Modularz presents a new release by Japanese producer Hattori Hanzō. Hattori delivers a great body of work focused on Extremely functional tracks with lots of driving rhythms, space influenced hypnotic grooves with the right amount of tension and drama.
Rekids label boss Radio Slave ventures further into unknown territory in a three-part sophomore album entitled ‘Radio Silence’. The UK artist delivers his latest body of work in the form of his ‘Radio Silence’ album, which will be dropping in three parts. The first chapter features perhaps the most leftfield tracks we’ve ever heard Radio Slave product. There’s a rawness to the album, which is in part due to the fact each track was recorded live and without edits, using hardware and Ableton as the main sequencer. Across the seven tracks, Radio Slave hone’s in on a sound that’s haunting and hypnotic.
Cio D’Or returns to Semantica with a new brand conceptual mini-LP. Self-styled “sound architect” and “music creator” Cio D’Or has been strangely quiet since releasing a ‘special edition’ of her “All In All” album back in 2016. Comeback EP “Fluidum III” is a fine collection of alien electronic workouts that sound like they were created via modular synthesis. What we get is six tracks built around watery sounds, swelling electronic motifs, spaced-out noises and occasional quirky rhythms. While some of the tracks – particularly “Climate” and “Celestial II” – boast deep but weighty kick-drum tracks in the techno tradition, for the most part the tracks are sparse, alien and devoid of dancefloor intent. The results are consistently alluring, albeit in a strange and spaced-out way.
Throughout his career, Roger Semsroth has followed a deep intuition for experimentation in sound, wrapping club music around eerie microtonal motifs and industrial sensibilities. This new work for Tresor takes a step forward, as the first true techno album from Sleeparchive, where his previous LPs have exhibited themselves more conceptually, or under di erent names and his Nord Vest label. Semsroth has been active in electronic music since the late 90s. He received initial attention first for his electro productions under the alias Skanfrom and the 80s minimal synth inspired Television Set. These projects echoed his love for these sounds, which the East Berliner had steadily immersed himself with after the end of the GDR. Upon hearing the bleeps of Mika Vainio and Plastikman, he began to engage with his strain of techno. Over the last decade, he has focused on his Sleeparchive alias, which dates back to 2004. Alongside close friend DJ Pete, he performs live techno as TR-101. His relationship with Tresor began in 2011, first releasing the Ronan Point EP and following up with the crucial A Man Dies In The Street series in 2013. With this new album, Sleeparchive’s impact on the techno sound is ever more relevant. Awaking in constant locomotion, locked-in, unrelenting and dry. Sleeparchive’s churning loops etch visions of tight minimalism at times densely frenetic and others serenely galactic. This predilection continues throughout the four sides on the album, eschewing conventional arrangement styles with gradual probabilistic change. Tracks such as ‘Needle’ and ‘Peccant’ o er up precise, sinewy techno. ‘Leave’ recalls the Detroit sound of Terrence Dixon, with its cascading synth tones and droning atmospheres. The album closes with a di erent version of ‘Trust’ to that found on last year’s Revised Recordings EP released on Tresor, with its now-familiar nerve-inducing pizzicato strings even more at the fore with its mechanic delivery.
“Be Careful And Nobody Dies” is Stanislav Tolkachev’s first release of 2020 and debut for Spanish imprint Semantica. Super nice versatile EP with a stunning electro cut (the title track) and some sick adventurous techno tunes.
The techno super-group of Luke Slater, Steve Bicknell and David Sumner aka LSD is back again with the third installment of their Process series. Futuristic drum programming and mind melting melodies for maximum dancefloor impact spread out over three tracks, touching all assets of an hypnotic high-energy techno trip.
ORBE, no stranger to the electronic music industry, strikes again with four tracks of psychedelic techno.
The Dutch techno producer, Jeroen Search, debuts on Token with Inner Call, a four track EP showcasing the veteran’s dynamic, puristic approach to the genre. A powerful, streamlined vision of contemporary techno, Inner Call highlights the producer’s time honoured ability to walk the line between pulsing, hypnotic workouts & outright peak time tools – stripping back the work to include nothing but the most vital components to deadly effect.
