Back catalogue: Techno

Review: HAAi's ascendance has been nothing short of stratospheric in the past six years, emerging as a dedicated deep house connoisseur with a personal, expressive approach to the genre and swiftly signing to Mute and pushing her sound into wild new areas of exploration. Immediacy has always been at the forefront of what she does, and so it goes now she mints the latest entry in the prestigious DJ Kicks series. As well as some original tracks and collaborations with people like Jon Hopkins, there are standout cuts from contemporary scene leaders like I JORDAN and The Blessed Madonna, plus space for the wilder sonics of Cocktail Party Effect, going some way towards capturing the many-sided spirit of one of dance music's current crop of superstars.

Review: Following on from his recent outing on a split 12" courtesy of Burned At Both Ends, Habgud now goes it alone with this new EP of techno firecrackers on Clergy. Opener 'Jaws Leanin'' is the sort of lithe roller with sheet metal snares and dark vocals that locks you in a good old heads down stompathon. After a trippy locked grooves comes 'Desire' which is another speed and effective linear techno pumper. 'Gold Hands' has a rugged and loopy design with vocal stabs adding intensity and 'XXS' is a final hugely effective tool with glitchy perc and drums that almost fall over themselves.

Review: Detroit house hero Kyle Hall returns with his biggest project in some time in the form of Transmissions, a new double album on his own well-regarded Forget The Clock. All six tracks have enigmatic, functional titles and the music is as idiosyncratic as ever. Each one veers more towards techno than is Hall's usual style, with pulsating synth lines and tight, dusty drum tracks making for stripped-to-the-bones grooves. Later on, things grow ever more abstract with twisted acid lines screwing their way through the increasingly ragged and roughshod drums. These are perfectly imperfect jams from a master of the form.

Review: The inimitable Jamal Moss comes forth with his second offering for Madrid's Apnea records. 'The Moon Dance' unfurls over 11 tracks- in turns pensive, elegiac, and slammin'. Between the sedate expanse of opener 'When The Earths Shadow Falls On The Moon' and the final cymbal strokes of gauche, machine funk closer 'Mawu', Moss lifts us on yet another Afrofuturist space flight of fancy, passing through superclusters of deep house, tactile techno and stroboscopic piano jams along the way.
Standout moments include the smoove-as-u-like-it intergalactic lounge jazz diversion 'The Moondance Moon Walk Version'; its steezy stride-piano vamp seamlessly intertwining with Moss' signature babbling acid intrusions, the irresistibly groovy bump of 'Tethered 2 The Divinely Spaces With In' and the hypnotic sway of 'Celestial Poems Of The Lady With 10000 Names', which opens up from Terrence Dixon-esque introspection into broad windy city string washes and synapse-tickling bleeps. With this collection, Moss pens yet another crucial chapter in the seemingly bottomless hieroglyphic being scroll. While 'The Moon Dance' is one of his most accessible and harmonious works to date, it doesn't lose an ounce of the rawness and immediacy of his previous work. Essential listening!

Review: The creative partnership between Tiga & Hudson Mohawke expresses a mutual love of "hardcore romance," a liminal state where the bounds between euphoria, melancholy and the raw power of friendship disintegrate completely. Recorded in Los Angeles from 2019-2023, these commonalities ebbed and flowed through various recording sessions, culminating in their debut album - L'Ecstacy - the sounds in which "all come from the same place, the same musical universe," in Hudson Mohawke's own words. Referencing the album's locus of bouncy elasticity and cinematic gloss - "we're building a particular kind of zone where it all fits together. A place lost in time." With guest appearances by luminaries like Abra, Channel Tres, and Jesse Boykins III, as well as album artwork by Wolfgang Tillmans, the result is delivered with "no apology, no cynicism, no irony, no winking."