Review: Amorphic and Tensal hook back in to the machine to dialyse their crafts once more, with 'Highland Frequencies' offering up four, machine-numbered atoning lambs to our mech overlords, following up the equally arrayed 'Distant Landscapes' EP (2024) on Blueprint. Now bringing their distinctive cataloguing system to the discographic vanitas Mord, four more 'AT' tracks make for an irresistibly well-layered, synthetically one-of-a-kind release. Only 'AT4' gets a subtitle, 'The Sleepwalker', where a sandman's slumbrous, lollygaggling beats somehow, at the same time, betray a subconscious, paradoxical restlessness.
DJ Shufflemaster & Go Hiyama - "Salasa Geometric" (5:20)
Bartig Move - "Asistencia" (5:12)
Tensal - "Esbar" (6:54)
Aocram - "Dreams In NYC" (6:41)
Review: Mord has put together a bumper collection of 17 searing techno cuts as part of its Herdersmat compilation but is also seeing up four at a time on individual 12"s. There is no messing with Part 41 which opens with DJ Shufflemaster & Go Hiyama's ear-splitting, brain frazzling 'Salasa Geometric'. Bartig Move opts for a much more minimal and roomy sound on the rolling 'Asistencia' then Tensal picks up the pace once more with the rusty loops and broken beats of 'Esbar'. Aocram's 'Dreams In NYC' is a swamp, depraved closer for late night mischief.
Review: Robert Drewek vs Tomie Nevada's 'Time 4 More' EP was originally released on Unleash Records in 2005. Nine years on and Rawax are reissuing it on black wax and the tunes sound as good as ever. 'While He's Away' is a slick blend of garage-infused house drums and warm synth pulses with catchy vocal samples that bring a hint of old school. On the flip is 'Down With the Bass' which flips the script with a stripped back and militant but silky groove, dubby pads and a head's down vibe that really hypnotises.
Review: Short Attention Records makes a welcome return here with a new drop of wax that fits the label head into its roots in deep techno sound worlds. This one takes the form of a various artists' EP crafted with an intake feel for cosy floors and who better to kick off in that vibe than the revered Lawrence whose 'Hawser' is a groovy and melodious track. Next, New Jersey don Joey Anderson sets a slow and deep tone with 'Human Kind' which has moody vocals and Japanese artist Takuya Matsumoto follows with 'Three Flowers', a more potent and driving cut with a fine acid bassline. Rounding off the EP is 'Desired Spring' by R/K, a loop-driven deep house gem designed for both listening and dancing.
Review: Chris Liberator's experimental techno label Maximum/Minimum forms part of the Stay Up Forever Collective umbrella, which has been going for a heck of a long time (since 1995-ish), charting untouched terrains of teratological UK hardcore techno. An offshoot imprint dedicated to the "creative corruptions" of the Stay Up Forever crew, Liberator and co. would originally release these ones without catalogue numbers, that is until the market beseeched them to behave more conventionally. Now, well past their 65th V/A release, comes their latest, a decapitatory pummeller fronted by Sonico's 'Did You Say Acid?' and Zyco Seon's 'Citric Frequencies'.
Review: The fact that this is the 13th release in the Ohm series catalogue need not impede the assurance of quality by way of superstitions about unlucky numbers. New ones from Modernism, Tim Kossmann, Bec Kaczor and Kirill Matveev work through gassy textures that rasp against negative, membranous moulds, be this on the understated, unassuming 'Love Goes' or the neurotransmissive 'Deserve Rage'. Bjarnar Jonsson has a good radar for talent, and does a bang-up A&R job on this resistant, reactant techno comp.
Review: AcidLab is back with a fourth dose of medicine and this one comes on translucent red vinyl with various different artists behind the beats. Musikaddikt's 'Acid War' is a straight-up techno banger with oversized hi-hats. Tassid & Eski offer up the best named tack of the year with 'Ok You Cunts' which is raved-up hard techno, Acidrats & Skandal get even more wild and unhinged with their barrage of wind-up melodies and hard-edge and flat-footed beats on 'Massive Murder' and last of all comes Crime with 'Knife Blast which is a big distorted wall of white knuckle rave-techno, not for the faint-hearted.
