After a fine first EP on the label in 2105, Dutch duo Artefakt are back on Delsin with The Mental Universe. This four track EP again finds Robin Koek and Nick Lapien showcasing their knack for spellbinding grooves of voodoo techno, absorbing ambient and frictionless drum programming after other outings on the likes of Prologue and Field Records.
Never one to sit still, core Delsin artist Conforce is back with a brand new EP on his most regular label. North To South Part 1 is the first EP in a two-party story featuring four fresh cuts, it is another deep exploration of musical subtlety and rich sonic design that comes tied to some of the Dutchman’s more propulsive drum work.
Delsin Records welcomes back Dennis van Gemert aka Area Forty_One for a second EP on the label. It is a second part to the Nocturnal Passions series started back in 2013, and come five years after his first ever release, which was on Ann Aimee in 2011, once again fusing ambient with techno, downtempo and electro. Nocturnal Passions Part 2 is seven minutes of slithering electro funk. Full of twinkling keys and spaced out chords, it has rugged bass and bumpy drums all making you want to move. Voyage is then a raw, beat driven yet still brilliantly serene affair with angelic chords, Consolation is a comforting, mid tempo tumble through the galaxy with soft focus, rippling melodies and gentle churning kicks and Orbiting is a suspensory, fully ambient track that sounds like a slow journey up to heaven. This is teary eyed, emotive stuff that comes from another world entirely.
A year after his last outing on the label, Gunnar Haslam is back on Delsin with four more tracks of idiosyncratic techno. Opening up this EP with the title track, Haslam cooks up a spangled brew of erratic synths and spinning hi hats and ties them together with a heavy rubber kick drum. Followed by ‘Sarsi’ which is then completely different, it’s a beatless and emotionally forlorn cut that still manages to take you somewhere special. Deep dancefloor business taking over on the b-side. Scurrying alien sounds closed by a frenzied techno trip. Each track here is different from the last, and each track here is a refreshing proposition from one of the most interesting guys around.
Michigan’s ambient and soundtrack specialist John Beltran introduces a new LP that will be co-released by Delsin and his digital only label Dado Records. Blair French aka Dial.81 is an experimental producer and visual artist who won an award for his score of Detropia–a documentary about his home city of Detroit–and now makes his ambient debut. As you would expect of such a project, it boasts suspensory and near spiritual pieces of ambient music with angelic chords and glassy textures. There are also more frosty cuts that sound like a chilly Autumn walk, tracks that feature emotive neo-classical piano pieces and suggestively rhythmic compositions that sooth your mind. The second half of the record touches on church like passages of synth heavy sounds, strikingly sad violins and lo-fi arrangements that sound, one hopes, a little like what you might hear as you pass from this life to the next.
Route 8 under his alias Q3A serves up a sumptuous four track EP, Space Chamber, on the Delsin label and it touches on many different styles with equally great results. ‘Lost Souls’ is first and is an expansive bit of well driven deep house with rich synths and cavernous innards that really suck you in. Next up is another serenely crafted bit of atmospheric house with dusty drums and lose hits all backed with heavenly pads and retro bass. The first of the b-side tracks is a chunky acid kicker with angelic vocals drifting up top as a controlled 303 line rips up the foreground. Spaced out and deep, driving yet emotive, it is a moving bit of club music before the B2 trips you out on a silvery electro tip with its icy lines and slap-funk snares.
Delsin present a new EP by B12 aka Steve Rutter entitled Orbiting Souls, a name which comes from the fact the veteran artist has recently spent contemplating the loss of a friend and believes we are surrounded by lost souls and spirits. Orbiting Souls is a somewhat complex journey, a representation of inner Bi Polar opposites; isolation; sadness, but also acknowledging the great and wonderful things around that swirl and support and energise us.
