June felt like living inside a pressure cooker: heat steaming the pavement, skies breaking open in floods, and a world that keeps tripping over its own shoelaces. But music, as ever, remains the lifeboat. When your brain’s frayed like old cassette tape, Katatonic Silentio on Fleur Savage offers ambient rescue missions, and Purelink on Peak Oil floats in like a cool breeze through blackout curtains. Secret getii’s xochicuicatl beams in cryptic transmissions perfect for solitary nights. For sharper daylight hours, Aspetuck’s Oslated release maps out subterranean passageways, while Cosmin TRG and DYL’s Romanian link-up draws blueprints for thinking techno. Shaw Cuts marks a decade with cuts that gnash and groove, and Raär’s new album on Omen Wapta proves rhythm still has plenty of riddles left. Meanwhile, Dino Sabatini & Maurizio Cascella, Toki Fuko, and Rene Wise remind us that sometimes salvation is as simple as bass rolling through a dark room.