022 / 3, shows that this gift remains proudly intact.
Mid-point highlight April Rain is right out of the classic Mr. Fingers tool box, down to a bass line that suggests the jazzy low-end of Can You Feel It, to which he adds a suitably mournful synth wash, understated house drums and occasional vocal melody. Heard’s production may be considerably more hi-fi than it was back in 1986 when Can You Feel It dropped but, in spirit, April Rain could be a previously unheard relic from that era.
I said earlier that Heard works by alchemy. That’s one way of looking at it; the other is that Heard’s grasp of a simple melody is so strong that it elevates what would otherwise be finely crafted but fundamentally underwhelming ingredients into a beautiful whole.
Much of Leev Ur Mynd doesn’t stray far from April Rain’s simple palette of synths, drum machines, voice and the touch of what sounds like live percussion, with the occasional appearance of an acoustic guitar for added campfire / summer field vibes. But Heard wrings a huge amount of melodic effect from these instruments: April Rain evokes early-morning mist and uncertain feelings; The Happening Things is full of nostalgic melancholy; and All I Need is sultry and desperate.
These textures are incredibly lush, with Heard’s unblemished, ultra-brite production sounds to the fore. But over an album length such smoothness can prove a little bit too relentlessly polished. This was the case on Around The Sun Parts 1 and 2, two records whose brilliant highlights - notably the title track and Like The Dawn - were clouded out by an overbearing air of sweetness, like being drugged by the heady scent of lilacs.
The best tracks on Leev Ur Mynd, then, are the ones where Heard balances his honeyed melodic instincts with the kind of spacey acidic grit we heard on Qwazars, his best work of the past decade.
Opening track Plastic Nightmares is an absolute barn-stormer, a slightly grizzled 303 line providing the base for galactic exploration. The album’s title track uses the same instrument in more lysergic mode, its alien groove setting the nerves on edge for the piano lines to soothe; and Menagerie sounds cosmic and angry, a martial kick drum set off against synth chatter and eerie electric guitar, like outer-stellar robots invading a Punk Floyd concert.
This mixtures doesn’t work all of the time. Barndance sets 303 against acoustic guitar and church organ only to fall flat on some rather uninspired melodies. But the fact that Larry Heard can still summon up magic most of the time is remarkable and it is a head-spinning achievement - perhaps unparalleled in the electronic world - for the producer to be able to tap back into whatever creative juices were firing his spirit 40 years back, free of cynicism, unspoiled by technological progress and still warm and unhurried at its core.
Leev Ur Mynd is all of that and more; a wonder of spirit, melody and lucidity, where genius goes to rest and play.
Some listening
I am very much of the opinion that Boards of Canada should just RELEASE SOME MUSIC AND STOP EFFING ABOUT PLEASE. Or at least I was, until I heard Tape 05, casually dropped to YouTube one Thursday, and its murky beauty seemed entirely in line with feverishly chasing clues around the darkest corners of the internet, hope mixed with static.
It’s often said - erroneously but we’ll go with it - that Boards of Canada make two types of tunes: the scarily nostalgic ones and the beautifully nostalgic ones. Well, Tape 05 sits precisely on the line between the two, the nerve-jangling, enigmatic opening giving way to the classical beauty of the song’s second half, as what sounds like a harp line comes rising out of the murky ether to take the listener home.
Massive Attack and Tom Waits - Boots on the Ground
… which leaves, somewhat improbably, the return of Massive Attack - with Tom effing Waits! in company - as only the second best comeback of Thursday April 16.
Not to worry: Boots on the Ground is essential, the kind of song someone needed to make in 2026, a tune of such outstanding relevance in its criticism of the American military-industrial complex that it feels incredible that it didn’t exist in the public consciousness two weeks ago. Waits is in perfect, growling-soul form, while Massive Attack provide exactly what the song needs, which it turns out, isn’t much, just an understated piano line and a rhythm that sounds like a revolutionary army sharpening its sticks.
Somewhere, Midland is frantically waving his arms in the arm to alert us to the fact that he also made his return on Thursday April 16, releasing his first music since 2024, in the shape of In The Mood For Love. For me, though, it’s the B Side, And You Are?, which carries the day, a mischievous, bass-driven stomp that is both minimal and ever-shifting, like UK Garage running head-long into one of Junior Vasquez’s bitchiest tracks, with just the twitch of tongue-in-cheek humour in its ear-worm spoken word.
