It's not often an artist serves up a debut album as accomplished and complete as @bambounou's XXX in 2012. His ambient synths and techno rhythms were perfectly formed right from the off. Impressively, the Pairs-based artist has still managed to evolve and explore plenty of new ground in the years since, not least in March with the first release on his new label Bambe. It found the straight-up, muscular grooves of his early work making way for a more restrained and minimal sound, where heady repetition and hypnotic pads seem to bend space and time.

It's fair to say that all aspects of the Bambounou sound past and present make up this week's mix. It kicks off in high gear, like a caged animal finally let free into the wild. The synths are nasty and twisted, the hammering rhythms never let up and cacophonous percussion keeps the intensity levels high. The frenetic pace remains throughout but there are occasional moments to catch your breath as tracks are stripped back to their bare bones. Ultimately, though, this is a peak time mix from a true techno futurist.

Marseille's Loïc Bodjollé started out making classic Chicago house as Donarra. As good as it was, he has really found his voice as @cardinalandnun. It's a project at the opposite end of the musical spectrum - a place where dreamy grooves and imagined utopias have been replaced by a much more biting reality. Deranged vocals, tortured guitars and punk synths drag you into a world of raw and visceral sound that has found a perfect home on L.I.E.S. Back in March, Ron Morelli's label put out Bodjollé's Dancing In Evil album, a gothic collection of EDM, industrial and electro from the dark side.

This week's no holds barred mix takes you right back to the same place in an instant. Clunking factory automation, caustic drones and heavily distorted drum machines lend the mix a sense of architecture that traps you at the centre while repeatedly collapsing around you. What starts as a collage of short, wrecked textures and busted loops eventually turn into a more elongated techno sound. It is blistered, banging and brilliantly suited to the grottiest rave warehouse you could ever imagine.

No one can deny that @conducta is surfing on the crest of garage's new wave. The Bristol-born artist is a dexterous DJ who jumps from style to style, leaving uplifting grooves in his wake. As a producer, he is just as nimble, and his Kiwi Records label and regular mixes have also helped to define a fresh new take on the classic sound. Always bright, sun kissed and never afraid to take on a big tune or recognisable sample, nothing is off-limits for this classy, party-starting DJ.

Part of the reason Conducta is so effective is the quickness and precision of his mixes - there is no time to linger when he is in the booth. Instead, you're hurried along from one bumping groove or darkened bassline to the next, and of course, that is the case in this week's mix. Elements of grime, dubstep, 2-step and the odd cheeky bootleg all colour his tightly woven and sun-baked grooves. The result is a mix as fun as it is fresh, and one that effortlessly highlights the fantastic breadth and depth of the current scene.

The B12 story started back in the early nineties when @mikegolding and Steve Rutter helped define the UK's intelligent techno and early electronica scene. Releasing on their own self-titled label as well as Warp, they turned out cult classics like Electro-Soma. From 1996, they took the best part of a decade off before returning in 2008. To this day, the music remains firmly in the future, with sci-fi designs and languid rhythms unfolding in cinematic fashion.

And that plays out in this week's brilliantly atmospheric podcast. It's a sensitive journey through an expansive world of glistening electronics and synth-laden sounds. Rhythms nod to IDM, braindance, techno and bass. As the tempos vary, tender and thoughtful passages sit happily next to more muscular and physical workouts. Few artists get such beauty out of their machines as B12.

Tokyo's @sapphire-slows has her own distinctive aesthetic. The music she makes is ghostly and delicate, eerie yet beautiful. The multi-talented artist plays her own synths and keys and layers her own beautiful vocal drones into her tracks to lend them extra intimacy. This of course means she has toured extensively and released on labels such as Japan's Big Love, Greece's Nous and LA's Not Not Fun/100% Silk. Despite often making and playing music with the brain cleansing purity demonstrated on 2017 album Time, Sapphire Slows can also do more caustic and mechanical sounds, as on 2014's Allegoria LP.

This week's mix explores a melancholic and introspective mood, but it is never dark. A range of mid-tempo rhythms set the tempo. Sometimes they're dubby and linear, at others more bubbling and off-grid, while the synths above glow like fireflies or glisten like knives in the sun. Organic bird calls float above hyper-real synthetic textures and the overall effect is to cocoon you in suspensory and meditative sound that feels out of this world.

Gavilán Rayna Russom (@gavilanraynarussom) is an accomplished and multi-disciplinary artist who works in the fields of performance, visual art, film, and writing. Musically, the New York composer necessarily works under a wide array of alias in order to capture the broad range of sounds she makes. From experimental drone techno as Hail of Arrows to acid and EBM under her own name via new wave as Black Meteoric Star, to touring extensively with LCD Soundsystem: she is impossible to pin down. In 2020, she founded the Voluminous Arts label as a home for boundary-pushing artists. She also released Secret Passage, an album of ambient created around her memories of growing up in the East Side Rail Tunnel which runs for one mile under the streets of Providence, Rhode Island. Later this year, another full length is due under her Black Meteoric Star alias.

