Game Plan is the meeting of Gabriel Rei and Gene Tellem. A longstanding friendship unfolded through mutual love for dance music and experience. ‘Club Negotiations’ arrives on Bienvenue Recordings as their first official studio collaboration. Three melodic and hypnotic compositions to help find your focus from the ecstatic nature of the party to the daily hustle of modern life.
John Shima has proven himself to be a natural disciple for the kind of emotive techno sound B12 were pioneering in the early 90s, and so it makes sense to see him working closely with Steven Rutter’s FireScope label now. More than meeting a pre-meditated formula, the focus here is on expression through the machines, and Shima is a dab hand at getting his synths and sequences to sing. After 2019’s The Lonely Machine, he’s back with The Empty Lands, an engrossing long player which journeys through enchanting, interwoven synth lines and delicate drum machine patter that will keep you invigorated and inspired for aeons.
In the year 2022, two induvidual electronic entities have formed an alliance; Spacetime Records by Darren Nye and Childhood Intelligence by Venus News Network – morphed into Elusive Intelligence. Darren Nye has been devoted to deep machine-dreaming techno since the 90s, but he’s hit a particularly productive run in the last four years. On “Voyage Of Light” across nine tracks Nye weaves a spectrum of sci-fi tales with the textbook tools – warm, expressive synth lines and crisp, intricate drum machine patterns.
Nuron makes a spectacular return on De:tuned with a compilation of hidden treasures. Nurmad Jusat aka Nuron / Fugue, one of the originators of the UK emotive techno sound, went on a quest for archived material and unearthed a handful of DAT tapes with previously unreleased music from the early to mid 90s. The tracks offer a deeply melodic and unique masterclass. Nuron combines a pulsing four-on-the-floor signature beat of the traditional techno sound with his characteristic rhythm and harmony elements. Classic Likemind-esque material that comes with an exclusive Stasis remix of ‘Contrapoint’.
Konduku returns to the Delsin Mantis series with an exciting double pack which dives deeper into his remarkable fractured rhythms and light-touch synthesis. Over the course of nine tracks Ruben Üvez straddles the space between introspective headphone trips and hypnotising dancefloor elegance, operating in a liminal zone of fluid tempos, submerged atmospheres and pointillist beats. It’s an open-ended but clear-sighted approach that aligns perfectly with the direction of the Mantis series.
For the fourth offering of Still Techno, newcomers Ke Thu drop a massive deep techno EP – ‘Like A Beacon Against The Fog’. Ke Thu is a Detroit-based live act consisting of Tim Barrett and Steven Stavropoulos. The two have been making music together for the last decade, developing the Ke Thu alias in 2018. Their music is an earnest exploration of techno and everything it is capable of: ethereal soundscapes, broken beats and rhythms, deep textures, and more.
Greyscale is back with a new set of burners directed specifically for the DJ’s and the dancefloor. ‘Spectral Flux’ offers four club monsters that spotlight different emotions and times in a classy deep techno set. Tracks by Stelios Vassiloudis, Jamie S., Operandum and Armin Bender.
Joey Beltram 1991 timeless classic is back on vinyl, originally released on Nu Groove. This reissue from brand new imprint Orange Wedge hears the original in fully-remastered glory, charting the proto-bleep tones of a trio of quizzical ‘Quad’ tunes. These B-side tracks are very nicely intro’ed by ‘C.O.D.E.S.’, a trance track which seems to revel quite well in the wonder of cyberspace, lilting between two chords in permanent alternation.
Placid aka Paul Wise is the leading light behind ‘We’re Going Deep’ – an online community and record label, born out of a lifelong affair with the many shades of electronic rhythm and an obsession for collecting records since 1988. For the label’s 3rd “Solo Series” edition Paul welcomes the talents and tantalising touch of one of the UK’s finest doyens of deep: ‘D5’. Offering up a trio of superlative sounding machine soul cuts for the next release. An artist who lives and breathes the mantra of less is more when it comes to his work, in large part his much prized output has only ever been released courtesy of Delsin.
