The Maltese machine funk specialist himself Keith Farrugia is back once more with yet more of his impeccable electro business as Sound Synthesis. This time the prolific producer is shoring up on Burnski’s Infiltrate label with four cool and deadly cuts.
DJ Overdose delivers again for L.I.E.S. Miami Bass party rockin floor shakers, and high speed, blade sharpened, trunk popping electro madness ran through his trusty sp-1200, programmed impeccably and ready for the club.
After first touching base with brokntoys on the compilation “A Call Too Close”, released in the Spring of 2021, Gareth Psaltis returns to the London based label with his project Barking, this time with a 7 tracks self-titled EP merging dubbed-out electro and menacing downtempo.
Prolific and often nomadic label boss, producer, and studio engineer, Tony Price (Maximum Exposure) has been making a name for himself over these last years, as he’s lurked in the shadows while moving from city to city around the world, leaving a unique and wide-spanning musical mark in his wake. On his 14 track IBM-CONTRA LP, Price conjures up a wild melange of free jazz and high speed electro funk next that sits next to dusty ambient, street tough house, and even Bill Conti-esque dark alley rainy street jams featuring saxophone work from Alex Zhang Hungtai and Colin Fisher. The album is unmistakably Tony at his best, as he weaves in and out of these genres making them make sense next to each other. Whether it’s providing a shady saxophone driven backdrop for the next inevitable worldwide bio-warfare crisis or tapping into the roots of stripped down classic electro and house for the floor, this is the artist at peak creativity flexing his skills.
Höga Nord Rekords kindly welcomes Tecwaa back to the label, following up his last full length-album “Beyond the Altai” with “Elysian on Moon Lake”. He is still exploring the intersections between house, electro, techno and dub and once again he manages to harness the analogue electronics in his machines to produce modern psychedelia. “Elysian On Moon Lake” is rawer, less airy and not as sparkling as his last album. This is a tighter, and slightly darker experience than Tecwaa’s previous work, maybe caused by being in quarantine for extensive time during production, letting some of the dreaminess aside for the harsher reality in a pandemic world. Still, you get a mind-altering experience in a lot of tracks since the album starts off in a lighter tone than how it later develops. Switching from the A- to the B-side works as a rite of passage going from dusk to night; the sun rays through the blinders are replaced by neon light dancing on the walls and ceiling.
The Jaffa Kid goes deep with his second EP for Gated, appropriately titled “Second Frequencies”. Kicking off with the beatless but driving “Phased For Days”, the EP has a kind of relentless hypnotism to it, with “Trinian”‘s almost 7 minutes of spaced out electro. Flip to the B and the acid comes to the fore, with “War On Words” and its addictive 303 line pulsing over the Kid’s signature pads. “Tangential” throws in some breaks under gritty acid, and Not The Way rounds out the EP with a truly poignant melodic beatdown.
Turbo Recordings harpooned and skinned one of it’s white whales, Gesloten Cirkel. Gesloten Cirkel’s banger credentials are unimpeachable.
Gladio Operations launches its fifth release, which bears the electro signature of the Russian producer Dmitry Larionov.
Something special on Nightwind Records: Last December Danny Wolfers met up with Japansese digital dub legend Taka Noda aka Mystica Tribe to produce this Far East style heavy digital dub album. Custom made lo-fi oozing echo effects transform synthesizers and drummachines into a comforting mist of arcane sludge, laced with Taka Noda’s enchanting melodica playing.
L.F.T. is returning to the disordered house with another EP full of banging Electro Wave tunes.
Mannequin Records boss Alessandro Adriani lands on L.I.E.S. with a new four track ep of his melodic and driving signature italo-ebm-electro fusion. A master of machine music, Adriani lets them do the talking throughout the ep, with heavy arpeggios, big Juno basslines, and slamming 808s bringing the tracks to a head. Go directly to the symphonic and epic opener “Ecstatic Feeling” with its beautiful melodies, dramatic arpeggios and reverb saturated snares, all reminiscent of Yello meets Robotnik with pent up tension waiting to explode. This is an anthem to say the least! The remainder of the ep follows suit laced with traditional EBM and electro stylings being manipulated by the hands of Adriani in his studio
Cologne OG Grischerr has graced Neubau with an EP full of brutally honest analogue downtempo madness. As the title Perspektivwechsel suggests, the three-track release guides you to a different sonic perspective – in the most positive sense.
L-A based producer Ole Mic Odd delivers 6 tracks designed for the dancefloor on Spanish label Another Perspective. Raw acid & electro sounds with a lot of strength and elegance.
Oscillating bass tones, off-kilter drums, velvety pads, melancholic synths, ambient soundscapes. Four timeless cuts by Estrato Aurora & Siarem plus an outstanding remix by VC-118A
MCM remaster of Electric Soul aka Mad Mike’s legendary electro track X². Originally released X-Squared on Direct Beat in 1996 and instantly became classic on late night mix shows in Detroit.
“The One With the Eyes” by R. Gamble is Marguerite Records’ 13th release. The tracks were all written between the summer and fall of 2020. The pandemic was in its bewildering initial phase when daily life had come apart from its familiar rhythms. The tracks describe this disruption and the return to a musical primordial state by limiting the field of vision to locate the essential. In fact, the artist limited himself with one synthesizer, one drum machine, and a sequencer and the instinct guided him shaping these little vignettes. Now nearly two years later they’re being released into a world that has in many ways resumed its regulated flow. We hope people can still catch a glimpse of that other world outside of time, the vague fear crystallized, the shadows made by afternoon sunbeams gliding like continents across the floor. Marguerite Records owners the duo Bianco Negativo were strongly impressed by the last album track ‘Precious Arc’ and decided to make a remix in a dark cinematic key.
Rudolf Abramov is taking a step in a different direction from his last release on Höga Nord Rekords. This 7” contains the works of deep mining in an old hard drive during the introversion of the pandemic quarantine. These two gems have been going under a bit of tasteful polishing before reaching the point of release and the result is a punk meets Stoner rock experience propelled by hard sequencers and drum machines.
Berlin-based label Burial Soil presents a collaborative electro album initiated by CYRK. Early 2020, they decided to reach out to some of their producer friends as well as artists they’ve been admiring for years, to collaborate on tracks. As they see it, the electro scene is a very close-knit community and it felt more than appropriate to support each other this way. For their album „Freundschaft“ CYRK has collaborated with Steffi, Anthony Rother, Ravn Jonassen, JakoJako, Jensen Interceptor, Alienata, Nite Fleit and David Carretta. BPMs are high on the eight tracks of “Freundschaft”, the end result of this collaborative process, incorporating various influences from electro-adjacent styles like italo, EBM or, unsurprisingly, techno.
Libertine 19 features the first album from Roman master Gianluca Bertasi AKA Teslasonic, a journey of 10 stunning tracks from pure electro to Italo infused techno and space disco. Operating in the corner of electro where dystopian dreams (or should they be nightmares?) are made, TeslaSonic haven’t forgotten how to keep things fun no matter how dark the vibe gets. Gianluca Bertasi keeps the project flying with this double LP drop on Libertine which has a nod to the likes of Maggotron in the nasty funk of opening track ‘Ion Drive’, while also knowing how to turn up the techno dial on the stiff and driving intensity of ‘Poly Verisof’. These are tuned up, rough, ready and raucous electro cuts for those who like to have fun even as things get deadly serious.
The Hipodrome Of Music 