RLGN Vinilo y CD

Review: Electro monarchs Maelstrom, Locked Club and RLGN return to EP-making with a four-track array of acid bangers, happily working together on a split record to celebrate the pan-European electro scene. Their offering is unequal in quantity (2 Maelstrom and 3 Locked Club tunes) but is resolutely equal in heat; 'LA Nuit Est A Toi' is Maelstrom's standout, bleepy and suffocating in its generative, janky fright. Locked Club and RLGN follow up, 'Kill Me' being the best and most suicidally pushy techno track to soundtrack our nightmares.

Review: Following a run of well-received collaborations and contributions to split EPs, RLGN has finally been handed a full solo debut. The producer has grasped the opportunity with both hands and delivered a quintet of cuts that sound like guaranteed peak-time winners in the making. For proof, check opener 'Olonkho', a hybrid electro/breaks workout full of buzzing electronics, urgent drums, dark bass and layered vocal samples (Mongolian throat singers and female choristers both appear), and the dark new beat revivalism of 'Betrunkener Hund'. RLGN returns to distorted electro pastures on the warped, acid-flecked 'Mahaut', where Indian vocal samples catch the ear, while 'Thriller' is a lo-fi techno slammer and 'Rain In Kyoto' cannily combines spacey melodies and surging Euro-techno grooves.