Back catalogue: Techno (All)

Review: Well Curated is a series of releases and parties that - in its own words - "reflects the ethnomusicology of the last 50 years of music" - and aims to reach into all genres, merging classic styles and breaking down barriers. Steve Spacek occupies the A-side with the breezy broken beat and soul-in-space of 'Alone In Da Sun', while Lukid's 'Hair Of The Dog' is a more intense counterpart, with wobbling sub-bass and swirling, surging atmospherics hovering above.

Review: Berlin's Cocktail d'Amore and Tokyo's Ene Records have come together once again to present the music of Solidair. The duo of Cocktail alumni Luigi Di Venere and Jules Etienne present three tracks aimed to induce a dance floor hypnosis. Orgonite (Riding the Waves) does just that, a slow build awash in the ebb and flow of acid tinges, just enough to wet your whistle on a Saturday night. The original mix keeps the skeletal support but throws in a life preserver of 8 bit gaming synthesis. Frisky arps call and respond to each other before making way for sinewy pads to lift off. Tiger's Eye sets itself onto cruising speed incorporating elements of late 90's acid techno with the sleek and smooth clubbing aesthetics of modern day Berlin.

Review: All that we know about the enigmatically named SaPa is they are affiliated with Weimar crew Giegling, emerging earlier this year with the Fuubutsushi album on the Forum sublabel that garnered comparisons with Prince Of Denmark. Sa Pa's penchant for subaqueous techno now lands the producer a 12" debut on Marcel Dettmann Recordings. Lead track "We Can Be Friends" is so dubbed-out and murky that it could almost run as a background percussive piece in your mix - that's not to say that we don't think it's absolutely killer, because it is! "Morocco" is completely in a world of its own, crackly feedback and sparse sonics abound, while "Fast Jam" is a heady techno stomper with a punchy low-end and sublime percussion, a track that is followed by another murky load of swamped atmospherics in the form of "Untitled 11". If we have to be completely honest, this has been our favourite MDR 12" in a long time, and it comes with a heartfelt recommendation. Killer.

Review: Schlammpeitziger gets some loving remix treatment here by a superb array of artists, many of whom will all be familiar to lovers of the famous Kompakt sound. Ada is first with a remix of 'Loch Ohne Licht' that is high in exotic melody and tropical bliss. Elsewhere a Wolfgang Voigt Megamix is dreamy and zoned out for the moments when you want to get lost in your own thoughts, and Andreas Dorau and Zwanie Jonson team up for a remix of 'Parzipan' that brings indie sleaze and underlapping groves to some skyward synth invention.

Review: After launching last year via an arguably overlooked EP from Obsidian, Parallel Connection has made us wait a little while for the London label's second release. It comes courtesy of Sela, a 25-year-old French producer who apparently honed his soon to be trademark sound while living in the UK. There's much to enjoy across the four track missive, from the alien electronics, loose-limbed broken electro beats and chiming lead lines of '2020 Connection' and sub-heavy, acid-flecked stomp of 'Animal Kingdom', to the pitched-down electronica eccentricity of 'Really Get Fucked' and the psychedelic late-night tech-house hedonism of 'Mr Rabbit', which boasts bleeping melodies reminiscent of both mod-90s ambient techno and Yorkshire bleep and bass.

Review: Techno talents don't come much more proven than Speedy J and Surgeon. Both are veterans of the game but artists who have remained at the sharp end and their Multiples collaborative project is in part responsible for that. Now it births a full-length album of tweaked experiments that take techno into new realms. The whole thing was recorded in just two days at J's STOOR lab in Rotterdam on an array of hardware machines. Each tune is a raw, one-take affair which means they are perfectly imperfect and feel utterly alive. Techno and elector collide with beatless moments, pummelling low ends and plenty of club heft.

Review: For two decades Buenos Aires-based electronic music producer Sebastian Galante aka Seph has been honing his craft in the Latin American underground with his label Aula Magna Records, which in turn gave rise to releases on Echocord, Insurgentes and many more. Recently he's been dropping bangers on Tresor as one half of Oscean, alongside Andres Zacco, and now arrives on Lapsus Records with Septimo Sentido. Here he brings his expert sound design to the fore, channelling classic mid-'90s electronica ala Aphex Twin, Skam, Reload, and/or u-Ziq, except Galante's approach is a lot more digital-esque than those artists' otherwise largely analogue stances. Opener 'OBI' recalls the daydreamy pad-n-stuttery neo-IDM of Lanark Artefax or Quirke; this mood is maintained for quite a while until the first whiff of acid is smelt on the A3 'Felina'. The record gets better and better, airier and airier, in fact; 'Skyways Shuriken' is especially sharp and recondite, and 'Dragonscale' blows us instantly away with its D&D-soundscape-worthy finesse. An aetheric release, one that wouldn't sound out of place as the next Mirror's Edge soundtrack.

