Back catalogue: Techno

Review: Diners Club International recently served up this Hi Tech album, Detwat, on CD, but now backs that up with a limited cassette version featuring some bonus cuts. It originally got released on Omar S's FHXE label and is a sleazy and high-speed ghetto workout with filthy low ends aimed well and truly at the rump. Juke, footwork and plenty of spin-off styles are all chewed up and spat out with plenty of top collars and guests adding colour. There are pumping beats and fractured vocals on 'Money Phone', Drake style trap vocoders on 'TakeOffOnnaPorsche' and bright, reflective, optimistic chords over hurried beats on 'Glitch N Ass' (feat Cheapskate Skutta, Dastardly Kids) amongst many more highlights.

Review: Chicago extraordinaire Jamal Moss aka Hieroglyphic Being's third solo album is titled There Is No Acid In This House, and sees him return to Soul Jazz Records. Using his idiosyncratic electronic sound, Moss takes influence from the experimental minds of fellow Windy City innovators such as The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, The Art Ensemble of Chicago and Sun Ra, through to icons of his hometown's house music scene like Ron Hardy, Marshall Jefferson, Lil Louis and others who have defined Chicago's musical universe over the last half a century.

Review: The inimitable Jamal Moss comes forth with his second offering for Madrid's Apnea records. 'The Moon Dance' unfurls over 11 tracks- in turns pensive, elegiac, and slammin'. Between the sedate expanse of opener 'When The Earths Shadow Falls On The Moon' and the final cymbal strokes of gauche, machine funk closer 'Mawu', Moss lifts us on yet another Afrofuturist space flight of fancy, passing through superclusters of deep house, tactile techno and stroboscopic piano jams along the way.
Standout moments include the smoove-as-u-like-it intergalactic lounge jazz diversion 'The Moondance Moon Walk Version'; its steezy stride-piano vamp seamlessly intertwining with Moss' signature babbling acid intrusions, the irresistibly groovy bump of 'Tethered 2 The Divinely Spaces With In' and the hypnotic sway of 'Celestial Poems Of The Lady With 10000 Names', which opens up from Terrence Dixon-esque introspection into broad windy city string washes and synapse-tickling bleeps. With this collection, Moss pens yet another crucial chapter in the seemingly bottomless hieroglyphic being scroll. While 'The Moon Dance' is one of his most accessible and harmonious works to date, it doesn't lose an ounce of the rawness and immediacy of his previous work. Essential listening!

Review: Hats off to Jamal Moss for the tongue-in-cheek title of his latest album as Hieroglyphic being, which is naturally another pleasingly wild, freewheeling, imaginative and out-there excursion in his now trademark style. It sees him sprint between mutant electronic jazz ('Circumploar'), out-there analogue techno ('21 Days'), organ-rich post-beatdown chuggers ('Foreboding Self Pleasure'), reverb-laden ambient soundscapes ('A Dream Within a Dream', 'Delta Opus L'), industrial-strength dancefloor weirdness ('The Prograde Direction'), sub-heavy lo-fi deep house ('Black Love On An Early Sunday Morning'), sparse electronic future funk ('Future Shocked'), and jacking, sci-fi seeped brilliance ('The Andromeda Strain'). In other words, it's another excellent collection from one of dance music's genuine geniuses.

Review: It's been seven years since Holden's debut album The Idiots Are Winning was released on his own Border Community imprint, and in that time new material has been scarce to say the least. Thankfully, The Inheritors was well worth the wait; produced with a combination of Holden's extensive analogue modular system and his own self-coded software, the album takes in influences as wide as The KLF, Elgar, ceilidh music, pentatonic folk scales and ancient pagan rituals, with each track recorded in one take with no overdubs. Border Community cohort Luke Abbott's Holkham Drones album would be the closest comparison, but even that superb record doesn't come close to the sprawling marvel that is The Inheritors, with highlights like the jazz sax of "The Caterpillar's Intervention" and twisting analogue techno of "Gone Feral" coming thick and fast.

Review: We have been digging in the warehouse and have found some copies of one of the faultless EPs that Detroit house royalty Mike Huckaby put out in his lifetime. It features three tracks that are all steeped in deepness and dubby goodness and are unlikely to ever age. 'Wavetable No. 9' is spaced out and rather menacing in a subtle, sparse way. 'Fantasy' is a more airy and light cut with meandering melodic leads and thinking keys that bring a cosmic feel. 'Jupiter' closes out with nimble bass and splashy hi hats joined by conversational synth leads that glow with a late-night warmth. Included in this is a CD featuring plenty of the samples used in the making of the tunes using the Waldorf synth.

Review: This archival release on Organic Analogue digs back into the prolific '90s period of Swedish techno maverick Jean-Louis Huhta, aka Dungeon Acid. These days he releases on iDEAL, Fit Sound, Borft and Klasse Wrecks, but he cut his techno teeth on labels like Hybrid, Svek and H. Productions. Clad in artwork details by Swedish graffiti legend Nug, Wormhole Of Time comprises unreleased cuts and long out-of-print jams spanning many of Huhta's aliases. The release also comes with a zine featuring photographs and an interview reflecting on Huhta's multifarious life in music.

Review: As part of Amniote Editions' fifth birthday, the admirably experimental label has decided to release a full-length excursion from Mirror Zone founder Spekki Webu, AKA Heliobolus. The multi-disciplinary artist has decided to utilise both aliases on the album, a way of reinforcing the key conceptual idea behind it - that it is a "story of intertwined storylines" akin to "parallel universes that connect and diverge". Musically, it's an intriguing affair, with pulsating, full-throttle sci-fi techno workouts sitting side by side with darker, more intense cuts, sound design-heavy experimental techno soundscapes, and nods towards the horror end of the cinematic soundtrack spectrum. Throw in a few mutant, noise-laden post-IDM compositions and you have a genuinely impressive full-length excursion.