Back catalogue: Techno (All)

Review: Amorphic and Tensal hook back in to the machine to dialyse their crafts once more, with 'Highland Frequencies' offering up four, machine-numbered atoning lambs to our mech overlords, following up the equally arrayed 'Distant Landscapes' EP (2024) on Blueprint. Now bringing their distinctive cataloguing system to the discographic vanitas Mord, four more 'AT' tracks make for an irresistibly well-layered, synthetically one-of-a-kind release. Only 'AT4' gets a subtitle, 'The Sleepwalker', where a sandman's slumbrous, lollygaggling beats somehow, at the same time, betray a subconscious, paradoxical restlessness.

Review: Drei Vinyl launched back in 2023 and has slowly but surely amassed a respectable catalogue of various artists' releases. This sixth outing is the most straight-up techno offering yet and it opens with one of Spain's finest in Eduardo De La Calle. 'Deva5Vyasa' is heady and otherworld loop techno perfection with synth daubs and conscious vocals peppering the rubbery kicks. DJ Shufflemaster brings more texture to the raw, percussive madness of 'Axiom' and Tensal layers up unsettling and anxious synth murmurs with rising drum tension on 'Thermal Cycler.' Pergo's 'Lume' is a brash, industrial closer full of urgency.

Review: Mord has put together a bumper collection of 17 searing techno cuts as part of its Herdersmat compilation but is also seeing up four at a time on individual 12"s. There is no messing with Part 41 which opens with DJ Shufflemaster & Go Hiyama's ear-splitting, brain frazzling 'Salasa Geometric'. Bartig Move opts for a much more minimal and roomy sound on the rolling 'Asistencia' then Tensal picks up the pace once more with the rusty loops and broken beats of 'Esbar'. Aocram's 'Dreams In NYC' is a swamp, depraved closer for late night mischief.

Review: Robert Drewek vs Tomie Nevada's 'Time 4 More' EP was originally released on Unleash Records in 2005. Nine years on and Rawax are reissuing it on black wax and the tunes sound as good as ever. 'While He's Away' is a slick blend of garage-infused house drums and warm synth pulses with catchy vocal samples that bring a hint of old school. On the flip is 'Down With the Bass' which flips the script with a stripped back and militant but silky groove, dubby pads and a head's down vibe that really hypnotises.

Review: Yay Recordings closes out another solid 12 months with a various artists' EP that showcases right where the label is at. Heavy Mental kicks off with 'Dabro', a colourful and loopy house jaunt for sunny days. Twowi's 'Metaverse' takes off to the cosmos on lithe electro rhythms with ice-cold beats and widescreen pads. Parchi Pubblici & Lucretio's 'Aladdin Sane' brings some wonky deep tech vibes with of-balance drums and muffled spoken words and Rinaldo Makaj closes down with a fresh party sound perfect for cosy floors. There's plenty of variety here, which makes this a great addition to your bag.

Review: Chris Liberator's experimental techno label Maximum/Minimum forms part of the Stay Up Forever Collective umbrella, which has been going for a heck of a long time (since 1995-ish), charting untouched terrains of teratological UK hardcore techno. An offshoot imprint dedicated to the "creative corruptions" of the Stay Up Forever crew, Liberator and co. would originally release these ones without catalogue numbers, that is until the market beseeched them to behave more conventionally. Now, well past their 65th V/A release, comes their latest, a decapitatory pummeller fronted by Sonico's 'Did You Say Acid?' and Zyco Seon's 'Citric Frequencies'.

Review: Serious seriality from the OHM Series, an imprint and sole patent owner of the rare, aurally administered chemical known as Omega X. The alphabetic Greek letter ohm determines impedance / resistance in an electrical circuit, and so too do each of the dub techno tracks released on the OHM Series amount to tergiversating transductions, their chillout chord-knocks and hardened beats never quite letting us settle. Though titles like 'Innocence' and 'Downtime' persist here, the tracks perhaps inadvertently prove that flow is impossible without resistance: Separation's track is especially unorthodox in its strange reordering of phaser, pan and saturation effects on the pad-stab, which produces an unusual swirling effect.

Review: Rotterdam techno label TH Tar Hallow is all about providing peak-time techno nourishment. Next to cook up the goods is Augusto Taito who kicks off with the caustic intensity of 'Kanji' which has unsettling bleeps and big rusty drum loops. 'Paradox Of Choice' captures, in techno form, the unresolved anxiety of being lost with infinite options on your Netflix home page then 'O1.2' is a more wispy and roomy blend of dubby low ends and intricate sound designs that trigger your synapses. It's all heavy drums and unrelenting synth loops on closer 'A Sip Of Blood '.

