Back in stock: Techno (すべて)

Review: Brazilian Jesse "Dreams" Pimenta has been roaming around underground circles for a decade plus. He has a stylish sound that is about heady excursions into deep rhythms. 'Losing Control' opens up with a warped and flabby baseline over buoyant drums for peak time deployment. 'Dangerous When Wet' is a tightly programmed and kinetic cut with flappy drums and snares, aliens in the machines and psychedelic vocal swirls. 'XTC Messenger' then hits hard with thudding kicks and hints of 90s tribal techno. Last of all, 'Pressure Points' flips out with broke beats and dubby undercurrents.

Review: Dookuzot is the entrancing debut from Floid & W92 aka Woody92, and it's released on their own Omen Wapta imprint. Across eight tracks, they craft a labyrinthine soundscape full of shadowy textures, tribal rhythms and eerie, dissonant tones that feels both ancient and futuristic-an ambient-techno blend that channels family history into sonic myth-making. Standout 'Maushe' hints at dancefloor tension, while 'Veriyou' is seriously deep and heady as part of what is a haunting, high-definition journey through imagined realms and moody post-human worlds.

Review: Irish-born, Manchester-based artist Kerrie returns to James Ruskin's Blueprint label with her third outing for the label, continuing her evolution through weighty, precision-built techno. A fixture of the UK scene and now a resident at Berlin's Tresor, Kerrie draws on her background in record store culture and over a decade of hardware experimentation to forge tracks that are both rigorous and emotionally charged. 'Act Of Resistance' pairs dub-soaked atmospheres with serrated industrial textures, while 'Validation' rides a more urgent, tunnelling pulse. Flip it for the paranoid spirals of 'In Your Orbit' and the slow-burner 'Natural Order', each anchored by detail-rich production and layered groove. Rooted in classic hardware sensibilities but driven by a personal, future-facing vision, this is heady, unrelenting techno with purpose.

Review: DJ Nobu's avant-garde Bitta label looks to fellow Japanese great in Osaka-based Erik Luebs for its next trick. As always with this fine imprint, the sounds are about balancing transcendental synths with deep tech rhythms. They are masterclasses in economical arrangement and on the surface don't do much, but when you tune in properly, they are mind-melting trips, starting with the mystery of 'Granite Monolith'. 'Irradiated Body' has loopy synth sequences unfolding at great pace with pristine accuracy and 'Coming Up For Air' gets a little more extroverted with dubby kicks and the sound of overloaded AI machines getting ever more frenzied. 'Facing The Horizon' is a flickering, optimistic and mildly euphoric sound for dropping when the sun peaks through the blinds and you celebrate getting through another night of darkness.

Review: On his long-awaited debut, Osaka's Takuya Matsumoto draws a clear line between the tactile futurism of 90s IDM and the emotional depth of Detroit techno, finding beauty in grit and structure in chaos. There's a cinematic quality to the sequencing, from the shimmering opener 'Drifting On The Ocean' to the gnarled syncopations of 'Dril and Acid' and the broken funk of 'Fonseca'. But what makes this record truly sing is its refusal to sit still: 'Mini' dances with jazzy irreverence, while 'Triangles' feels like a dusted-off memory from a lost Rephlex archive. Matsumoto's palette is warm, spiky, and full of movementian album built not on pastiche but on devotion to groove and experimentation in equal measure. You hear shades of Underground Resistance's urgency, Mike Paradinas' off-grid detail, and Floating Points' melodic intricacy, but none of it feels borrowed. 'Traverse' and 'Mercy on the floor' close things with a spacious melancholy that lingers beyond the final fade. This is a conversation with dance music history, spoken fluently in rhythm and mood. A richly detailed, deeply personal statement from one of Japan's most quietly consistent producers.

Review: New York City's underground stalwart Sweater On Polo returns with the debut release on Signal Route. His Mechanical Confusion EP draws inspiration from early 90s Chicago techno and basement house so it echoes the gritty, raw style of labels that dealt in that sort of stuff, like Dance Mania and Relief Records. Across the six cuts there is an intergenerational dialogue between past and present with acid house, techno and synth punk all capturing a familiar old-school angst and texture but with a fresh twist. 'Land of Code' is one of our favourites with its rising percussive tension, deeply buried bass pulse and dusty analogue drums.