Back catalogue: Techno (すべて)

Review: The Kimochi label has been steadily releasing quality output over the last four years and they've been responsible for introducing us to a pool of new talent from the ambient corners. This latest beautifully presented 12" comes in their usual house style and comes from UD, an unknown artist who has already released one EP for the label last year. "Muy Casera" starts things off with colourful minimalism thanks to its glitchy sonics, while "Meticulous" breaks the groove and takes the beeps to an irregular tempo. "After The Cremation" is looser and more heavily focussed on cinematic pads, whereas "Pankow" takes subtle bursts of noise and places them above grey-scaled low frequencies. There's some special appearances on the B-side in the form of two remixes by Leipzig's Mix Mup and Sued's SW: the former gives his own version of "NFL CC DUB", a slow and chuggy beat burning below mild pads, whereas the latter interpretation of "Dewy" contains that classic SUED sound, a bag of rickety percussion and rich soundscapes. Don't miss it, gone before you know it.

Review: Mystery production unit UD returns to Kimochi, one of the more overlooked imprints of the last few years, with four new cuts and a rather fine selection of remixers to boot! The mood is pensive and the sounds are atmospheric throughout, where tracks like "Lollipop Robot" or "Adapter" stand somewhere between ambient and electro-acoustic. The remixes give the tracks slightly more dancefloor weight, and both Area Green Grass and label regular Skookum contribute with a set of pretty killer reinterpretations a-la outsider house, but the silent killer is most certainly SW's remix of "Pankow". The SUED records co-owner fixes up a wonderfully bizarre concoction of sounds and shapes, moulding them into a dubby, sparse and cinematic twister. Another fine slice of Kimochi, beautiful artwork and all.

Review: My Own Mirror To Stay is a brand new and first-ever compilation from the Sure Thing label. It finds them carefully curating six new artists and welcome them to the family, each with their own personal reflections of the dance floor. Lukas Urban kicks off with supple, seductive and stripped back techno while Soreab layers up prickly percussive layers and Sanguine sinks you into a dream state with his lush ambient pads and skeletal rhythms. The flip side features three more elegantly designed and meticulous bits of techno sound sculpture. The always exceptional Neel has mastered this one too.

Review: User.Exp's first release on Greyscale Recordings provides a thoughtful sonic exploration, made up of field recordings, contact and hydrophone mic sessions and shortwave transmissions (either generated from scratch or really recorded). Artist and label are met with serendipity and ease here; though many releases have hit the Greyscale stocks - all working well within their trademark sonic and visual monochrome - User.Exp's latest is an especially congruent record, bringing crackly burrs and earthen movements to an album that feels large in scope and difficult to pigeonhole, yet intuitively felt. As if to describe a set of 12 different microbiomes - all besieged by a black-and-white, ecosystemic blight - the likes of 'Pollution', 'Erosion' and 'Wind' provide indications enough as to the set of ideas going in here. A deeply calming release, full of textural intricacies and yet not without a creeping sense of unbalance too.

Review: Harald Uunk's take on techno may be angular, electronic and refreshingly avant-garde, but his creative inspirations are far more natural. Unseen, his expansive debut album, was not - as some may assume given its sonics and largely dystopian feel - influenced by the urban environments in which he lives and works, but rather his frequent adventures in the countryside. That's not immediately evident, but if you close your eyes and listen intently, the various off-kilter polyrhythms, distorted electronic motifs, ghostly electronics and dubbed-out textures soon conjure mind images of stumbling around dark woods and fields in moonlight and pre-dawn drives down deserted rural roads in the Netherlands' most isolated spots. More importantly, it's a hugely enjoyable and evocative beast, even if it does tend towards the dark, intense and unsettling.