Review: Netherlands techno titan Planet Rhythm goes full percussive gas giant on their latest V/A, 'Friction', a motorsport motivator full of accelerometric elan - one of several V/As to grace their revving catalogue in recent times. Ramon Tapia leads the motorcade with 'Friction', a stabbing aerator full of overtop claps and rims, while Louis Lp's 'Radioactivity' unsettles with its seething high ringing and affectively isolated chord-stab-melody. Deas' 'Hard Dreams' nods to the real, unshakeably material core of dreams, with its rancorous full-tone acids, while Ramon Topia closes with 'Fear', a restless, chord-throttling, hard trancey, speed demonic rally racer.

Review: Eindhoven underground acidcore distributor and label Flatlife generate yet another mind-melter for the nitty masses, supercolliding tracks by four of the foremost DJs come sound-summoners on the subterranean scene. Flatlife have dispatched rapid-response rave Apaches since 2009, and A-siders 'Septic' and 'Lord Of Darkness' bring a fittingly mid-noughts feel to things, during which time the roughage of hard dance fused with the encroaching gloss and finesse that came with digital sound tech that defined the decade. The mood is horrific, with 'Saure' climaxing to apocalyptic, territorial levels through waspish yamps and kick crushings, while the aggro is not lost on the ensuing 'Out Of Order', somehow the most relaxed of the four.

Review: French producer Alizee Chelal aka Tauceti's latest offering distills her signature fusion of dense, percussive momentum and textural finesse into four meticulously sculpted tracks. Across this four track release, she refines the balance between propulsion and atmosphere, drawing from the shadowy edges of techno while leaving space for shimmering, almost cinematic detail. 'Aquamarine' opens with rolling low-end and flickering metallic accents, setting the stage for the layered tension of 'Emeraude', where rhythms shift beneath fog-like synths. 'Tanzanite' tightens the focus, its kinetic pulse threaded with ghostly harmonics, while 'Jade' expands outward, its submerged melodies stretching into the depths. As both a DJ and producer, Tauceti has honed a distinct sonic languageione where intricate rhythms meet a deep, almost tactile sense of space. Her work moves fluidly between intensity and restraint, dissolving the lines between the physical and the ethereal.

Review: BOY Records reissue an early example of legit new beat robo-trance, Time Modem's 'Welcome To The 90s'. The German duo of Joachim and Ulrich Wilhelm first dropped this deathly cold, wan emotion-stripper under the ZYX Music subsidiary shortly following 'The Time Of The Gathering', their debut EP. 'Welcome To The 90s' proves it: most of the cultural collective mind who experienced the transition into the last decade of the Millennium knew ahead of time that this would be the decade that defined dance music. Just one look at the waveform of this future-gothic grinder - as thin as a too-savoured fishbone sucked dry - reflects the loss of affect that was to be expected of this new bionic-sonic era. We hear a faint robotic voice over the title track's tannoy, speaking on themes of deterioration, futility and renunciation; it glides above the track's unpassable early stab lines and end-stop stomps. 'Intensive Worlds', meanwhile, extends the Gregorian voxsynth to underlie a rather flat, detached description of a future Frankfurt street scene, narrated by a female interloper. A historic slab of wax, reproduced for a new age.

Review: Los Angeles mainstay and famed techno practitioner Truncate has joined forces with Chicago legend DJ Hyperactive for a first-ever collaborative EP. The results are fascinating from the first beat: 'Universal Function' is an anxiety-riddled deep techno pumper, 'Trust The Process' is laced with cosmic synths and an eerie sense of the unknown and 'Space Shuffle' is more jacked, with raw drums and punchy kicks topped by manic synth squiggles. Last of all is a heady soundscape in 'Matter Of Time' with its dusty hi-hats and frictionless drums.

Review: TWR72 takes the techno baton from the HAYES crew with four highly effective tools. '1N0V4T1V3' brings rusty loops and cantering drum funk, '7ECHN0L0G1' is more paired back with twitchy synth repetitions and kinetic drums while 'F4SC1N4T1NG' is an off balance and dynamic blend of fluttering metal snares and thudding drums. 'ID34S' is the taught, tense closer with oversized shakers and some more physical drum patterns. A fantastic addition to your record bag for when you need some real damagers.