Techno (すべて) charts

Review: Regis and Female's Againstnature album from 2000 gets the full reissue treatment here by Berlin label, Tresor. Released under their given names Karl O'Connor and Peter Sutton, the record is a noted zenith of the Birmingham techno scene of the era. It has had a major influence on the music that was released in the years after and has here been remastered for a fresh double vinyl pack. As well as the original sounds, there is also 'Theme From Streetwalke,' a track that was previously released on a Tresor compilation. The tracks are heavy but relatively stripped back. They're packed with texture and atmosphere and never less than hugely compelling.

Review: Since opting to release more music under his given name, DeepChord man Rod Modell has largely stuck to dubbed-out ambience and heady drone soundscapes. His latest full-length is a little different, though, offering up club-focused cuts that mix his usual fuzzy aural textures and dub-fired motifs with up-tempo techno rhythms. By his standards, it's a very forthright set, with highlights including the noise-soaked stomp of "Reiki", the thrusting heaviness of "ITO", the hypnotic slam of "Jade" - where breezy, early morning electronics flutter away above tough drums and a mind-altering bassline - and the boisterous peak-time techno anthem "Scrawler".

Review: Tresor is a titanic techno brand that has very much had a large say in how the genre has sounded over the last few decades. The German club and label now welcomes Parisian artist UFO95 into the fold with his Backward Improvement EP which draws on elements of all the genre's many niches from London to Detroit to Berlin. 'Cogitor' is thumping and wried up with warped lines, 'Sexual Tension' has a more seductive sound with a rubbery and funky bassline and 'Fragment' then brings panel-beating loops for peak time showdowns. There is pure sci-fi atmosphere to the bells and the sonorous synths of 'Solar' and 'Gargk' closes down with a glitchy and ambient-laced breakbeat monster. Great variation makes this a useful EP.

Review: Berlin by-way-of Vancouver duo Minimal Violence are up next on the mighty Berlin institution Tresor, which as both a label and club is back with a vengeance. On Phase 3 we've got four stern and austere techno cuts with serious attitude; whether it's the pitch black TBM punishment of opener 'Flatline' featuring Mad Johnny's screaming vocals, the old-school rave mish-mash of 'Cold' (Sex) incorporating classic motifs like Menstasms, breakbeats, whistles and warehouse techno aesthetics, or the extreme noise terror of 'Focus On That Form' on the B-side that veers violently between jungle and gabber. Fierce!

Review: Formed as the collaborative project of techno legends Mark Broom & James Ruskin, The Fear Ratio was created as a means for the pair to explore their more experimental urges, away from their usual house and techno, through which both found success in the 1990s. Their new album under that name, 'Slinky', features British rapper King Kashmere, and a one-off vocal cameo from London singer Ella Fleur on the track 'Lacovset'.

Review: Considered by some to be one of the greatest IDM albums of all time (though we'd argue that it's really an electro set), Drexciya's 2002 set 'Harnessed The Storm' has been given the 20th anniversary reissue treatment. Pressed to striking silver vinyl and housed in freshly redesigned packaging, it's certainly an alluring album. It was part of a series of conceptually linked sets the pair recorded in 12 months (most of the others were subsequently released under other aliases after the surprise death of member James Stinson), and it has a typically atmospheric, other-worldly sound - underwater sci-fi electro that twisted standard Motor City tropes into a variety of futuristic directions. Highlights include the fizzing 'Digital Tsunami', the beautiful and widescreen 'Under Sea Disturbances' (a freakishly sub-heavy affair) and the clandestine shimmer of 'Lake Haze'.

Review: After a five year album-hiatus, the iconic UK artist is back with his highly-anticipated release, Crash Recoil, which has found its home on the equally iconic Tresor. Drawn from the spontaneous experimentation of Surgeon's live sets, Crash Recoil spans eight MIDI-sequenced, hardware-reconfigured tracks, inflected with the artist's signature penchant for raw and rugged sound. The first track, 'Oak Bank', builds up to a throbbing core - a cacophony of driving percussion and side-stepping melodic layers that shift expertly in and out of focus. 'Second Magnitude Stars' moves with a tidal rhythm, like waves retreating backwards across shingle before crashing forwards once again with force. 'We Laugh & Clap At The Circus' is, texturally speaking, a touch lighter and more spacious, yet still replete with a sense of spiralling chaos. 'Leadership Contes' feels closer to ground-level - earthy yet eerie atmospheres meld with drums that seem located in the subterranean. A masterful album from the techno key-player - well worth the five year wait.

Review: Electro lovers will be foaming at the mouth over this one - it is a super luxe reissue of some seminal UK electro from the late 90s. It channels plenty of Drexcyia vibes with its cinematic sound and sci-fi overtones and sounds as good now as it ever has. All of the tunes on it have been remastered from DAT tapes and included along the way is 'Original Flow' which wasn't on the album before and has never been released. It was only recently unearthed having been written in 2000.

Review: Tresor is celebrating 30 years in the game with a series of special reissue projects. This one really goes way back to almost the start, when Juan Atkins was already defining the early techno sound. For this one he linked up with Moritz von Oswald and Thomas Fehlmann in 1992 for a second iteration of the 3 Men in Berlin project. The monumental results join the dots between Detroit and Berlin across a collection of timeless cuts that meld bassline funk, hypnotic minimalism and soulful machine sounds into propulsive, emotive dance floor joy. The unbridled energy and cosmic elegance of 'Jazz Is The Teacher' might just be the highlight.

Review: LNS and DJ Sotofett explore a new direction on their latest EP, 'The Reformer,' released on Tresor Records. Moving away from their debut album, the duo fuses digital artifacts, scanner sounds, and vocoder voices with melodic colors that radiate across cold electro landscapes. The opening track, 'Reform,' takes a deep dive into the electro sound, while 'Plexistorm' blends synthesised strings with arpeggiated acidic bleeps. 'Electric Terraforming' uncovers charged energy sources for life on another planet, and '909 The Controller' features washes of dub over a skipping beat, with a slow, rippling melody and percolating synths. The vinyl version includes exclusive locked grooves by DJ Sotofett.

Review: Yazzus made a massive impression on us with her last outing in March last year on Mall Grab's Steel City Dance Discs label and now gets a suitable step up to the mighty Berlin techno label Tresor. She manages to lay down some bombastic and elastic rhythms on 'Human Error Processor' which has the kick drums pinging about the mix, before hammering a more searching and militant techno groove on 'Perforated.' There is sleazy and unrelenting energy to the chaotic percussion and synths of 'Metro City Bay Area' and that only gets turned up to 11 for the final outing, 'Three Deities'.

Review: Brunson marks a shift away from his earlier work under the name Acid Jakal, and eases further into his penchant for modular techno experiments. In a roundabout way, his music is influenced by the writings of various psychedelic and bohemian movement pushers such as Timothy Leary; and the result? An empathic hybrid techno powerhouse of an EP, which urges us to love our friends through pulsing beats and raw tops.

Review: Back in 2001, short lived Tresor Berlin sublabel Supremat released Mind Over Positive & Negative Dimensional Matter by Drexciya co-founder James Stinson under his Transllusion moniker. This much needed reissue features all three original tracks. There's the murky electro funk of 'Disrupted Neural Gateway', the minimalist beat dystopia of 'Do You Want To Get Down?' and more ghosts in the machine conjured up on B-side offering 'Power Of The 3rd Brain'. 2022 marked the 20th anniversary of Stinson's untimely passing.