Network’s 30th Anniversary celebration continue with a dig in the vaults finding three timeless treasures from UK Techno pioneers Nexus 21. The “Progression Logical” highlights how skilfully the Stafford duo – Mark Archer and Chris Peat – combined their love of Detroit inspired Techno with North of London Bleep culture. The third track is well and truly an historic piece of Techno history – Carl Craig’s first ever remix no less.
Evod Music presents ‘Galleria’, a Various Artists mini-compilation with Oscar Mulero, Mike Storm, Evod & Oisel and Divide. ‘Perlora’ by Oscar Mulero is a perfect dancefloor tool. Continuous bleepy spaced out sequences dialogue perfectly with stationary drums patterns and noisy hi-hats. ‘Cosmic Occurance’ is Mike Storm’s first appearance on Evod Music, which welcomes his inimitable style. The track is dominated by repetitive sinusoidal glissandos and a powerful bassline sequence. ‘Dune’ by Evod & Oisel is live recorded and composed by four sounds. A raw kick, a (dynamically filtered) bassline sequence, a resonant melody and and a light hi-hat. The melody of ‘Enigma’ by Divide is endless. As his usual, a single sequence dominates the entire track, melted with distorted, powerful drums and raids of pure power, during track’s climax.
James Ruskin and Mark Broom returned to their Techno bunker after some solo outings and their more experimental project, The Fear Ratio. They now deliver four new tracks of ”Basement Jams”. Expect heavyweight basslines, sharp stabs, tough grooves and a high level of funk to the metallic sonics that sets them apart from other releases.
Tbilisian record label, Murder Records, is back with 6 tracker various artist compilation, including exclusive tracks from Fractions & Zanias, Alessandro Adriani, Years of Denial, Body Beat Ritual. Vulkanski and Puritan.
David Vunk’s mini album vinyl debut on the most legendary cult The Hague record label Bunker records. Expect the true techno acid.
LUZ1E makes her debut on Voitax, with a four track EP, “Radical Optimis”. The opener “Transition” lays down LUZ1E’s law, featuring headstrong drum work, matched with equally menacing bass arpeggios. If the theme of apocalypticism wasn’t obvious enough from the opening track’s looming pads, it will become apparent with “Electronic Warfare”. Served up on electro’s trustworthy chassis, we watch the distorted arpeggios unfold as the tension of the pads guide us to an dystopian finale. On the flip, the title track “Radical Optimism” uses shrill pad pressure to break the track’s dreamy opening sequence – as the modulating bass provides plenty of frequencies for the dance floor. The closing track, “Emotional Intelligence” provides a candid looking glass into the producer’s musical influences. LUZ1E’s knack for emotive pads furnish the track’s uplifting structure with class, as breaks and bass deliver us to a tender climax.
‘Psy Visionary’ is the latest outing by the long going Spanish techno producer ORBE. On his self titled imprint he’s been pushing futuristic and hypnotizing techno sounds since 2014. His latest collection of tracks is a full solo effort and comes as an expansive 4LP vinyl box exploring a wide universum of techno. Atmospheric and spaced out booming techno trips spread over 16 heavy cuts to showcase ORBE and his visionary sounds.
Continuing our past year briefing, after the readers top 3 and best giveaways, we present a list of our 20 favorite albums from 2020.
We have four albums more on the electro side coming from DMX Krew, Men With Secrets (Donato Dozzy and Retina.it), Nullptr and The Exaltics & Heinrich Mueller, while on the industrial/EBM side we have albums by A Civil Terror, La luna sotto il ponte and LBEEZE and impressive works from Black Meteoric Star, Ian Martin and Trenton Chase.
On the synthier side of music we have four albums coming from Das Ding, Linea Aspera, Newclear Waves and Jake Schrock, while for the Detroit lovers we have two Detroit influenced album by The Beneficiaries (Jeff Mills, Eddie Fowlkes and Jessica Care Moore) and The Nightstalker (Dan Piu and Martin Akeret).
