Samurai Horo Vinilo y CD

Review: Tracks from Liam Blackburn's recent Ancestral Voices album get the remix treatment. As expected, Abdulla Rashim's take on "Invocations" is an understated dub techno affair, its deep textures threatening to seep out through the Swedish producer's heavy bass tones. In stark contrast is ASC & Sam KDC's take on "Feathered Serpent". Although it is sub-titled the 'grey mix', a more appropriate name might be the 'dark techno from Hades' rework. Over splintered beats and ticking, percussion, the pair deliver a moody, gut-busting bass and filters that churn and groan with the force of a stormy, grey sea. It's a universe away from Rashim's studied calm.

Review: It's been two years since ASC released music on Geoff Presha's Samurai Horo, an experimental offshoot of the New Zealander's main Samurai Music operation. It's ASC's fourth release for the label which finds James Clements spiralling down even further into the nebulous world of Horo, with "Loophole" a perfect example of what the label stands for: unclassifiable drum and bass that sounds like techno. A drone-based "Diffusion Loop (Rumble mix)" is murky with distant breathes of vocals haunting its background while a softly cracking snare hits fills the foreground. "Broadside" is downbeat and full of the similar science-fiction synths that define "Loophole" while "Ashen" sounds like something Samuel Kerridge might make after a night out with dBridge.

Review: Samurai Horo introduces Carrier One, a new name producing genre-bending drum and bass rhythms for the experimentally charged sub-label of Samurai Music. This debut comes packed with a Felix K reinterpretation of "Underwater Device" which the Hidden Hawaii boss turns from minimal and stripped back to beefed up and deadly. "Warning Of The Lucky" begins as a percussive tribal loop which then evolves to become something sinister with a deep house warmth you expect from DJ Qu, while "Symbol" is an exercise in bell tone atmospherics and lucid beat design. Unique music to say the least.

Review: Delivered ahead of Ena's sophomore set Binaural later this season, Samurai Horo present this highly limited, vinyl-only six tracker of material that won't appear on his album. As with everything Yu Asaeda does, every track on "Dirt" is a deeply immersive and perplexing audio adventure as strung out sounds weave and languish in ways you didn't think sound could possibly stretch. From the muffled techno and paranoid atmospheres of the title track to the far away flexes and switches of the otherworldly "Chiasma", Ena's work remains some of the most unique and forward thinking within bass music.

Review: Kiwi Geoff Presha's now Berlin-based imprint Samurai Horo delves deeper into the grey area, presenting four dark and textured excursions by some modern masters of the black art. Japan's Ena gets remixed by Ancestral Voices (one half of Akkord) on "9th Divided" which incorporates sombre vibes and exotic percussion and field recordings from the tropics. Ena appears again, remixing DINT's "Visceria", fully deconstructing it on this harshly reduced drum and bass experiment. On the flip the darkness prevails with Synth Sense (Auxiliary/Diode) and their grinding and sludgy slow burning techno mess that is "Corrosion (remix)" and finally ASC's "Loophole" gets taken on a one way ticket to hell and back courtesy of Sam KDC.

Review: Since 2011 Geoff Presha's Samurai Horo label (sub-label of the Samurai conglomerate) has been confusing genre analysts and drum and bass heads with its undefinable sound. This four-track missive by Kiyoko, a collaboration between Auxiliary's Jack Lever and Exit Record's Joe Mcbride, is the duo's second release on Horo which only strengthens the label's experimental maxim. There's a distant wailing, Burial feel to "Archway" and the mood stays melancholic and full of vinyl crackle in "Fragments". A beatless "Lost Object" combines Balearic guitars with plucked tones drenched in reverb and delay, while "Headlights" is a future-funky dub cut that sounds like it could have been released on Warp during the '90s.

Review: Stroboscopic Artefacts head honcho Lucy on Samurai Horo? You better believe it! Recorded live to tape in his Berlin studio, these four experimental soundscapes work together in a perfect continuum. "Eat" helps you surrender to the void, assisted by fascinating modular synth textures and field recordings creating another auditory world. "Drink" shows more restraint with its beatless, reductionist groove covered in the just the right amount of dust and rust, gradually building in tension and resonance over its eight minute duration. But it's the immersive sci-fi aesthetic of closer "Relax" which really nails it; featuring sonar blips, hypnotic/ evolving pads and and some of the most sublime synth textures you'll ever hear.

Review: Samurai Horo, the Samurai Music offshoot, has offered us a sublime collection of timeless techno and electronica over the last few years, with artists such as AnD or ASC dealing their twisted sonics on the label, respectively. This time the label have decided to go for a remix affair, and it's the excellent Lucy who drops two dark and deviant reinterpretations of a new tune by the mysterious Pact Infernal. Entitled "The Descent", the tune is first given a Cosmic makeover, where a pulse of a drum beat is barely perceptible below a sea of hypnotic chords and dubby electronics, followed by a Subterranean mix that heads down a much more direct techno route for the dance floor. Don't worry, though, Lucy still keeps it subtle, stripped back and cerebral...

Review: Pact Infernal, whoever they may be, hasn't exactly had the quietest of debuts. Right after his inaugural release on Samurai Horo, the mighty Lucy stepped in for a remix EP as a follow-up, and now he's back with the second instalment of The Descent series. As with the first release, Pact Infernal's sound blurs the lines between techno, post-futuristic d&b, and drone. In fact, the three genres are so tightly woven together that this gear almost feels like a new genre in itself. As you might gather, that is precisely the sort of vision we like to see from electronic music artists, and it's also what makes us proud to work in a field that's constantly in a state of flux. From "Circle V (Anger)" to "Circle IX (Treachery)", we're thrown headfirst into a dark and grainy world of chilling sonics inhospitable harmonics; the perfect sort of stuff to give you a good old mind-bender. Total brain dynamite.