Aura Dinamica continues its exploration into hypnotic, wide angle Techno with a dense eight track missive from Italian producer Matteo Ghiringhelli’s new project Atoloi. In equal parts subdued & transcendental, the album pairs intricate, polyrhythmic drum work with carefully executed and gently undulating atmospheric motifs to generate a moving and immersive listening experience.
Noah Gibson marks his first appearance on Northern Electronics with an EP of plaintive meditations on his innermost causes and conflicts. Acidic enthusiasm spirals out of control in innumerable ways across ‘Press On,’ routing us through the reflective atmosphere that hangs heavy in the background of the thrilling adrenal spikes.
Soothing synthesizer music and fantastic audiographic collage for fans and lovers of obscure ambient and jazzy minimal electronics. Original soundtrack to the feature documentary Love and Saucers (2017) […] Don’t sleep on this! Just 25 units made!
Freshly-formed French trio BOA – aka Behzad, Ohes and Amarou – wrap themselves around the new decade and squeeze tightly. Joining forces with decorated French musician Mathieu Deranlot, they present four far-ranging deep electronic and ambient techno explorations that range from the dramatic-yet-beatless “Nitro” to the brooding, swampy slo-mo electrofunk of “Lumiere Electronique”. Elsewhere “Merci Pierre” teases and squeezes even tighter with its trippy triplets and sudden dive into deep dream synths before “Bonne Nuit” closes on another ambient tip, this time switching the urgency for lullaby arpeggios. Sweet dreams.
Marco Shuttle is very much part of the Spazio Disponibile label family: he’s put out his Systhema album and various EPs with Donato Dozzy and Neel in the last couple of years, and now the Eerie boss serves up more of his immersive techno excellence. He starts off in slow motion, with the roomy ambiance and slightly spooky dub of ‘Ritmo Elegante.’ Of course it’s a track carefully filled with little sonic details that make it a very real place to be. ‘Arpex’ then switches things up with a super urgent, super supple acidic techno rhythm thats overlaid with a widescreen arp that sapiens space and time, and ‘Stairway To The Milky Way’ is a half time stepper though some trippy sci-fi jungle before ‘Qatarsi’ rides on a floating groove as sound effects pan all around you and traps you in a state of trance. These are expressive, hard to define and excellent electronics once again from Marco Shuttle.
The Amsterdam based Modern Obscure Music label launches a new sub-division named MOMArchives. MOMArchives is a reissue label that will focus on electronic music. The first release is Neocrystal by Japanese producer Yoshihiro Sawasaki. It is a fantastic slice of mid 90s Japanese Ambient Techno that needs to be heard by a larger audience.
Protection is a new label established by Japanese artist Haruka, which seeks to explore the spaces where techno and experimental sounds merge, and club tools blur with home listening. Here this aim is achieved with precision and care by Romanian producer and DJ Cosmin TRG. The EP is distinguished by its intricate production and focused exploration, with each track finding a distinct balance between intensity and power. This record represents an impressive addition to Cosmin TRG’s discography, and a very fitting start for Haruka’s new label.
Forest Drive West delivers the ‘Parallel Space’ EP via Copenhagen’s Echocord, backed with a remix from Conforce.
Since nearly a decade now, Italian born artist Antonio Marini is going through a sonic adventure known as Healing Force Project. Discreetly building up his musical blueprint, he slowly reached a cult status as a visionary who is blending electronic music with free-jazz in an atypical, anarchic, spontaneous and original way. On ‘Sideral Escape’ the artist shows himself in his different facets ranging from ambient to jazz to techno.
Mysterious German producer His Master’s Voice makes his debut on Delsin Records. With three mind bending originals and an absorbing Vril rework on board his entry on the Delsin e-series is a deeply immersive beat trip into another dimension. The roughed edged ambiance of ‘Fire Red’ opens the dance in soothing yet engaging fashion with superbly spacious soundscapes pulling you in and slowly involving into a foggy kick drum extravaganza. ‘Eve’ then offers a deep and propulsive electro groove with glitchy atmospheres. Lead track ‘Transition’ hits hard, an intergalactic trip on turbulent stuttering drums and whipping synths. To finalize an immersive EP, close friend Vril jumps in for a rework of ‘Eve’ where he smoothly connects the dots between his typical dark bass lines and blistering dub chords.