Closing the list are the debut album of disco-don Franz Scala on Slow Motion, Obergman‘s acid album on Furthur Electronix, Anthony Collins with his album on Lobster Theremin under the Grant alias and Shifted with his first album on Avian.
The list is compiled in chronological order.
Music From Memory is turning 50 with a special release: Virtual Dreams: Ambient Explorations In The House & Techno Age, 1993-1997. ‘Virtual Dreams’ delves into music produced during the 1990’s that redefined the boundaries of ‘Ambient’. This was music that explored the possibilities of Ambient music within a new setting, created often by House & Techno music producers for a world beyond dance floors but made very much with the pre and post-clubbing listener in mind. When House and Techno exploded out of America in the mid 1980s a whole generation was redefined not only musically but also culturally and chemically speaking. Peaking, quite literally, with a second ‘Summer of Love’ in 1988, millions of young people across the world would experience the life-changing ups of a brave new world but with it of course came the downs; enter the concept of a ‘Chill-out’ room. Whilst early Chill-out rooms lacked a specific sound and were often soundtracked by music such as reggae and soul, slowly young Techno and House producers themselves would become increasingly interested in developing a futuristic ‘Ambient’ soundtrack to a world beyond the thud of the main room. From Ambient and early Chill-out classics, to lesser known one-off projects, as well as Ambient deviations by some of House and Techno’s leading producers, Volume One of Virtual Dreams features tracks by Bedouin Ascent, David Moufang, LA Synthesis, LFO, Marc Hollander, Mark Pritchard & Kirsty Hawkshaw, Richard H. Kirk and more.
Baruch Williamson is the alter ego of Boris Willems, a Belgian artist member of a string of psychedelic rock acts like Aavon Durckheim, cosmic super weirdo, Hugs of the Sky and The Insect Soldiers Of The Sky. In 2019 he started to release a more electronic, experimental sound. ‘Sagittarius A*’ is his second album as Baruch Williamson (both release in 2020) and is inspired by metaphysical themes, a fierce experiment in pop composition and mixing. The album it’s released digitally by Wagonmaniac and on CD by Dream Museum Records.
Distorted Sensory Perception welcomes back the prolific one-man-machine from Malta, Keith Farrugia AKA Sound Synthesis for the first solo EP on the imprint. ‘Memory Sequence’ Depicts a cerebral journey into the depths of cognitive recall.
Erell Ranson confidently displays his renowned character of finely textured Electronics with old school aesthetics on Propersound 007. Electro, Deep Techno, and Downtempo are the styles traversed to you from the machines with emotive class, and ambient pads across 4 lovely tracks.
New DeepLabs Record release featuring a special collaboration by label founder Luke Hess & his brother Jeff Hess. This is the 10th Anniversary release on DeepLabs featuring full sleeve artwork by Haqq. Three functional and diverse Detroit Techno tracks with stripped down analog sounds reminiscent of the mid-90’s warehouse scene.
For this 7″ release Mr. Bongo is taking things back to 1984 and 1985 with a split single from The Egyptian Lover and Jamie Jupitor. First up is a track from The Egyptian Lover, AKA Greg J. Broussard, the cult Los Angeles-based producer, vocalist and DJ, who is a true hip-hop / electro-fusion pioneer. ‘Computer Love (Sweet Dreams)’ is a seminal electro-fusion / machine-funk classic that saw a release on the iconic label Freak Beat Records (owned by Greg himself). On the flip we have another electro jam from The Egyptian Lover disciple, Jamie Jupitor. ‘Computer Power’ was additionally produced and arranged by The Egyptian Lover, and was released on Egyptian Empire Records (the label that evolved from Freak Beat Records).
From time to time I like to take a brief look at what our readers enjoyed the most and the end of the year is always a good time to do so. In order to do this I compile a top 3 of the most appreciated albums, compilations, mixes our readers liked in the last year.
As a cover for this year’s post I choose a map showing from where our visitors come and the first 10 places are the US, Germany, Romania, UK, Ukraine, The Netherlands, Spain, France, Russia and Italy.
The Hipodrome Of Music 