Review: Dino Sabatini returns to his own Outis Music label with another mesmerising selection of deep electronic sounds that seem to take plenty of influences from dub, downtempo, ambient and trip hop. The open has a creeping melodic sequence that is forever subtly shifting and brings a sense of eeriness to the smooth and unhurried dub rhythms below. 'Inenarrabilis' is then a double quick flurry of tiny synth loops and trippy effects then 'Plena Lunae' allows you to breathe once more and sink into a vast dub soundscape. 'Ego Experior' shuts down with some paranoid baselines bubbling up through a slowly churning groove. Some quality work here for sure.
Review: Mad About Records is back with another essential double dose of Latin funk with this limited edition 7" from Los Sonidos De F.M. and Sola. 'Tema De Los Adolesentes' kicks off on the flip with brilliantly lively samba keys and blasts of big horn energy next to more slinky and seductive lines. It's a true steamy dancer full of sex appeal while Sola take a different approach on the flip with 'Tabu.' This one is low slung and mischievous with its prickly rhythms and wet cymbals. The Spanish vocal is delivered with power and flair and backed by brooding harmonies that add extra weight.
Review: Having set our world alight with his third Ilian Tape 12", 2012, back in the spring, Munich man Skee Mask delivers another essential collection of loose-limbed, broken techno workouts. Typically, he's on point from the word go, enveloping swinging, off-kilter techno breakbeats with swirling chords and cascading melodies on brilliant opener "Inti". His love of African-influenced polyrhythms is explored further on the ghostly, percussion-rich club cut "Kappelberg Chant" (which, incidentally, makes great use of choral chants), while "Routine" is a warm, loved-up and evocative tribute to rave-era British breakbeat-house. His debt to British dance music's formative years also comes to the fore on killer proto-jungle jam "Skreet Lvl Dub".
Review: SPD makes a striking debut on Sneaker Social Club with a four-track EP designed for powerful systems and refined style. Will Sheppard has long established himself on labels like Keysound, EC2A, and Roska Kicks + Snares and here he channels UK bassweight while infusing it with a futuristic edge. First cut 'Genbu' features stripped-back, snaking sequences that keep dancers moving while 'Systema' delivers a bleep-speckled roller with a firm grip on deep, snarling bass. 'Willman' introduces a choppier groove that shows Sheppard's patient approach before leading into the emotionally rich 'OK'.
Review: Akte is the Cologne-based event series rooted in timeless ambient, minimal and techno sounds and here it launches its own record label with a debut 12" EP by founder Philipp Stoffel. Featuring four original tracks and a signature remix by dub-techno icon VRIL, these sounds are less about cooking up direct dancefloor tools, more about immersive storytelling. The EP channels dub textures and deep sound design that compresses the emotional depth of an LP into a tight, cohesive selection. With mastering by the legendary Stefan Betke aka Pole, it's a top draw package with vision and substance aplenty.
Review: Italian label Suoni Incisi launched in 2020 with a mission to offer up hugely emotional electronic music that fuses experimentation with multi-genre explorations. The boss that gave their name to the label takes charge of this third transmission and it is a deep techno journey into sustained chords, mysterious pads and the sort of muttered vocals that add real atmosphere. 'Track 2' on the flipside is similar in make-up with liquid rhythms, cavernous and dubby bass and subtle musings, this time with some eerie flute melodies drifting up top.
Review: Harlem & Irving label partner Brian Kelly assumes his Supplement alias here for a new and limited edition 12" that features two of his tasteful and challenging sounds. Kelly is always out to disrupt and subvert and does so with aplomb here as the a-side title track starts with a whisper but soon grows with layers of found sound, piano, percussion, and ethereal voices. It then collapses before reemerging with melodic and tonal guitars and pulses. On the flip, the same tune comes 'Revisioned' but is much more cold and distorted, edgy and urgent.
Review: Four years ago, Jon Linksey brought his Sectra project to Tectonic to the first time, serving up an impossible-to-pigeonhole set that combined his love of abstract noise, drone, industrial, techno and warped dancehall. The producer expands on these ideas on Through The Static, his first album to be released on anything other than cassette. In some ways it was designed with the CD format in mind, with the 13 'official tracks' - decidedly dystopian, angular and frequently intense affairs full of mutant rhythms and flashes of genuine musical emotion - being joined by a five-track bonus EP that can apparently be heard "through" the sound of static bolted onto the end of the EP. It's an interesting and unusual idea, but it's the adventurous and experimental qualities of the main album that makes it such a vital listen.
Review: After years of silence, Colombia's Insurgentes, which is run by DJ Lomalinda and Verraco, is back for one final transmission, and we're here for it: la ultima vez is a superb swan song that comes in the form of Fiera, a powerful long player from Argentine producer Seph that was written between 2022 and 2023. It's his most daring work yet and takes the form of eight restless, shape-shifting tracks that dodge predictability and blaze through techno, 90s IDM, dub and ambient with finesse. Limited to 300 vinyl copies, Fiera pays tribute to Insurgentes' decade-long legacy of sonic rebellion and though it's a bittersweet ending, without Insurgentes, there would be no TraTraTrax and no roots for the future we're now living.