As a DJ of 30 year's experience, Rayna is just as free-range, and she demonstrates that is this week's mix. At over three hours long, it is an epic oeuvre with many different chapters. There are passages of fuzzy, distorted ambient with a muted industrial clatter that take you to those underground train tracks, pieces of sound art that pair spoken word with icy wave minimalism, plus thrilling club, rock, and noise selections that are all coated in layers of grit and grime. Keeping the intensity so high, for so long, is no mean feat. But in Gavilán Rayna Russom's hands, it seems effortless.

Wonja (@wonj) is an elite level record collector. The Oakland-based DJ and producer has been putting together mixes for many years that are filled with music that is hard to describe, let alone to find. From teary-eyed Italo disco to her series of Wood Glass Metal mixes via world music and more club ready sounds, she is a Jedi-level digger who also occasionally produces solo, or with partner Dan as Motoko & Myers. Her main priority, though, is to devour and share as much music as possible.

This week's podcast is a two hour trip to the outer edges of Wonja's collection that her partner describes as "hard sci-fi party tracks." It is a wide open and spacious selection where alien details, solar pulses and cosmic motifs all drift by as scattered percussion only hints at the most skeletal rhythms. Nothing about the tracks is at all familiar, and all genre terms are redundant. Even when more propulsive grooves do arrive, the sound sources are wonderfully weird and abstract, yet the desire to dance is as primal and compelling as ever. Few mixes are as full of WTF?! moments as this one.

Jordana (@jordanaofficial) is one of America’s most widely respected drum & bass artists. In that field alone, she has already achieved a lifetime’s success and secured her legacy with albums and EPs. These impressive achievements haven’t stopped her also fronting a goth metal band in her Seattle hometown, holding DJ residencies in London, working in radio, performing and recording with Lady Sovereign, remixing Blondie and scoring the ‘Free Cece’ documentary. Just as important to Jordana as her musical achievements is her on going dedication to speaking publicly about trans rights and Black Lives. As a hate crime survivor herself, her activism is close to home and as personal as the music she makes.

Whether producing under her own name or aliases such as Lady J, she has an expressionistic, sci-fi influenced sound that is as likely to sample Malcom X as it is Al Pacino, but is always laden with a raw emotional power. That’s laid bare on this week’s two hour mix, which is packed with drum & bass gold, including some exclusives from Jordana herself. It is an exquisite heart-on-sleeve selection that isn’t afraid of a big vocal or a euphoric synth line, but is just as open to a flurry of hardcore breaks and gritty bass. Because there are so many absorbing highs and lows along the way, this is two hours of music that leaves you feeling utterly exhilarated.

We're all familiar with the healing power of music, but the Motor City's Whodat has made it her life's mission to spread that through her DJing and productions. Always coming at music with a sense of sincerity that carries over into her infectious sounds, she has released on the likes of Uzuri, Meakusma, and Queen Mum's Mail. Always uplifting and filled with life-affirming melodies, her take on house is all about feeling good and sharing love.

On this week's podcast, Whodat's smooth mixing style allows the glory of her selections to shine though. Despite dealing with difficult personal circumstances of her own, on top of the pandemic we've all endured, her music never fails to bring joy. There is warm and diffusive soul from start to finish, with scuffed up beatdown, off-grid Detroit grooves and seductive deep house all adding up to the sort of heartfelt and authentic grooves that the MidWest, and Whodat herself, are so well loved for.

@lukid is about as low key as they come. Somehow, he's managed to remain in the shadows despite making music - either solo or as half of Rezzett - for cult labels like Actress' Werkdiscs and The Trilogy Tapes, as well as his own Glum. His style is hard to define and can take in anything from caustic sonic collages to experimental and abstract sound design via lo-fi house and blistering beats. Since 2018 he has also made old school jungle as Refreshers, but whatever he does, it always explores the outermost fringes. The same is always true of his never less than adventurous transmissions on NTS each month.

In just 55 minutes for us this week, he serves up a breathless trip through hugely kinetic sounds that could be 30 years old or not out till next month. Amongst the colliding energies of hardcore, jungle and rave he will often drop a pitched up vocal so soulful and emotive it hurts, before racing onto the next flurry of drums. Frankly, it's a high speed mix of hyper real sounds that acts like a double shot of adrenaline straight into your bloodstream. You have been warned.