Juno Recommends Techno May 2018

Review: British producer Mark Ambrose has been steadfast in the deep techno scene since the mid 90s, keeping his head down and slinging out refined, immersive tracks with a minimum of fuss. His Crayon label carried his most personal gear, and there was a lot of it, so now Was/Is have done the right thing and sifted through the catalogue to find the strongest jams for this Crayon Classics 12". "Zulu Groove" is a quintessential rolling groove, all pattering percussion and dubby FX threads, while "Warehouse Blues" ramps up the hi-hat sizzle and plots a course for the techno end of Ambrose's repertoire. "Thru" finishes the record off with a housier disposition, all shuffling beats and looped up melodic hiccups locked into an irresistible funk.

Review: Detroit techno hero DJ Bone is ever prolific these days, with his Differ-Ent alias releasing an epic triple LP release on Don't Be Afraid last year. A Piece Of Beyond marks the second DJ Bone studio album, and it finds him in an exploratory mood. "It Begins" is a unique exercise in synth wobbles and military drum programming, while "The Stalker" heads into the deepest and farthest corners of the quintessential Motor City techno sound. "The Chase" takes on a cosmic, break-infected stance that calls to mind spiritual jazz as much as techno, while there's more classic styles to be enjoyed on "Dreamers 9" and the absolutely stomping "Sweat".

Review: While undoubtedly one of dance music's greatest party-starters, Daniel Avery has never been a dance music purist. Over the years, there have been various quirky, downtempo-minded side projects and DJ mixes that show the impressive breadth of his musical knowledge. It's for this reason we're not that surprised to find that Song For Alpha, his first album since 2013, combines deeper and more trippy takes on his club-ready sound (home listening fodder, despite the drums) with escapist, early morning cuts inspired by ambient greats (Brian Eno, John Hassell etc.) and the after-hours electronica of Warp's pioneering Artificial Intelligence series. By mixing things up in this way, Avery has delivered what could well be his strongest body of work to date.

Review: The resurgence of Icelandic techno continues with the latest release on AE Recordings, seeing Bjarnar Jonsson returning to his long standing Ohm project alongside emergent talent Kvadrant. The pair were last seen on Kvadarant's Kontakt label, and their production partnership is clearly still yielding quality, dubbed out techno in the finest Scandinavian tradition. Even if all the tracks are built with a steely techno focus to them, the synth work and sound design scattered throughout the tracks elevates this to a higher level, not least on the bubbling geisers of signal processing that course through the middle of "Grip".

Review: Given that XOR Gate is a new project from Drexciya member and all round Detroit legend Gerald Donald, we'd expect copies of Conic Sections to fly off the shelves. It helps, of course, that's the mini-album is little less than inspired. There are hints of Drexciya's alien electronics throughout, but little in the way of punchy TR-808 beats or booming bass. Instead, Donald treats us to a sublime selection of futurist soundscapes, experimental doodles, deep space ambient compositions and trippy, horror-influenced electronica. It's effectively the distilled essence of Motor City futurism with the dancefloor grooves removed and some creepy modular electronics thrown in. Which, we think you'll agree, is an enticing proposition.

Review: A taster for Robert Hood's second Floorplan album, this EP puts a spotlight on the radical nature of his musical transformation. On "Music", the visceral rhythms of techno minimalism are gone; in their place is a rolling, tracky groove that boasts a repetitive vocal loop and which has shades of classic Relief /Derrick Carter. "Tell You No Lie" is even more impressive. It sees Hood use a gospel vocal over a stomping, funk guitar-sampling disco house workout. There is an audibly religious dimension to "Tell You No Lie," but Hood's knack for writing a great tune means that it sounds celebratory rather than self-indulgent or preachy.

Review: Torino label We Play The Music We Love has already made a strong start with some immersive turns by Trevor Deep Jr and Rills, and now they provide a platform for Italian duo Luminer. "Indaco" is a charged up dub techno excursion with crisp percussion to propel the classic chord shimmer that course through the centre of the track. "Canadian" takes a deeper direction with a crafty tapestry of synth flares and a more understated rhythm section. Hiver's reconstruction of "Indaco" opts for a crooked electro foundation, nimble acid line and a shapeless swell of pad tones as the key ingredients, and then Icelandic techno champ Thor whips up a sharp-strutting dub techno variation of "Canadian" that sits comfortably with the Luminer tracks.