Review: Shed's Towards East was originally made for Berlin's Dussmann store back in 2022. It's a very personal project that now gets reissued by The Final Experiment and it sounds superb. The Polish producer weaves in plenty of foggy and lo-fi ambient pads into these tracks, whether they are beatless vignettes or more low-end driven soundscapes such as 'Absolute.' On 'In Between (Fur Geli), yearning strings and a lonely motif amongst walls of melancholic synth done and 'September 5th' is another hazy memory with nostalgic overtones and loads of frayed edges and buried melodic wisps. It's techno, but not as we know it.
Review: Swedish duo SHXCXCHCXSH distort club music by using a refined, idiosyncratic palette that challenges functionality. As logophiles, they twist language into fragmented, barely recognisable sequences, reflecting their experimental process. Their new album marks their debut for Northern Electronics and showcases a broader exploration of sound. Spanning 15 tracks in style, it combines drone elements, shredded vocals and chaotic melodies to make for a dark, intense atmosphere. Interspersed with brooding yet effervescent breaks, ......t is their most focused and comprehensive work to date and it also pushes their sound into new territories.
Review: The next level beat maker and sound designer that is Skee Mask returns to long-time home label Ilian Tape with another bold and brilliant album, Resort. It's an album that expands on the artist's usual sound with fusions of celestial ambient, IDM sound design and lithe, rhythmic techno drums. There are breakbeats on 'Reminiscrmx' backlit by heavenly pads, 'Schneiders Paradox' is marbled with zippy pads and raw drum hits, 'BB Care' glistens with a futuristic glow and 'Holzl Was A Dancer' slips into a shuffling, UKG tinged dub house pumper. It's a wild, wonderful ride that reaches all new levels for this already accomplished producer.
Review: Munich based producer Bryan Mueller aka Skee Mask presents his latest album titled Pool, via local imprint Ilian Tape which follows up his LP Compro which came out three years ago. There's an extensive collection of sonic experiments on offer on this one, such as opening cut 'Nvivo' which goes down an IDM route, to the glassy eyed rave euphoria of 'LFO', the intelligent drum and bass reductions of 'Rio Dub' and UK influenced steppers like 'Crossection'.
Review: After being commissioned to produce several 'interlocking' ambient pieces for an art gallery piece in LA, Brian Foote and Sage Caswell decided to take the concept of 'audience crossfading' to the next level, creating an entire ambient album using a particular sonic technique. Over five long pieces from 'Waterwheel' to 'Smiley', their aim was to evoke the feeling of bodies moving in thoroughfares. The tracks are long-exposed movements captured in ambient space, blending rhythms and soundscapes for chillout rooms that exist only in memory now.
Review: Sarah Sommers' inaugural album HeartCore was captured live at Princess Tower Studios in Berlin. Clocking in at 74 minutes, it's a vibrant fusion of dance music genres fuelled by Sarah's profound passion for electronic beats that span various eras. From dub to techno, house to dubstep, and drum & bass to breakbeat, the record showcases all that and more across nine tracks extracted from Sarah's live sets and previously performed across Berlin clubs in 2022 and 2023. A testament to her lifelong love of the music, this LP epitomises authenticity and comes on lovely gatefold neon pink wax.
Review: This first album from Sons proves them adept at a range of techno soundscapes, It was written as the soundtrack to a movie that does not exists and it plays out with a great sense of narrative because of that. It tells the story of Anna and her escape from earth to a new planet, Seylanide. The record features well-received singles such as 'Identity' (ft. Sun) and 'Eternity' (ft. OCB), complete with plenty of rich layers of emotive pads, deep basslines and melodic vibes that have your mind cast adrift in a cosmic abyss.
That Wisnae A Microdose/Melon Farmer/Epsilon/Sheep To Shepherd (21:33)
Review: Mad-heads, rave veterans and lovers of having their brains rewired by previously unexplored sonic realms unite, because here comes the first of four, yes four, new albums from the fantastic freak of nature that is Special Request. His 'What Time Is Love? Sessions' arrives in several different formats this month and across six sizzling tracks that re-wire the KLF's hit of that name, he taps into everything from "ephemeral ambiance to barnstorming hardcore, pummelling house to pointillist trance" and does so with a mix of the surreal and the psychotic, the psychedelic and the downright ridiculous. It's mental, and we love it.
That Wisnae A Microdose/Melon Farmer/Epsilon/Sheep To Shepherd (21:33)
Review: As you know if you have followed the work of Special Request aka Paul Woolford, it often comes in huge bursts and across several releases at once. So it is that this year the one-man production machine is to drop not one but a four-album run over the next 12 months, all independently. Quite what he runs on we do not know but we need some because once again on this limited clear vinyl version of his 'What Time Is Love? Sessions' he taps into the future as he rewires the musical DNA of rave, techno, bass and jungle into tracks that make your brain fizz and your body move. Unreal work once more from this unstoppable force.
Review: Andy Stott excels at exploring the spaces between electronic genres and has gone for many years now, He is known for crafting a unique, ever-evolving sound and after experimenting with minimal techno and dub early on, he defined his style in 2011's Passed Me By, a world of grey tones, static and experimental rhythms. In 2012's Luxury Problems, Alison Skidmore's haunting vocals added a human touch to his artificial landscapes then with the now ten-year-old Faith in Strangers, Stott fused his signature sound with influences like trap and minimalism. Over 54 minutes, the album builds in intensity and is still unmatched in its originality and impact.
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