Back catalogue: All genres

Review: Orbe's Absolute Zero on Non Series Records offers a thrilling dive into underground, sci-fi techno that keeps you locked in from start to finish. The title track, 'Absolute Zero,' sets the tone with its menacing, hard-hitting beats, layered with an alien, sci-fi edge that feels otherworldly. It's the kind of track that grips you with its intensity. '20kv' follows, delivering a relentless, percussive assault that adds even more weight to Side-1. On Side-2, 'Spark Gap' is a heavy, tension-filled builder that delivers a powerful punch. Finally, 'Bronze' wraps things up with a sick, soundtrack-like vibe, offering a cinematic close to this intense collection. Fans of hard, sci-fi-infused techno will enjoy Orbe's ability to craft tracks that are both intense and detailed.

Review: The fourth release on Amotik's AMTK+ label delivers two tracks from Orbe Records boss Fernando Sanz, aka Orbe, whilst Room Trax honchos and the appropriately hyped Angioma & Blanka serve up a similar couple as their collaborations continue. On Orbe's side of things, we're shown the producer's hypnotic leanings, with 'Inverted' powerfully, but subtly, sliding and scurrying away through an especially wompy but also minimal soundscape, and 'Exelon' providing sequential movement of a similar kind. Angioma and Blanka's 'Mindset' induces a parallax shift, supplanting overt textures for pure, roomy gestalt combos of womper kicks and knockout echo-hits. Finally 'Bottomless' digs to bedrock, eking an almost unbreathable sound out of miles of sonic-esoteric, haxan soil.

Review: This fresh tech platter from Fur:ther Sessions came with a note in Latin, "Vivendum Est Ut Ea Libertate Utamur, Quae Prosit Amicis, Noceat Nemini" which translates as 'We Must Live To Enjoy The Freedom That Can Benefit Our Friends And Harm No One.' It's a great mantra, and these are great tunes that will help you do that. ORBE brings mind-melting and dubby depths with 'Delta', D-Leria's 'Fortepiano' is another sub-aquatic deep techno roller and Magna Pia then gets more edgy and intense with unsettling synth lines and a groaning bassline. Hakan Cepni closes down with another elastic and loopy techno hypnotiser in the form of 'Celestial Pulse.'

Review: For the seventh V/A EP to be released by the label, End Of Perception welcome four new artists aboard their fleet; Orbe, dc11, Viels and Peryl. Each artist bringing a respective techno cogjammer to the record, the sound laid out throughout is nonetheless thoroughly misty and wayward; 'Raster' and 'Caduta Nel Vuoto' both sound like probing rovers navigating the treacherous topsoils of some far-off darkened exoplanet without breathable air; the B-side moves more subterranean, its grooves toothier and clearer-headed, as though we'd found a pocket of oxygen under a rock, yet also unfortunately the the object of predation by a wriggling, scuttling alien that's made said rock its home.

Review: The third drop on Tonske's Cogo label welcomes another grip of high-functioning techno freaks to the table. The mighty Jeroen Search leads the charge with the loopy, Hood-flavoured pressure of 'Observer' before Border One throws down a primal mind-warper which is built for creative blending and psychological submersion. ORBE heads up the flip with a deadly, simmering workout built from densely interwoven threads of drums and synth, all the better to open a wormhole up with. Tonske's own sonar bleep stylings offer the deepest foil to the intensity of the other tracks, favouring minimalism as a vessel for pure, eyes-closed techno escapism.

Review: The seventh V/A release on Mary Yuzovskaya's Monday Off imprint lands on vinyl, with Viels, ORBE, D-Leria, and Yuzovskaya all contributing tracks. Each artist lending their tender efforts to a mutant techno march, Viels' 'Nero' and Orbe's 'Rigging' provide strong titular clues as to their muses; the first uses both the Latin word for "black" and the name of an ancient Roman emperor, suggesting might, militancy and nyctalopic mis-seeing in its dispatch of a blind sonic firestorm; the latter likens production to construction, with its central, low-sined wayfinder sound effect, and dusty hi-hat caroms, suggesting some vessels have windshields that truly can brave the storm. Yuzovskaya's 'Trouble' lands us in hot water, with its startled, far-off vocal snippets and knockout prattles in the left and right lobes; then there's B-leria's closer 'Battito', a living, breathing planetary entity, prone to emit eerily harmonic Close Encounters-style tones and whose atmosphere we dare not cross.