Review: Astonishingly, it's been some 18 years since the release of Fluxion's Vibrant Forms II, a classic compilation of early minimal, ambient and dub techno productions. Two years ago, Subwax Bcn reissued the double-CD compilation; here, they get a trio of contemporary producers to deliver new interpretations of their favourite tracks. Samuel Andre Madsen (as S.A.M) handles the A-side, adding a little Detroit flavour and bumping drums to the vintage dub techno riffs and hazy textures of "Bipolar Defect". On the flipside, Parisian deep house producer Janeret joins the dots between dreamy, deep space techno and his usual locked-in, club-ready house style on a fabulour version of "Multidirectional II", before Moreon and Baffa emphasize the killer drums and booming dub bassline of hypnotic techno shuffler "Circa".

Review: Kalbata has turned his hand to many styles over the years, not least the excellent soundsystem explorations of Congo Beat The Drum, but on this second release for his label Brush & Broom, he's decided to fling himself into the fiery pit of acid while paying tribute to 90s motocross bikes. "Honda" is dripping with 303, punctuated by a twitchy set of drums, while "Yamaha" takes a diversion into moodier territory, letting hazy chords set the tone for an energised but defiantly heads down acid workout. "Suzuki" is a bit spicier, capturing the essence of 'up-for-it' early Trax Records but edging it into more hypnotic, looped up territory. "Toyota" finishes the EP off with an atonal bleep out with an electro undercarriage.

Review: Ali Renault's techno bludgeon instrument Vivod gets another notch in its handlebar with this appearance from new Glaswegian venture UNI.OMNI. It's rasping, rabid stuff with distortion and noise in abundance, but these wild elements are actually wielded with a firm grip on opening beast "Acceptance Resistance". "Metaphysical Lives" meanwhile channels some wave influences while keeping up the sense of foreboding, "Sequential Self" gets into a death disco spiral complete with beyond the grave vocals and "Viral Dread" goes even further into the graveyard while keeping the stiff dancefloor pressure dial turned up to 11.

Review: DJ Deep and Roman Poncet launched their Sergei Rezza project some three years ago with a widely lauded album, and now they're back with their own label and a chance to fully explore the boundaries of their combined sound. The record starts off gently with the introspective, ambient lilt of "Cale" before wriggling into a knotted groove on "Treehouse" that places intricate rhythm programming at the forefront of the mix. "Monte" has a more forthright pulse at its core, but there's still space for some pattering percussion, and "Decale" shrugs off the drums to explore guitar licks with an almost Balearic finish to them.

Review: If you've not already twigged, Vakulism is a fresh alias from the artist more frequently known as Vakula, and this is the Ukranian's first release using the pseudonym. It does, however, continue his recent trend for emphasizing woozy deepness and hushed emotiveness. Check, for example, opener "Edelweiss Reflection", where seemingly endless chords and reverb-heavy hand percussion hits rise above an unfussy drum machine beat, and the deep Detroit techno futurism of "Evening". The EP also includes two fine excursions into trippy ambient territory, with the Japanese spoken word vocals and meandering melodies of "The Eve of Metaphors" just edging out the leisurely bliss of "Afternoon".

Review: Chris Weeks has been building up the Kingbastard catalogue for a long time now, generally taking a self-reliant approach in the underground electronica scene where CD-r releases reign supreme. He's been a key figure on Ambidextrous since the label launched back in 2008, and now he's committed to wax with a range of crunched up leftfield sonics for the machine-loving crowd. "Anxiety" is a melodic cut with a house-minded structure, but there's a lot of production acrobatics and compositional swerves taking place within this framework. "Scatterbrain" is more overtly out there, tapping up the kind of heavily processed sounds that producers like Paradroid have championed in the past. "Data_Loss" strike a heavy blow somewhere between dubstep and electro, and "Data_Ctrl" ups the tempo for a rabble-rousing exercise in mind-bending machine music.