Delsin present Sides Of Space, a collection of classic, lost and forgotten tracks from atmospheric techno producer D5. The tracks on this new compilation have been chosen from old CDRs by label boss Marsel and truly reflect the artist formerly known as Dimensions 5’s fine tradition of relaxing chilled out, Detroit influenced techno. This is a compelling compilation that is wholly timeless from start to finish. Though driven by a fine sense of groove, it is also great head music that is richly musical and truly serene. In all, this releases reminds us that D5 is a underrated producer of emotive electronic landscapes.
BNJMN returns to his regular label home of Delsin with a brand new mini-album of experimental cuts that continue his journey into ever more decayed, lo-fi and gritty sound sculpture. This new release features six tracks and kicks off with ‘Microgravity,’ a shadowy exercise in suspensory dub that ripples and groans, growing in menace over its static laced three minutes. Next, ‘Womb’ is a vast chamber of glory synths and rippling pads that sounds like it comes from the after life, ‘P-Tr’ is a high tension, nerve jangling brew of glassy electronics with heavy kicks buried deep below and ‘1987’, a fuzzy, darkened brew of spacious kicks, whirring machines and bubbly tape sounds that are seriously foreboding. ‘Oder’ is a more emotional work where multiple synth lines echo about and emit cautious rays of light, then finally ‘Amygdala’ is based around a frazzled, oversized and spraying bassline that is backed by radiant pads and a dystopian house groove and it rounds out another expertly outlier collection full of strange yet compelling tracks and textures.
Delsin release a new EP from Voiski entitled ‘Breaths Written Outside Gloom’ that features four cuts of the Frenchman’s trademark techno. Opener ‘Downhearted Holidays’ is all about a menacing bassline that looms large below jostling metal percussion and frazzled synth lines. It’s spare and absorbing, inhuman and bleak in the most inviting way. ‘Galaxy Call’ is a more energetic affair with squeaking, pixelated and high pitched melodies squealing over a gloomy and gloopy bass line. Militant snares are upright and driven and the result is a track that sounds like the machines are taking over. ‘Mathematical Park’ is about mid tempo drums, paranoid synth drones and desolate urban soundscapes all run through with a sense of dark futurism and finally ‘Answer Silently’ is the slowest and swampiest of the lot. A growing sense of darkness permeates slithering synths, icy hi hats and lazy drums and there is a real air of foreboding through this and all the cuts here that make it perfect night time music.
Next on Delsin’s deep and house leaning series of releases is Artefakt with a new three track affair entitled The Fifth Planet EP. The Dutch duo are experts at conjuring up atmospheric grooves that seduce your soul. Opener ‘Transit’ is a thick, heavy and heady track with rubbery kicks tunnelling deep. Above it, smeared, sombre synths gets stretched and skewed into trippy forms and the whole thing has you as a slave to the groove. ‘From Our Minds To Yours’ is quicker and more overkill, but is again rooted in rolling rubbery kicks. Hypnotic once again, the synths here are lighter, more airy and more uplifting and induce trance like states of mind. Lastly, ‘The Fifth Planet’ steps it up another gear, with celestial melodic patterns, heavy synth daubs and spine tingling pads all expanding around a ticking techno groove. This is expertly crafted, serene and supple stuff that will sound perfect in the dead of night on some intimate and spaced out dancefloor.
Boris Bunnik is back with a brand new album under his Conforce guise. Entitled Presentism, is his fourth under this alias and proves once that this most prolific talent is still very much an evolving producer. Presentism is more organic and less dystopian and mechanical than before, with a light hearted sense of joy and vivid musical patterns lingering long in the airwaves, and as such harks back to earlier full lengths like Machine Conspiracy, which leaned more on Detroit rooted techno. It is a collection of diverse musical compositions that leans more on musical structures than technical obsessions, and where his last effort Kinetic Image was a tightly programmed conceptual thing, this LP is a much warmer, more organic and aquatic bit of floating modern techno. As such, you get the sense Conforce is back and having fun with his music making once more, free from any rules and instead just crafting what he feels inside.
