Back catalogue: Techno (All)

Review: London underground night train riders Deadbeat Records prioritise techno-breaks handmade for late night and early morning dancefloors, times when both the best and worst comes emerges from each of us. Their inaugural Deadbeat Breaks compilation hears six out of ten full digital curations brought to a shadowy, space-invaded black vinyl truncation, with modern talking synth vomits from Olly Rant, booty bass hups from Hunter Starkings, hackney parroting hurtles from Rnbws, and a closing breakstep broil from Hooverian Blur.

Review: Mind Express boss Refracted, AKA Berlin's Alex Moya, emerges from the depths of some murky, oily, opaque lake. A place unsettling and unnerving - the site of some unknown tension - but also wonderfully inimitable and hard to countenance. Powerful stuff, just not really in a way that immediately presents itself as such. Nevertheless, before you know it these tones have enveloped and ensnared. Call it ambient techno, call it ambient, call it pure futurism - parts here almost feel like the ambient noises of familiar things that haven't been invented yet. If that makes sense? A moody precog of a record, it whirs and drones, echoes and dissipates. There are moments when structure become more defined, like the mystery of 'Initiation', but for the most part these are aural infinity loops.

Review: Rivet's newest album for Editions Mego blends optimism and negation, emerging sanguinely from a period of personal tragedy and disillusionment undergone by the artist. Mika Hallback, a key figure in the Swedish underground, first gained attention with industrial techno as Grovskopa before shifting to experimental work, including On Feather and Wire (2020). After the loss of fellow musician Peter Rehberg and his dog Lilo, Hallback created the somber L+P-2 (2023), and now Peck Glamour marks his return, coming reinfused with hope and exploration. Drawing on punk, industrial, techno, and trauma, the album combines synthetic and organic elements, with 'Orbiting Empty Cocoon', with its tugging, metal ballistic sound-rooms sounding like an Au-technic, cybernetic ritual, a dance anthem 'Patitur Butcher' and 'We Left Before We Came' concluding on comparatively layered zoonotic notes; posthuman synthesis backed by birdsong.