Review: Lena Willikens is not only the first female DJ to curate a compilation for Dekmantel's Selectors series, but also the first to put the emphasis on previously unreleased music rather than dusty-fingered crate-digging gems. That's not to say there aren't excellent older cuts present - see the decidedly psychedelic brilliance of Sandoz's ambient dub earworm "Morning Star (Dubmix)" and the trippy 2001 industrial dub techno of Vromb's "Amalgame" - just that there are a few more previously unheard killers. These include, but aren't limited too, the drowsy broken techno of Jasss's "Little Lines", Parrish Smith's jacking industrial house shuffler "Minima" and the druggy, mind-altering synthesizer soundtrack throb of Borusiade's intoxicating "Night Drive (An Exercise in Indulgence)".

Review: In the 13 years that have passed since he made his debut, Stanislav Tolkachev has kept himself busy, releasing a trio of well-regarded albums and a high volume of club-ready 12" singles. His latest missive, The Fridge, is effectively a mini-album, with the Ukrainian producer serving up a sextet of dark, atmospheric variations on a theme. While there's plenty of variety in the rhythms and melodies, each of the six tracks is blessed with distorted, mind-altering bottom-end and wild, lo-fi riffs and melody lines crafted using what sounds like one synthesizer. Highlights include the darting, almost ecclesiastical synth motifs and druggy beats of "The Fridge 2", the synth-accordions and bombastic machine drums of "The Fridge 4" and the kick-drum driven creepiness of clandestine closer "The Fridge 6".

Review: Predictably, DVS1 has grabbed tracks from some serious techno talents for this third volume in Mistress's Special Release series. As a result, the vibe is loopy, pumping and energy-packed throughout, with standouts coming from Adriana Lopez (whose "Last Path" sounds like Surgeon making creepy EBM) and UK veteran Steve Bicknell, who brilliantly ladens a stomping beat with creepy electronics and all manner of psychedelic bleeps ("Space 13"). Elsewhere, Mike Storm brilliantly builds dancefloor intensity via relentless drum machine handclaps on "From The Human Eye To Earth", while Dustin Zahn delivers a decidedly distorted fusion of lo-fi techno and spacey Detroit futurism.

Review: Following up from an impressive first edition, DVS1's imprint Mistress is devoted to secret weapons of the house and techno variety - plus all sounds in between. Much like the previous edition, it has its sights set on surefire techno tools for the main room. Rotterdam's Benny Rodrigues impresses as always, but with something different than what we're used to on the stripped back dub techno aesthetic of "Duchi Kaal". Fellow Berghain/Panorama Bar resident Steffi hands in a stellar effort on the loopy, trance inducing sorcery of "IE-4" and the legendary Mark Broom (of Pure Plastic and Rue East fame) has got the right credentials to do old-school - and he sure ticks all the right boxes on the classic Chi-town jack of "Drum Jamz 2".

Review: Ok, so the Speicher 95 series from Cologne's mythical Kompakt label is always capable of pleasing all sorts of DJs, from the shady outsider freaks to the progressive show-off, but having Laurent Garnier on top of that feels like striking gold. The legendary French producer and DJ doesn't exactly release a lot of music these days, so a new two-tracker by the man feels like something truly special to adorn our charts with. On the A-side, "1-4 Doctor C'est Chouette" is an explorative house voyage with plenty of life and organic energy behind its deep web of bass tones and spaced-out melodies; the flip, "From The Crypt To The Astrofloor", is another story altogether - Garnier enters a new realm of cerebral fantasy here, a world that sits more in line with films like Akira or Blade Runner rather than a basement dance floor. Magic.

Review: The unstoppable Geoff Kirkwood aka Man Power serves up another edition in his Me Me Me series. This time it's courtesy of the mysterious Vyvyan, who serves up a lo-slung acid disco number in the form of "Source Rocks". Equally on a roll at present is Paul Woolford (truth be told, he has been for over a decade!) and further testament to this is his late night, proper UK style remix which is at street level with its gnarly, speed garage bassline. Killer low end frequencies galore still, as heard next on "Wu Me Seh" bridging the gap between nu-disco and EBM, plus the Futureboogie affiliated Christoph's version works those gliding 303 elements and takes it further into the stratosphere.