Review: Dutch industrial techno producer Parrish Smith created Light Cruel & Vain over the course of nearly three years. Each track on the record was originally conceived solo, then further realised with the assistance of contributing musicians Sofiane Brahmi and Javier Vivancos. The collaborative where no studio sessions occurred due to the pandemic - the full collaboration conducted remotely. Notable tracks include the seething post-punk swagger of "Black Scarlet" or the brooding industrial rock of "Sway", to the industrial strength breaks of "Never Break Faith" and a frantic techno banger towards the end "I Wanna Be An Idol".

Review: DJ Sotofett is a cult hero with a sound that is never less than eccentric. This new album Braindance on Sued is a collection of material the mercurial one has written between 2002 and 2020. All of the tracks are short but high impact in different ways and despite some of them being the best part of 20 years old and pre-dating all the famous Sex Tags projects they still bang. Thrilling breaks, icy techno, mashed up jungle and deeper, more acid laced late night grooves all feature and offer a window into the mind of one of electronica's most vital talents.

Review: Mad-heads, rave veterans and lovers of having their brains rewired by previously unexplored sonic realms unite, because here comes the first of four, yes four, new albums from the fantastic freak of nature that is Special Request. His 'What Time Is Love? Sessions' arrives in several different formats this month and across six sizzling tracks that re-wire the KLF's hit of that name, he taps into everything from "ephemeral ambiance to barnstorming hardcore, pummelling house to pointillist trance" and does so with a mix of the surreal and the psychotic, the psychedelic and the downright ridiculous. It's mental, and we love it.

Review: As you know if you have followed the work of Special Request aka Paul Woolford, it often comes in huge bursts and across several releases at once. So it is that this year the one-man production machine is to drop not one but a four-album run over the next 12 months, all independently. Quite what he runs on we do not know but we need some because once again on this limited clear vinyl version of his 'What Time Is Love? Sessions' he taps into the future as he rewires the musical DNA of rave, techno, bass and jungle into tracks that make your brain fizz and your body move. Unreal work once more from this unstoppable force.

Review: Warp continues to comb back through the landmark Artificial Intelligence series with this landmark record from Jochem Paap, aka Speedy J. Alongside a tandem reissue of Richie Hawtin's F.U.S.E. album Dimension Intrusion, this remastered edition of Ginger takes us back into the heart of early 90s techno innovation, when new ideas were developing globally at a rate of knots. Paap had already established himself in the harder end of the techno pool, but Ginger flipped the script with an immersive, meditative exploration of minimalism and melodic structure. Amongst the eternal classics are some dazzling miniatures deemed 'Fills' which make for some of the most compelling listening on this seminal slice of early 90s techno.

Review: Andy Stott excels at exploring the spaces between electronic genres and has gone for many years now, He is known for crafting a unique, ever-evolving sound and after experimenting with minimal techno and dub early on, he defined his style in 2011's Passed Me By, a world of grey tones, static and experimental rhythms. In 2012's Luxury Problems, Alison Skidmore's haunting vocals added a human touch to his artificial landscapes then with the now ten-year-old Faith in Strangers, Stott fused his signature sound with influences like trap and minimalism. Over 54 minutes, the album builds in intensity and is still unmatched in its originality and impact.

Review: In Japanese history Suemori refers to a castle constructed in 1548 by Lord Nobuhide. A short-lived structure, it was abandoned just over a decade later and subsequently- in the many years between then and now - all but vanished from the face of the Earth. A solitary stone stelae now marks the site, but whether impermanence was really a central theme to Suemori forming isn't clear. Nevertheless, their growing, reforming and restructuring sound certainly fits with the idea.

Occupying a strange, jerky and juxtaposed place between art sounds, crunchy electronica and noise, Maebashi represents a real melting pot of ideas and details. 'Yakkosan''s scatty hi hats, 'Kaminari Okoshi' and its strange sense of abstract rhythm, the pared back is-that-breakbeat of 'Bonsai'. Definitely destined for the pile marked less ordinary, if you're diving in prepare for a real experience.

Review: Minimal Wave present a reissue of Yoshifumi Niinuma's 1980 self-titled debut album, having already released his Automaticism and Plastic Love EP's previously. Produced in his Tokyo living room, Niinuma built his own synthesizers and speakers from scratch to create these 'intense proto-techno soundscapes.' A zeitgeist of early pioneering electronics, it runs the gamut from minimal synth ("A Worm"/"Automatic Type"), noisy industrial beats such as on "Temprament" or early electro sounds as heard on "Quick Starttype".