The expertly designed sounds of this album float and drift in subtly uplifting ways, right from the off. It is a diverse collection sounds with a fine sense of mood through, and that is what ensures it makes sense as a greater whole. At the same time it retains that signature Conforce sense of rhythm, underwater atmosphere and vivid seascaping that really takes you away from the world in which you live. Some tracks like ‘Realtime’ are slow and moody, others like ‘Erased Connections With The Past’ are more propulsive and physical and those such as ‘Monomorphic’ are heady, hypnotic affairs that make for beautiful electronic soundtracks
The Inertia sub-arm of Dutch label Delsin is back. Inertia-5 introduces Discrete Circuit with a fierce three track EP. Connecting Berlin with Detroit, their EP kicks off with ‘Machine Code’, a frazzled techno cut with bleeps and alarms, sirens and rusty synths that all make for intense listening. On the flip ‘Recursive Descent’ is even more unhinged, with a see-sawing, saw-tooth synth line ripping up frantic hits and loopy drums and getting right into your brain as it does so. ‘Compiler’ is a more subtle, stripped back and seductive techno roller with supple synths undulating above rooted, rubbery kicks and woodpecker like percussion.
Delsin is focussing on a re-issue project, the return to the spotlight is My Home is Sonic, a standout techno, dub and minimal album by Exos originally released in 2001 by Icelandic producer Arnvidur Snorrason aka Exos. Few have done minimal dub techno better before or since this masterpiece album, so it’s right that 2015 sees it revisited by fans old and new alike.
Delsin’s C-Series welcomes Sven Weisemann. Known for his deep, atmospheric and cuddly house and dub, he draws on the heritage of Detroit and Chicago at the same time as imbuing tracks with his own sense of smoky, jazz infused soul. Fall Of Icarus contains it all, heavenly pads accompanied by rasping basslines, blissful ambient chords, buried deep drum lines and beatless dub excursions. A slowly churning current drives things along as you are left suspended in the midst of it all and this one closes out another superlative EP from both Delsin and Weisemann.
Delsin kicks off 2015 with Micronism’s Steps to Recovery EP. Originally released on Nurture records in 1999, the EP, which comes in black and limited coloured vinyl, is a bonafide deep house classic from the short live career of New Zealander Denver McCarthy. ‘Engaging Causeless Mercy’ is a contemplative, atmospheric affair with soft drums and celestial pads that could roll and roll forever and you’d never get tired. ‘The Quiet Mind’ is just as deep, but the spiralling pads and rippling melodies here are more colourful and charming. Both tracks are hugely spacious, luxurious affairs whilst ‘Constructing Space’ on the flip is a more stripped back and humid number that is more enclosed and oppressive for cosy back room spaces. Finally, the title track is a playful, elastic house track with heartwarming hooks and pinging drums.
Dutch techno practitioner Steve Rachmad aka Sterac is back with a hot new track for Delsin. Originally released on a limited white label run earlier in summer, it now comes backed with remixes by Fachwerk’s Mike Dehnert, VRIL and US twosome Anthony Parasole & Phil Moffa.
BNJMN steps up to make his debut on Delsin with six tracks of experimental and inventive noise and techno. ‘Coil’ opens his account with screechy, unnerving synths squeals, imposing and throbbing pads and super deep kick drums that come at you from miles below. It’s a hugely textured and spine tingling affair before the ambiance of ‘Berth’ comes rippled with glassy and alien little melodies. ‘Merge’ has turbo charged drums hiding beneath more unsettled synth based noise that sound sernee at the same time as being paranoid. On the flip, ‘And Suddenly’ makes your hairs stand on end with is gothic celestial glow and slithering synth patterns, ‘Blown’ is a damaged and degraded bit of icy, thumping and reverb heavy techno and ‘Azure’ ends on a brain soothing, chilled out ambient high. These are the sort of truly unique and magically textured tracks you would expect from a producer like BNJMN, and mark a fine debut on Delsin.
The Hipodrome Of Music 