Nat Bush
Taste Of Love Again

Maara makes seductively uninhibited, proggy dance music. In fact, she’s quickly becoming one of its foremost exponents. Barely pausing for breath between releases, ‘Spiral 2 the Other Side’ finds the Montreal artist summoning divine feminine frequencies with a hypnotic, ritual-ready 4-tracker.Some Maara productions are shot through with an almost radiant optimism, but here, darkroom throb prevails. Big on the gated vocals, ‘Spiral 2 the Other Side’ achieves cybernetic sensuality through trippy, moiré-d electro, while ‘Take the Wheel Miss Sweetie’, with its driving, fathoms-deep approach, provides a direct take on the blueprint.The Canadian assumes the role of high priestess on the flip. ‘Forget the world’ is a ritual incantation for bridging seen and unseen worlds; prog house magick with shades of ‘90s trance utopia. Rounding things off with a tunnelling electro tripper, ‘Doom Quest’ references the vortex-dwelling atmospherics of early tribal modes to mind-altering effect.

"Magic Lover" by Aura Recognize this one? You might, since it's one of the first tracks on the DJ Muro Hawaiian Breaks mix. Whatever beat the band kicks off, Hawaiian funk group Aura struts its prowess in cutting instant dance floor classics. "Magic Lover" is no exception. I love this track because it showcases what each member of Aura has to offer, from the dirty bass lines to the brassiest horn section in Hawaii. What keeps me fascinated by Aura is local music scene columnist John Berger, who wrote in 2003: "The name change to Aura took place in 1984 when a local record producer convinced them, as Christine Mendoza put it, "That the name Nomads wasn't going to go over." The resulting recordings -- a single and an album -- didn't capture the group's proven power and pop chart potential , but the name stuck."