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: Brussels-based DJ Hadone serves up his most ambitious musical statement to date with What I Was Running From., which also serves as a glimpse at what his immersive label project Things We Never Did' is all about. All nine tracks blend contemporary techno with various parts from subgenres and make for richly emotive soundscapes that are more than just functional DJ fodder. On 'Sonar' he joins up with Asking for a thrilling and dread fuelled minimal jungle stepper while 'Nobodies Oscillation' is pure euro-dance madness. Other highlights include the irresistibly emotional 'A Key To The Shadow'.

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: Kyle Hall and Steven Julien have been working together on and off for a whole decade now as Funkinevil. To mark the occasion they have pulled together their first two releases - namely 2012's 'Night / Dusk' and 2013's 'Ignorant' - on one new double album that very much sums up their raw house sound. The Detroit-London duo draw on plenty of their hometown's signature aesthetics, from well swung drums to soulful synths, and the results are still fresh sounding and captivatingly deep. Importantly, all these years later, there is still real emotional punch in these tunes as well as damn good grooves. Essential stuff from this vital pair.

Review: In the post-minimal years, and after the deep house revival, dark techno and electro became the most fertile ground for new producers. Hamburg-born Helena Hauff was one of those who brought through such sounds and she has since become a global tastemaker who has perfected the art of dark and hard-hitting soundscapes. She shows that off once more here with her selections for the mighty Fabric presents series. It is raw, fierce and rough yet seamlessly moves through breakbeat, electro and the still magical charms of Autechre's remix of D-Breeze's 'Crazy For Love' from 1999 which closes the mix in style.

Review: Vienna's Florian Stoffelbauer is the man behind the Heap alias. He uses it sporadically to drop cultured deep techno on labels like Mechatronica and Neubau and has done for around six years now. This new long player is the first we have heard from him in almost three years but it has been worth the wait. False Hope on Canadian label Isla is slow and snaking techno with icy atmospheres and a sleek sense of futurism. It's stylish in design and heady in mood with standouts like 'Inner Peace' drawing you into a world of intrigue and mystery. The title track brings lush cosmic melodies over gentle kick patterns and somehow soothes the mind, body and soul. Nice work indeed.

Review: Thomas P Heckmann is a venerated German techno veteran whose back catalogue is delved into here by the Monnom Black label. This is a first ever retrospective compilation and it goes into all his many different aliases including the likes of Knarz, AGE, Heckmann, Skydiver, Spectral Emotions, Purple Plejade and DRAX, which is now 30 years old. Across 17 beefy cuts, there is plenty of invention on display, sleek future techno, dark and deep material and raw percussive workouts that would not sound out of place in any contemporary set. That is a fine testament to the vision and execution of the one and only Heckmann.

Review: Chicago extraordinaire Jamal Moss aka Hieroglyphic Being's third solo album is titled There Is No Acid In This House, and sees him return to Soul Jazz Records. Using his idiosyncratic electronic sound, Moss takes influence from the experimental minds of fellow Windy City innovators such as The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, The Art Ensemble of Chicago and Sun Ra, through to icons of his hometown's house music scene like Ron Hardy, Marshall Jefferson, Lil Louis and others who have defined Chicago's musical universe over the last half a century.

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: For the latest volume in their essential reissue series, Tresor has decided to offer up a brand new edition of Robert Hood's celebrated 1994 debut album, "Internal Empire". A quarter of a century after Hood first committed it to wax, it remains one of the Motor City maestro's most potent and inspired works. It effectively defined his throbbing, minimalist style, with heavy and hypnotic cuts such as the bleeping "Minus" and deep and wonky "Within" perfectly encapsulating the stripped-back genius of Hood's production. If you've yet to acquire a copy, we'd recommending grabbing one of these: in truth, no techno collection is complete without it.

Review: Jon Hopkins' fourth album Immunity is a bona fide classic that is now a full ten years old. To celebrate the milestone, it has been newly remastered for this special reissue. Listening back now reminds you just what a confident and adventurous record this was - a creative trip deep inside Hopkins' mind that brought totters everything he had done and learned up to that point. The focus was firmly on the dancefloor but still, the tracks come with plenty of emotional nuances, from sad piano motifs to stirring choral drones but shifting rhythms and real-world sound effects that brought the whole thing to life.

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Review: A pivotal album in ensuring the continued popularity of experimental techno for fresh-eared fans, Huerco S.' Colonial Patterns was first released in 2013. It was his (Brian Leeds') debut album, following hot on the heels of his first three our four EPs. Though, while Leeds by then was no stranger to the stock format of releasing EPs as a techno artist, this is one of many albums we can cite to disprove notions of techno being somehow inherently not an album-worthy genre. Indeed, the sonic content of Colonial Patterns' is somehow consistently smothered, dub-pulsatory, lo-fi, rude, angelic, demonic, shifting, naturalistic, and synthetic - all at the same time. Meanwhile, the sinister, disfigured visage and title both suggest its occupation of an elusive but critical historic ideaspace. Now reissued via its original label Software, we can confirm its renewed status as a modern classic.

Review: This archival release on Organic Analogue digs back into the prolific '90s period of Swedish techno maverick Jean-Louis Huhta, aka Dungeon Acid. These days he releases on iDEAL, Fit Sound, Borft and Klasse Wrecks, but he cut his techno teeth on labels like Hybrid, Svek and H. Productions. Clad in artwork details by Swedish graffiti legend Nug, Wormhole Of Time comprises unreleased cuts and long out-of-print jams spanning many of Huhta's aliases. The release also comes with a zine featuring photographs and an interview reflecting on Huhta's multifarious life in music.