Delsin are pleased to gather together some of the highlights from the rich and varied catalogue of Manchester-based producer Claro Intelecto. From his earliest works on Ai Records through a prolific run on Modern Love to his more recent outings on Delsin, Mark Stewart has continually presented a vision of electronic music that uses the Detroit blueprint as a launch pad for his own distinctive strain of techno. Moving from elegant beauty to rabid intensity while grounded by a firm sense of rhythm, his catalogue runs deep and wide. The second volume in this expansive compilation series filters out select highlights from across his discography, and reframes them as a compelling overview of a truly distinctive voice in modern electronic music.
For his new album Existenz, Function marks a clear step away from the corporeal techno of his recent releases. Pivoting around themes of religion, sexuality, trauma and healing, it is a work expansive and celebratory, a clear liberation from a deeply internalized past. Formed from a collection of recordings made in a period from late 2016 to mid 2019, Existenz takes the form of a creative outburst in reaction to a number of traumas – recent, childhood and throughout Function’s life. Life partner Stefanie Parnow assisted the production process in its entirety, providing inspiration, spiritual healing and featuring vocal contributions.
In 2018 Konduku took everyone by surprise with his debut called Kiran. It doesn’t happen all too often a new artist emerges with such a developed and distinctive sound, delivering an album as debut. Now, a year and three EPs later, Nous’klaer Audio is thrilled to present his followup: White Heron. His singular sound of odd-groove based techno has aged into a sound that’s more mature yet still very playful. Konduku further refined his sound of snappy polyrhythmic blips by using a controlled sound palette focusing on the tensions in-between. Starting with the mesmerizing depth of Kenar to the stripped down halfstepper Hermitage, and from the synthetic beat patterns of Kobalt to the colorful dream fields of Belki – White Heron is an album designed to listen from start to finish, but more than anything else meant for the club.
Andy Stott’s first release since 2016 and first EP since 2011, ‘It Should Be Us’ is a double EP of slow and raw productions for the club, recorded this year and following a series of EP’s that started with ‘Passed Me By’ and ‘We Stay Together’ early this decade. Recorded fast and loose over the summer, these 8 tracks harness a pure and bare-boned energy, melodies subsumed by drum machines and synths; slow, rugged hedonism. It’s all about rhythmic heat and disorientation, pure dance and DJ specials rendered at an unsteady pace, from percolated house and percussive rituals to moody tripped-out burners.
“Hymn to Moisture” is Rrose’s first solo album, and it unfolds with the scrupulous care and patience that defines all of Rrose’s auditory experiments. The album explores embodiment in natural phenomena by playing with microtonal and unstable tunings, shifting overtones, and integrated modulations that make it difficult to separate tone from noise. Evoking wind, water, rock, and flesh, the album occupies multiple spaces simultaneously: abrasive and tranquil, propulsive and meditative, familiar and alien.
Boris Bunnik aka Conforce returns to Delsin for his fifth album on the label. Across eight tracks he delivers a wide range of styles yet keeps the ethereal and textural aesthetic of his sound recognizable at all points. His atmospheric approach combined with razor sharp percussion and intricately programmed synths make “Dawn Chorus” one of his most adventurous albums to date. Flirting with his Versalife moniker at times, this album leans to his experimental works, strongly optimized for dance floors using his unique sounddesign skills and unstoppable drift to reinvent himself.
Since returning to music a few years ago, B12 man Steven Rutter has released a wealth of fine material in his trademark thoughtful, melodious, complex and far-sighted style. His latest EP is a little darker and more uncomfortable, sounding not unlike the soundtrack to a yet-to-be-aired sci-fi TV movie about the slow death of the universe. He begins with a fine chunk of creepy, faintly unsettling electro (the otherworldly creepiness of “Neuro Fracture”), before reaching for weightier sub-bass, melancholic melodies and complex electronic rhythms on “Not To Be Trusted”. Over on Side B, “Divine Intervention” is a fuzzier chunk of horror-informed electro ghostliness, while “Reds Dead” pops, chimes and bubbles impressively thanks to Rutter’s extensive use of dub style delay effects and stabbing bass.
Mythological echoes and lush atmospheres form Simone Bauer’s “Arcadia” EP, which concludes with a blooming, psychedelic remix from Refracted. Following a long-running series of events and podcasts, Sure Thing inaugurates their new label with a heartfelt love letter to introspective techno and self-discovery on the dance floor.
The Hipodrome Of Music 