J.S.Zeiter is one of those alluringly mysterious artists whose music keeps on drawing us in. Here they kick off the new Maastricht based label Mosae with a serious of deep techno bubblers. There are archetypal dub chords rippling their way over a sublime techno rhythm on opener ‘Sentinel’ while things remain just as war, cavernous and cuddly on the widescreen dub techno delight that is ‘Inflection.’ It all comes to a heady end with ‘Horizon’ which will have you taxing off into the distance lost in your own thoughts.
Roi’s newest EP is titled ‘Pasture’, a play on words combining both past & future. The project draws influence from old school Detroit techno but with a ‘modern’ & ‘futuristic’ approach applied to it. The project is filled with bouncing & groovy tunes that are ready to shake the dance-floor.
Collaborations is a new series curated by Artefakt on their own imprint De Stijl. Inviting friends and likeminded artists for extended studio improvisations crafting an EP based on live sessions. First guest is Claudio PRC, a close friend and familiar face in the deep techno scene. Both artists reside in Berlin and share a dedicated passion for atmospheric and immersive ambient and techno. Collaborations I features four jams combining the unmistakable strengths of both artists, resulting in a well varied pack of emotive techno with room for experiment.
This release is coming exactly 3 years after Gëinst ARTS, Accents Records and Inerit discussed about a new place where they could converge musically and artistically. A place to propose spontaneous and borderless music by avoiding any kind of standardization. This place is now called ITAE and this is the first release. ITAE001 is a first great demonstration of the esthetic that ITAE wants to share and develop over time.
John Shima makes his debut for Rawax with “Parallels EP”, featuring four deep Detroit techno tracks.
Aroy Dee with a first solo EP on his own M>O>S Recordings in years. Four emotive, atmospheric deep house efforts. Joined by his R-A-G peers Spaventi and G-String on track 3 for the special spiral galaxy blend.
Following on from the 2020 release of ‘On A Nimbus’, Priori returns with his second album ‘Your Own Power’ on NAFF – the label he co-founded alongside Ex-Terrestrial. ‘Your Own Power’ was produced between April and July of 2020, with the lockdown allowing Priori to spend more time in the studio exploring new instruments and wiring the equipment in new inspiring ways. Like a lot of people, the isolation and change of pace got him back into more contemplative styles of music like shoegaze and ambient, which had a big impact on how the album was recorded. The only collaboration on the album is ‘The Tower’ which was recorded with Ex-Terrestrial in Montreal and highlights the contemplative quality that defines the album.
Marco Shuttle’s third album, Cobalt Desert Oasis, features a varied collection of music recorded across a two year period. Often traveling to remote destinations, Marco would come back to Berlin with field recordings, images, and other inspirations to process in his studio and turn into sound. The theme of the journey turns into a something more abstract than a travel diary, where environmental sounds blend in with modular synthesis, drum machines, effects and analog oscillators resulting in a cinematic listening experience where psychedelia, ritualism, and mysticism weave together in a sort of alien soundscape – that as the title of the album suggests, is reminiscent of a parallel utopian world. The album is rich in complex rhythmics, and more than in any of his previous work, has strong acoustic elements. Amongst other percussion instruments, Marco used the Tombak, a traditional Persian hand drum capable of reaching a very wide range of frequencies – from deep round subby toms, to high pitched sharp rimshots, throughout the record. Marco Shuttle is certainly not new to these sort of elements, but in Cobalt Desert Oasis he brings the environmental element of his sound into the forefront in a way that takes the listener into a hazy expanse where it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the machine elements from the natural – and where the music almost becomes a visual experience, which relates to Marco’s own photography used throughout the cover and insert images.
Sure Thing welcomes two new additions to the label with a long-distance collaboration between Seattle’s Archivist and Berlin’s Claudio PRC. Two original productions from Archivist recall dense, billowing fog and the gentle shimmer of waves, each re-imagined through Claudio PRC’s exacting lens into novel forms that spiral with steady, monolithic intent. Brought together, an expansive double vision, an exploration of the compelling nature of movement and air each within the other.
The Hipodrome Of Music 