Electro charts

Review: A quick piping of ultrafast space-techno comes as a six-track aural electro-techno drip, courtesy of Berlin's Mechatronica Music. The second in their 'Constellations' series of V/A EPs, this is an exodic exultation, charting top farings from the likes of Umwelt, Ben Pest and Viikatory. Umwelt's opening charge 'Stellar Oscillations' is a warpsped drive back to the retrofuture, with punctured stabs and fractal chord efferents propelling a lengthy trance crissing 'cross the milky way. Pest's 'Shodan' takes a detour, recharging at an interstellar traction substation specialising in sputtery, kilowatted electro. And 'Be Scared Of Clowns' is the titular highlight by Prz & Ori bringing a different spaceship to the same docking bay; it is the comparative Borg cube to the A3's Romulan craft, lessening any residual humanity for a shocking laserdesign B cut.

Review: Cultivated Electronics Ltd's For The Floor series is back with another split EP on 12" and it's packed with floor-facing cuts that showcase a mix of regular label artists next to fresh talents. Volume 4 presents two tracks each from Bristol-based Ben Pest and Maelstrom. Pest is known for his jacking live hardware techno and electro and delivers bass-heavy, distorted vocal beats with 'Who Would Have Thought I'd Be' and '26 Hybrid,' while Maelstrom, who is co-founder of RAAR, contributes his signature dark and rave-inspired sound on the cyborg funk of 'Permanency' and dystopian energy of 'Ascii Twins'.

Review: Extramusical hugeness from Texas's best experimental electro outing, Science Cult. A name like 'Commuting Observables', when lent to a V/A mini-album, is abstract enough to immerse us in the implied concept; it conjures a mental image of a glaucous laboratory of sorts, in which a cadre of sonic mad scientists toil tirelessly to yield the batch of effervescent sense-smushers you hear here. Be warned, this isn't your bog-standard, one-or-two-part acid-analog jam EP; no, every track and alias here plays out like a different iteration of some carefully spliced yet still egregious biogenetic experiment; monster faunamechs bursting free from their respective vitreal nutri-vats, and embarking on respective misanthropic rampages, all leaving trails of mimetic polyalloy gunge behind them. Were we to choose one of said bio-beasts as our fighter, it'd have to be Syrte's 'I'm A T-Shirt', shortly run up by a tie between Fleck Esc' 'Unrefined Intentions' and Ben Pest's 'From AU'. But we have to say, none of this music is standard fare techno: all of it is really quite wild.

Review: Love Love presents a collaborative release by two of the freshest contemporary Avon producers here in Best Pest and Kursa. Kursa, also known as one half of S.Murk, has picked up a significant following in both the UK and the USA with a unique mix of tight, maximalist bass music. Meanwhile, Pest is a familiar name on this label after two previous solo releases which showcased his crunchy techno, electro, and hardware-heavy sounds. Together, they deliver a five-tracker EP that transcends genres as it blends elements of dubstep, grime, hardcore, and garage with intricate sound design. Audacious, to be sure.

Review: Fear-E's Posh End Music celebrates its tenth release with an EP of ceiling-shakers by musical wizard Ben Pest. 'Worst Behaviour' is a restless splurge of overdriven but still tasteful energy, moving through five ultimate wompers of a kind of electrified techno we rarely hear. Ben Pest's style, honed since 2009, is entirely his own. First there's the VIP version of 'Strict Saws' and the follow-up 'Beta T', both of which reserve ample mix space for an overwompy kick drum, Pest's trademark stinger. The former track especially clips the zero level, hearing said kicks bleed out the sound around it, flooding it into a fully crunch-steeped stupor. 'Withoutta Moa' and '1996' follow similarly pressurific principles, the latter of which commands a special sort of apnea, resembling a strangled French house. Then 'Weight For It' closes on notes of maximised squelch and crossrythmic evac alarm sounds, as we're dragged into successive states of terrifying suspense.