Orbe is the long going Madrid based funk and techno veteran. His first release of 2020 is the 10th release on his own ORBE imprint. The EP entitled ‘Mechanische Apparate’ includes five mesmerizing techno trips. Focused on coherence and hypnotism, these five deep tools are essential for the most refined techno DJ’s.
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.
”Today it has been 6 years, 7 months and 19 days since I based all my music on the colundi sequence. This album is a milestone on my colundi journey. The first half of it was made in Montreal, Canada; and the second half in Lahti, Finland.” Aleksi Perälä
Adam X’s highly respected, deep, science fiction laden, Traversable Wormhole project celebrates its 10-year journey with a first full-length studio album titled Regions Of Time. Lying mostly dormant since 2012, with a cameo appearance on Hospital Record back in 2016 with two tracks, TW is now fully awoken from the long travel through the space-time continuum with eight new songs of thought-provoking, psychedelic, bass-heavy, galaxian techno. Adam X’s back catalog is, of course, vast, spanning over a period three decades under several aliases. The New York native recently released his devious escapade through rumbling EBM and industrial techno in the form of his full-length album Recon Mission, released under his Sonic Groove Imprint. With this project being under the Traversable Wormhole alias, be sure to expect a completely different facet to X’s repertoire of pounding excursions. Step through the wormhole portal and take a deep cerebral mind trip into “Regions Of Time “
DJ Nobu returns to his own Bitta label, his personal playground for new musical projects with a focus on artists coming out of Japan. The label functions as a space for experimentation with the intention of instigating multiple styles by unexpected artists or pairing them with stimulating remixers. The unique chemistry created by these cross-genre connections results in an exciting catalogue carefully curated and directed by DJ Nobu himself. After recent outings on Rush Hour, Token and BleeD, the Japanese producer dives even deeper into a pure and adventurous techno journey with his most simplistic output to date. A DJ tool EP designed for the club, with four tracks of stripped down yet powerful dance floor workouts. All cuts have been tested and proven in Nobu’s own DJ sets before now, so he decided to make them available for fellow DJs to play and experiment with.
As Planetary Assault Systems, Luke Slater is an innovator of psychedelic mindfuck techno. Across a lengthy catalogue that stretches back into the 90s, the music’s bleepy, polyrhythmic loops are as recognizable as they are genre-defining. Plantae is Slater’s first release as PAS on Ostgut Ton since Arc Angel (2016) and covers the spectrum of PAS’s different strains while remaining grounded in Slater’s uncanny funk and knack for developing oblique melodies and rhythms over longer stretches. Deepness and hypnosis come as much through duration as sound design. For Slater, Plantae is made for Berghain, where he is a long-standing resident. In his own words: “I’m sure it’s no surprise that when it comes to putting together a release on Ostgut Ton, PAS takes on its more mind-altering, otherworldly quality by natural cause, quietly reflecting the dark sweaty nights and days at the club; at the point, the common neural coupling, of us all together. PAS has been part of Berghain and Berghain part of PAS for a long time.
Metro Skim provides ‘Generator Of Thoughts’ on Steve Bicknell’s 6dimensions. Metro Skim, deeply rooted in the underground, shrouded in mystery, and adopting music as their preferred form of communication to convey their message. Metro Skim unifies symbiotic relations between technology and human form, preserving a pure and natural process guided by an uncompromising mode of production.
For those who dig Jeff Mills but don’t have the time or money to hoard records from his extensive back catalogue, the ongoing “Director’s Cut” series showcasing hard-to-find gems from his discography is a godsend. Volume five begins with a trip back to 2015 and “Solar Cycles” – an alien-sounding, otherworldly mid-tempo techno loop jam – from the limited edition, USB-only “Proxima Centauri” album. Side B begins with the bleeping tribal techno hustle of “L8” from 1998’s “Skin Deep EP”, before Mills offers us a chance to drift through space via 2006 track “Above Waiting Worlds”, which is one of his most intergalactic and cinematic dancefloor cuts to date (and that’s saying something).