Review: Mental health charity label Serenity keeps it sophisticated with its sixth outing and once again donates all proceeds to charity this time Young Minds. It is underground house mainstay and DiY Discs legend Nail who steps up first with a much more breezy and balmy sound than you would expect but it sure is lush. 'Pad On' slips into his more usual and driving house sound but with swirling pads up top for summery refinement. Trixie, Connor Male & Thoma Bulwer then get deep and late night with their punchy 'Impromptune' while Trixie's solo cut 'restless sculptures' is a jacked-up and percussive number that leans into techno.
Review: The Rotterdam label Mort's long-running Herdersmat series was first released in digital compilation form; only now has this round table turned its swords towards a sequential vinyl series, not the first of which you hear here. This 12" marks parts 16 in the series, clocking contributions from producers Rumenige, TAKA, Jokasti, Nek, and NX1. The heads-down producoes so named have delivered a creative, blazing irradiation of broken techno heat here, charting a rumbly and grounded, yet no less interoceptively arresting haul; our fave 'Eka' throws our sense of balance of course with quick, hard autopans and roughly ingrained, kick trods; then the silver medalist 'MRD1' bucks the proceedings off to unploughed courses, frightening the listener with garbled, found-footage EVP voices between horror-techno kicks.
Review: Blackmarket is a New York party that has always led from the front and been a rare underground haven for threads. The label reflects that similar mindset and here label boss Taimur and long-time Costa Rican friend Artro link up for a four-track techno trip. 'Know Your Friends (Vox)' is a percussive workout with sinewy synths reaching into the cosmos. There is more low-end heft to 'Machina' which is weighty and dubby. A second version of 'Know Your Friends' is surging and metallic and last of all 'Elements' brings a touch of high-speed funk to a techno framework.
Review: Rotterdam techno label TH Tar Hallow is all about providing peak-time techno nourishment. Next to cook up the goods is Augusto Taito who kicks off with the caustic intensity of 'Kanji' which has unsettling bleeps and big rusty drum loops. 'Paradox Of Choice' captures, in techno form, the unresolved anxiety of being lost with infinite options on your Netflix home page then 'O1.2' is a more wispy and roomy blend of dubby low ends and intricate sound designs that trigger your synapses. It's all heavy drums and unrelenting synth loops on closer 'A Sip Of Blood '.
Review: Taken, in case you didn't know, is the duo of former Skudge man Elias Landberg and Nihad Tule. This latest slab of techno follows their previous work in that it is functional but stylish. The drums are analogue, muscular, and perfect to hook on to, and the synths and hi-hats that peel off a rusty, glitchy and slight, but make enough of an impact to cut through. 'Hybrid' is a sleek opener, 'Drumcode' is more dubby and raw and 'Ice Truck' has a more mysterious sense of intergalactic exploration thanks to the sonar-like synths. 'Standard Truck' shuts down with mind-melting and warped synth lines all twisted around one another.
Ramon Tapia - "Fear" (Dynamic Forces remix) (5:05)
Review: Netherlands techno titan Planet Rhythm goes full percussive gas giant on their latest V/A, 'Friction', a motorsport motivator full of accelerometric elan - one of several V/As to grace their revving catalogue in recent times. Ramon Tapia leads the motorcade with 'Friction', a stabbing aerator full of overtop claps and rims, while Louis Lp's 'Radioactivity' unsettles with its seething high ringing and affectively isolated chord-stab-melody. Deas' 'Hard Dreams' nods to the real, unshakeably material core of dreams, with its rancorous full-tone acids, while Ramon Topia closes with 'Fear', a restless, chord-throttling, hard trancey, speed demonic rally racer.
Review: Eindhoven underground acidcore distributor and label Flatlife generate yet another mind-melter for the nitty masses, supercolliding tracks by four of the foremost DJs come sound-summoners on the subterranean scene. Flatlife have dispatched rapid-response rave Apaches since 2009, and A-siders 'Septic' and 'Lord Of Darkness' bring a fittingly mid-noughts feel to things, during which time the roughage of hard dance fused with the encroaching gloss and finesse that came with digital sound tech that defined the decade. The mood is horrific, with 'Saure' climaxing to apocalyptic, territorial levels through waspish yamps and kick crushings, while the aggro is not lost on the ensuing 'Out Of Order', somehow the most relaxed of the four.
