Sure Thing presents Well of Sand, its second compilation. Six tracks from label friends and favorites, each new to the roster and offering bold, untempered explorations of tempo and weight, a concise yet expansive collection recalling the deliberate cadence of rippling sand and the sheen of shimmering oases.
Dolly is kicking off a new TS series, focused on serious high quality techno in the widest sense. The first release in the series comes from Detroit dub techno specialist, Luke Hess. Dynamic, pumpy and melodic, deep techno bombs with super solid remixes by Portuguese techno talent Vil as well as the Italian power duo Fireground.
Adlas joins the a.r.t.less family with his debut called Convergence EP. Here he presents four more four-to-the-floor driving and mesmerizing Techno tracks that tick all the right boxes. Think swinging Dub Techno, DJ Power Tools with a tribal twist and an undeniable deepness factor.
Submoon’s debut EP is a collection of tracks that capture the essence of techno dub in modern key, with a sound that stands out for its depth and hypnotic atmosphere.The goal is to introduce the listener to a dense and enveloping sidereal sound world, melancholic melodies and static backgrounds with chords that disperse into the surroundings. The Conforce remix is an energetic concentrate, a key revisit to drag you with a more precise focus to the dance floor, fast-dub techno vibes and very liquid details that drag you into the deepest of abysses.
Berlin’s Mojuba Records welcome Viktor Apo to the a.r.t.less family, exporting these sonic labour-fruits from the heart of Macedonia. ‘Regenerate’ is a wicked Detroit-technical EP; fast, hat-led, synthetically morphologic. Opener ‘Flow’ lives up to its name with a meandering, oxbow-laking chordstream set channelled through a driving, pistoning techno backbone. Then come the comparative cascaders ‘Royal S’ and ‘Regenerate’, both of which keep the pace. Finally, we’re met with ‘Aerial Scape’, which occupies a strange boxy stratosphere – an ultra-minimal track in progression and texture.
Who would be better suited for remixing the Skudge classic? It’s not a far-fetched idea, as we now see the remix 12″ of Convolution featuring Levon Vincent. Classic late 00s Levon Vincent style of rhythm and pace meets Skudge’s hallmark sound.
Another deep techno ride on Delsin’s Cameron series by Rhythm Büro co-founder Na Nich. The Ukrainian DJ and producer delivers four excellent vibrant, dreamy techno trips. From the punchy ‘Inlamint’ to the unstoppable flow of ‘Subway’. A darker twist appears on the mesmerizing ‘Black Soil’ finishing it off with a downtempo eyes closed delight ‘Argonaut’.
Hold Me Recordings is Manuel Gonzales and Ryan Spencer and their objective is to maintain a constant flow of releases from local artists from Detroit. The first release comes from Manuel Gonzales under his MGUN guise. “From Time To Time” is an album with eight techno-electro tracks.
Robbers was at the flying centre of Dutch techno in the early 1990s. “Perks” is Robbers’ fifth EP for Delsin in a relatively short time. On the one hand, it contains his signature sound: melancholic melodies and complex drum patterns wrapped in outstanding production; on the other, Perks surprises on many fronts. For starters, the overall vibe is a lot more sombre, the chosen route much more experimental. Take ‘Model A’, a dreamy, 12 minute-long meandering epic that nods to the kraut-infused electronica of Tangerine Dream and Cluster but at the same time proudly carries the techno DNA.
The Black Dog exploring the old ways… ”We pushed further by adopting old practices, working with one synth per person and limiting the use of our computers. We only stopped short of putting everything on beer crates. It seems like madness these days, but there is raw creativity within these confines.”
Great deep techno on this collaborative split release between XDB and Kryptic Universe! They’re bringing 2 of their favorite cuts onto the table. C.O.N. and Cloud Riders do dive deep and relentlessly into dub techno territory.
Derek Carr has been pretty untouchable in the last couple of years. His work in the fields of deep house and deep techno has been consistently innovative and captivating. He takes care of the eighth EP on the Trident label now with more of his serene sound designs and dynamic grooves. ‘Allez’ heads off into the cosmos with balmy pads and smooth drums then acid lashes about the mix of ‘I Want You’ which rides a nice tight, clipped, locked-in drum line. Things get more loose and star gazing on ‘Revival’ while ‘Typhoon’ closes with playful synth patterns tumbling down over invitingly warm deep house drums.
This fifth EP in the Steve Rachmad re-issue series contains a colorful combination of three tracks from different releases. Side A brings the sought after track ‘Teknitron’, originally released on his 3rd EP, originally released under his short-lived alias Black Scorpion back in 1995. ‘Transpose’ is taken from his first Sterac EP from 1994, while the last tracks ‘Alastria’ comes from his second album Thera, originally released in 1998. All tracks are re-mastered of course. Steve Rachmad’s richly melodic strain of techno has resulted in a huge body of work he has been growing since the early 90s. His sound is the perfect distillation of machine soul – dubby atmospherics and crisp, danceable dynamics balanced in perfect unison. Amsterdam’s Delsin Records gathers together some of the Dutch techno figurehead’s most important, sought-after works in a new EP series, all remastered from the original DAT tapes from Steve’s archives.
Eduard Costea aka DYL is a Romania-based (born in Deva & living in Cluj-Napoca) experimental producer. He lands on Nous’klaer with Fjord: a deep dive that starts out soothing and gets deceptively heavy and hypnotic as you swim further offshore – filled with immense echoes that can feel eerie and comforting all at once.
Channelling his own explorations in search of the soul inside the machine, VRIL draws from the deep well of his live performances to present his third LP for Delsin, Animist. Inside lie 12 pieces which seem to probe at the unknowable distance between tangible consciousness and the astral plane, imbuing even the most seemingly synthetic of materials with a living essence. Given his illustrious back catalogue, it’s no surprise to hear VRIL conjure explicitly electronic music with such loaded emotional impact and seemingly organic animus, but in the process he also toys with the idea of how far the technology’s spiritual potential can reach.
”Metropolis Metropolis” album is an abbreviated version of the most recent electronic music soundtrack for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) by Jeff Mills. Unlike his first soundtrack version (released in 2011) where tracks addressed specific segments of the film in a track listing form, this version is more a symbiotic mix of compositions that proposes a nuanced representation of the plot and storyline. As an electronic symphonic music creation, Mills proposes a few interesting points in the schematics of this album. First, the positioning and role of the listener as the soundtrack is based on the environment of the scenes, rather than pure transcription and second, as a storyline that takes place in the year 2000, the choice of sound elements refer to some future commonality and foresight between the genres of Classical and Electronic music – between man and machine.
Third Ear presents a new Brendon Moeller project … Ultra Random Analog Orchestra. The project kicks off with 13 tracks released on vinyl over 3 individually released 12″ and a digital album with 16 tracks. The music ranges from deep, wide-screen Techno to Ambient and beatless, that pushes the limits of the sonic palette. Brendon says, “the ability to sculpt an audio collage in realtime employing techniques of randomness is one of my favorite pursuits using a Eurorack modular system.”
Levon Vincent continues unabashed to combine the Streetwise and the Elegant on his newest release, The Medium is the Message II – a reference to Marshall McLuhan’s theory that the message signifies content and character, and the ‘content’ of any medium blinds us to the character of said medium. Levon doubles-down with Novel Sound #40, promoting his love for vinyl all these pleasurable years.
The Hipodrome Of Music 