The Exaltics – Reclaim Your City 667
reclaim your city
Legowelt – Reclaim Your City 666
Peter Van Hoesen – Prime Directive [RYCL023]
Continuing his exploration of intricate techno systems, their effect, and the direct perimeter of action, Peter van Hoesen turns in his newest four-track piece, ‘Prime Directive’: a fascinating dive into the artist’s shape-shifting headspace and inner creative chaos.
Sterac / Kr!Z – Lightworks [RYCL019]
The next Reclaim Your City pays tribute to the Benelux techno connection as they welcome Dutch maestro Steve Rachmad under his Sterac alias and Token boss Kr!z to the fold. Each contributing a brace of the typically elegant hard-hitters they’ve become so widely reputed for, the pair has us swinging in balance between proper floor-destroying potency and mind-expanding otherworldliness. A homage to the uncluttered and beautifully escapistic vision they’ve advocated throughout their career and continue to push in their various endeavors, RYCL019 is a feast for the purists as much as a compellingly future-facing manifesto: classic in essence but vanguard in its quest.
Jeroen Search – Enigma [RYCL016]
A stalwart of the Dutch techno scene since the mid nineties, Jeroen Search has been ploughing his own furrow aside from the typical norms and standards of the techno scene with lasting integrity and unflinching dedication throughout the years. A coinage derived from the sharp, clinically designed blends he has come to be known for, that Search-sound has long established as a blueprint for DJs seeking laser-guided weaponry into their sets, and Jeroen’s maiden effort for RYC follows that very guideline. Starting with the massive pound of the title-track, “Enigma”, the EP knocks into your system with blunt force, ushering us into a no-frills corridor of hydraulic kicks and sizzling static. As per usual with Jeroen’s compositions, minimalism serves a purpose of exponential effect.
Stanislav Tolkachev – Up The Steel Stairway [RYCL014]
Ukrainian don Stanislav Tolkachev resurfaces with his debut solo four-tracker for Reclaim Your City. Not quite swerving from the sonic pathway his name has become synonymous with over the years, ever so alien and transporting, Tolkachev’s latest boasts the very exact qualities that have made his sound stand out from others, earning him a constantly growing crowd of heirs and imitators along the way. Breaking the trip in, ‘Up The Steel Stairway’ sets the tone for the EP without further ado. Sniping hails of steadily frantic, arpeggiated synth chords and puncturing kick drums that’ll have you dancing like one rolls with the punches, Tolkachev sails into the eye of the cyclone all guns blazing. Lacking no pounding heft either, ‘The Less You Know’ slits a way open into your head through a carefully dissonant symbiosis of corrosive synth lines and octave-shifting bass gone astray. On-the-edge techno at its rowdiest, most mentally challenging. Flip the coin and here comes the deranged, trouble-brewing ‘One More To Go’. Cranking the mind-bogglingness a notch further, this one bulldozers its way past all sanity thresholds without blinking. Final number ‘The Way To The After’ tops it off in more straightforward but equally immersive fashion. Plunging us in a submerged chamber of sorts, where heavily verbed-out synth flexions entangle along tranquilly ascending pads, progressively dissolving in inert pools of FX-charged bleach and slo-dripping dub venom.
VA – Amsterdam_Madrid [RYC010]
With it’s 10th release, Reclaim Your City is set to enter a new aesthetic cycle, sloughing its old skin for a brighter, all the more edgy one. Not content with counting some of the finest names in today’s techno landscape on board in the persons of Oscar Mulero, Psyk, Sterac and Dimi Angélis, ‘RYCL010 – Amsterdam_Madrid’ is the occasion for Reclaim Your City to take a new breath and explore deeper the intrinsic values and key-words that make for the label’s very raison d’être: music, energy, action, city, quality, art, underground, activism, rebellion, global community.
The Hipodrome Of Music 