MJ Cole and John Glacier - Move Time
In the week of the big BoC comeback, it feels appropriate that there is the distinct air of the Pentland’s finest to Move Time, a surprisingly lopsided collaboration between MJ Cole and John Glacier. The song is nudged along by the kind of nervous drone that BoC specialise in, like being pulled in by a spectral fog, to which Cole adds an IDM-ish beat with the slightest suggestion of garage swing and a chilling arpeggio. Glacier’s vocal is like the frozen cherry on top, cool, distracted and totally hook-y, like it was laid down late at night in a fit of pure inspiration when a nervous baby was sleeping next door.
British producer Ibrahim Alfa Jr. is one of those artists I should know a lot more about, his name swimming around on the oddball fringes of the European techno scene for years, adored by those in the know, without ever really making a mainstream breakthrough.
Infinite Black Inside, his new album, emerged from a period of sobriety, serious health problems and isolation, during which he wrote more than 500 songs. Perhaps just knowing this has influenced my view but Black, one of the singles taken from the album, sounds cramped, nervous and isolated, like Bug in the Bass Bin trapped in a nightmare-ish world of its own creation, frantically turning tale in an attempt to escape.
It’s not an easy listen but the creativity in the programming, the incessant drums, eerie chords and wandering, jazzy bass are exceptional, the work of a intensely creative mind looking to burn off some anxious energy.
Anastasia Kristensen - Magpie Song
If you’ve ever wondered to yourself why more electronic music doesn’t try to emulate animal noises - guilty as charged - then Anastasia Kristensen’s new album Bestiarium Sombre is very much the record for you.
She calls it “Anthropomorphic Music” where each track personifies an animal, which is perhaps the most brilliantly smart reaction to the spectre of faceless techno I have ever heard. Magpie Song, the first single released from the new record, is the highlight, a dramatic work of scrabbling drums (with perhaps the hint of a tabla) and mysterious IDM melody from which the song of a magpie - whether real and treated or entirely recreated - slowly shows its pretty head.
And, yes, you might think that the magpie is the real star here. But the setting is important and I love the way that Kristensen has re-contextualised the bird’s song, bringing the kind of every-day beauty we too often ignore to the forefront of our minds.
Upsammy and Valentina Magaletti - It Comes To An End
Imagine one of Richard D James’ most enchanting, melodic number rendered with real, live drums and you’re kind of close to Upsammy and Valentine Magaletti’s awesome It Comes To An End, a song that scuttles like a cosmic beetle and flies like a drunken bird. (Yes, more birds. It’s the week of comebacks and birds.)
The Heliocentrics, Marshall Allen, Knoel Scott and Bilal - Nuclear War
Fate laughs at me; fortune smiles on me. Just a few months have passed since I wrote here about how hard it was to cover or remix Sun Ra and we’ve already had one intriguing and occasionally excellent Sun Ra tribute album and now this, the Nuclear War EP from Malcolm Catto’s Heliocentrics alongside Arkestra legends Marshall Allen & Knoel Scott and Bilal, in which this incredibly talented group give their own, funky touching on abrasive, take on four Sun Ra classics, full of joy, freedom and love, neither too in awe of the original songs or too keen to make their own mark. AKA the perfect ratio.
Things I’ve done
My guest on Line Noise this week is Matt Black, half of epochal British electronic music duo Coldcut alongside Jonathan More. The reason for our talk was the 20th anniversary edition of their fifth album, Sound Mirrors, which is being reissued on vinyl for Record Store Day. And we did talk about this; but we also went gloriously all over the shop, from Top of the Pops to AI; Coldcut’s working relationship to the role that musical genre plays; and I even asked about the possibility of a new Coldcut album some day.
Has anyone had a more interesting life in music than Steve Hillage and Miquette Giraudy, aka System 7? They were both in Gong in the 1970s, recorded the classic album Rainbow Dome Musick in 1979, gravitated towards acid house in the 80s and eventually formed System 7 in 1989. 27 years later, they are about to release their 15th (ish) album, the excellent Flower of Life, which includes collaborations with Coldcut’s Matt Black and The Orb, and have a new live tour planned.
We speak about all that, as well as Miquette’s work on the “heroin ‘n’ hippies” film More in 1969, talking guitars with Mike Banks, Steve playing with Sham 69, birthing dance music at Glastonbury and vintage synths. Plus, we discover their secret to a healthy working and sentimental relationship.
(Yes I did two podcasts this week: sue me.)
The playlists
Can you feel it? Yes, it’s the playlists.
Apple Music: The newest and bestest 2026.
Spotify: the newest and bestest 2026.
Apple Music: The newest and the bestest
Spotify: The newest and the bestest.