Review: Dark, hard techno producer Tensal brings a heathen, cultic mood to the arc of techno orthodoxy with his latest record 'Perpetual Survivor'. With its ominous heraldic symbol on the 12" inner label, and a four-track sonic palette portraying the seedy underbellies of religiosity, this is a record that recalls the Brum-school solemnity of Downwards Records or the post-Catholic heresies of Vatican Shadow. Opener 'Sonic Particle Rain' claps back with a status-quo-shattering barrage of sonic madness by way of 16th-note stutters and squelching lows, while 'Ethos' breaks from the horde with a personal, textural reflection on what it means to follow one's own ethical code. Meanwhile, 'Perpetual Survivor' and 'Nemesis' strip things down to barer bones, amounting to something of a puritan Reformation in sound; the gilded ornamented of their clerical predecessors are contrasted starkly here by the B-side's electric, merciless and sparse sound.
Review: The rather enigmatic Tonearm is back with a new transmission that is clearly inspired by the ambient innovations of AFX. Innocent synth modulations, naive keys and thinking patterns all bring futuristic AI visions of peaceful utopia to life on 'Minerva', which is a beatless delight. 'Luminance' has a deeply buried rhythm and sustained chords that hum up top, then 'Isko' has cascading melodic rain and hurried rhythm suggestions way off in the distance. 'Ilthat' allows a moment of hope and joy with its brighter synth colours deftly looped and ever shape shifting. A quiet, impressive future sound full of nostalgia.
Review: Luigi Tozzi is a revered techno artist who has a pretty special live show. The way he crafts that informs how he records in the studio which means his music always feels lived-in and impromptu - you never quite know how it is going to unfold. This new outing on Hypnos backs that up - it's full of lithe rhythms and dubby undertones, with ever-evolving synth lines up top taking on various aquatic, alien or more organic forms. 'Sentient' sets the scene then 'Amphibia' further trances you out and 'Uterus' rolls ever deeper. 'Reptilian' is a more textured and dark closer.
Review: Fantastic Planet (which is also the name of a great 1972 sci-fi flick) is back with a powerful new collection, Survival Mode, which goes way beyond music and is in fact dedicated to the fight for freedom in Georgia. It draws on a diverse lineup of visionary artists who serve up sounds that embody resilience and resistance and call upon the instinct to persevere when all other options are gone. For those in Georgia fighting oppression, it's about unyielding determination to defy silencing forces, and the power of that translates into the music. All four cuts are cutting-edge techno sounds with jungle breaks, empowering spoken word slogans and beats that give you the energy to stand tall.
Review: Truncate is back on his own label for the first time in two years. It finds the revered techno talent in fine form and laying down some of his signature heavy low ends with surging synth loops and frosty hi-hats all ready to destroy the floor from the off. Remixing the opener is label resident Kai Van Dongen who makes it more hard-hitting and physical with his slamming, flat-footed kicks and urgent stabs. 'Dust 2' from Truncate then layers up scintillating synths and cosmic melodies and shuffling drum funk and last of all, 'Dust 3' brings some fixing synth texture to a more dialled back but still driving banger.
Review: Los Angeles mainstay and famed techno practitioner Truncate has joined forces with Chicago legend DJ Hyperactive for a first-ever collaborative EP. The results are fascinating from the first beat: 'Universal Function' is an anxiety-riddled deep techno pumper, 'Trust The Process' is laced with cosmic synths and an eerie sense of the unknown and 'Space Shuffle' is more jacked, with raw drums and punchy kicks topped by manic synth squiggles. Last of all is a heady soundscape in 'Matter Of Time' with its dusty hi-hats and frictionless drums.
Review: Manchester's Tys is back on the Simpler Times label he runs with Archie Gray, Tay and David with his third EP of cinematic, crisply rendered techno melancholy. If you're into the likes of Jon Hopkins and Four Tet you'll find much to savour in Tys' sound, dealing as it does in lingering emotive composition as the primary focus. There are plenty of deft drums driving the tracks along, but this is delicate music aimed squarely at the heartstrings, whether it's the endearing warble of the lead synth on 'Prism' or the sweetly spiralling shuffle of 'Antalya' you find yourself blissing out to.
Review: Few labels are as idiosyncratic as Theo Parrish's Sound Signature. It deals in house and techno of an otherworldly sort with esoteric rhythms that blur the lines between the synthetic and the organic. And that is exactly the case with the label's magnificent 100th release, a new album from Howard Thomas that takes its cues from his love of 80s sci-fi films and beat tracks. It's a stark world of dance floor pressure with buzzing synths and clattering hits, raw beats and leftfield energy that brings utterly new ideas across seven spellbinding cuts. This is a cassette version of what is an immediately timeless album.
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