It’s now almost two years since German producer Sawlin made his debut on Ann Aimee, but now he is back for a third EP on the Delsin sister label. Entitled ‘Niedertracht’, it features four more tracks of searing techno in truly uncompromising Sawlin style. ‘Kontraktion’ goes first with heavy metallic hits, lots of industrial machinery found sounds and thumping kick drums. It’s lumpy, mechanical and stiff stuff that is slow and purposeful. The surface of ‘Padjam’ is then covered in squirming, scratchy little effects as syncopated drums swing deep down below. Eventually the thing gets fleshed out with some malfunctioning melodies and slurred vocal stabs yet still it sounds like no other techno out there. ‘Niedertracht’ takes up the b1 with a spangled techno track that has gurgling synths and fizzing drills all encased in a ravey arrangement of horns and windy howls. The broken sounding ‘Weisshaupt’ is made up of metal loops, punctured drums and rasping synths that sound like factories in melt down. This is truly inventive electronic music that’s laced with a very real and unmistakable sense of industrialism, and proves Sawlin is one of the day’s most exciting producers.

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‘Eviment’ is the second release of Sawlin on Delsin off shoot Ann Aimee, made up of three more deep and subterranean techno cuts that play with plenty of textures. Title track ‘Eviment’ is a tortured and paranoid offering that has a nagging vocal stretched out over splashy claps and a foreboding bottom end thud. It’s vast and dark, spare and haunting where ‘Kretze’ is a bigger and bolder track. The analogue percussion and serrated lines all sound old and aged as they mark out a scraping, dystopian vision of a world well away from here. ‘Sour Tear’ has a more syncopated, techno-funk groove but is still padded out with plenty of dubby undercurrents. Sawlin’s percussion sounds are wholly non standard, from clanking metal to twanging strings, everything sounds like a real world sound, which makes his music as arresting as anyone’s, despite being made firmly for the techno backroom.

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Sawlin drops four cuts of grainy, scratchy sounds with his Techno Dumping EP on Delsin little sister Ann Aimee. ‘Boring Feels’ is the deepest offering, gently pushing forward as sharp percussion sounds roll off the heavy and hunched over bottom end. ‘Techno Dumping’ is a punchier affair with trippy background atmospherics and a cantering bottom end that’s paranoid as hell, whilst ‘Datamen Working’ is a dubbed out destroyer with eerie shapes craft sounds and muffled vocals throughout. Closer ‘Neid Auf Vacuum’ lets in some shafts of melodic light to its clappy house heart, with rippling keys and train-track sounds fleshing out the backdrop.

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