Techno Recommendations October 2011

Review: ** Repress For The Hood Fans ** Emboldened by the reception to his overlooked and revisited Floorplan project, Mr Robert Hood turns to a track of a similar nature for the latest release in the M Plant Perpetual Masters series. The main slinky hook from Sister Sledge's "He's The Greatest Dancer" may have been subsequently bastardized by Mr Will Jiggy Smith, but Hood's minimal sampling of the same source on the 1991 track "The Greatest Dancer" must have sounded thrilling then. It still does today, remastered and is complemented on the flip by "Dancer", a new Hood jam that is as close to outright disco without losing that trademark Detroit grit as you can get.

Review: Skudge return with the latest installment of their remix series, in which Berlin's Substance (aka Peter Kuschnereit) is paired up with Bristol's finest, Appleblim & October. Substance's remix of "Overture" takes the hypnotic quality of the endlessly looping original and runs with it, adding some high frequency stabs that cut through the mix. On the flipside October & Appleblim bring some Bristol influence to Skudge's much straighter approach. Isolating the ghostly 808 cowbell of the original and adding some welcome percussive swagger, it nevertheless maintains the straight groove of their recent collaboration on Schmorgasbord, complete with liquid synths which create an interesting contrast to Skudge's warehouse sound.

Review: Mike Dehnert arrives on the Echochord Colour series in the midst of a purple patch, having sported various takes on the glowering techno world he occupies, as anyone who has checked recent drops on his own Fachwerk and Clone Basement will testify! The only disappointment here is Echochord not pressing the record up on purple marble vinyl in honour of Denhert's rich vein of form. Instead this murky blue twelve opens in fine style with the guttural vocal intonations of "RGS2" cascading in sync with the gloopy bass hits, dragging you down a k hole of despair until the rasping hi-hat procession arrives and a sense of industrial chaos grows. Flipside, "Bar2" operates around minute rhythmic deviations from the thick set groove - just wait for the sprawling synth line to coax more metallic hi-hat brilliance into action. Fellow Fachwerker Roman Lindau remixes "RGS2" into a growling, scratchy, heads down techno bump.

Review: Delsin drop an illuminating hint at what to expect from Conforce's forthcoming album, with the Dutchman handpicking a quartet of tracks from it for this Dystopian Elements EP. Don't be put off by the title though as the trademark analogue warmth is present here at times, with "Luminous" setting the tone, icily emerging from the ether and spreading deep sythns across heavily atmospheric textures and a restrained groove. A fractured, murky contrast is provided on the most beatless stutter of "Desolate Ground" with abstract textures morphing with downtrodden robotic ambience. On the flip, Boris indulges in some spectral acid manoeuvres on "Lonely Run" with the rumbling lysergic bass line dominating amidst rasping percussion and haunting waves of sound. "Vacuum" ends this excellent release in sprawling style, steadily growing from the ethereal fuzz into a rattling techno thrust.

Review: Anthony Shake Shakir and Oni Ayhun serve up two superb remixes of tracks from Honest Jon's 2010 Shangaan Electro compilation that showcased the more frenetic sounds of South African dance music. You probably won't be surprised to learn that both remixes are splendid, although Shakir's reimagination of BBC probably just shades it - a beefy, positively booming bass drum bristles beneath traditional percussive elements and lazer beam synth stabs. On the flip the enigmatic producer Oni Ayhun adopts a broken drum pattern, with all manner of curious sonic elements warped and twisted in the Swede's idiosyncratic style. Stunning stuff all round.

Review: Now this is a bit special. Luke Slater's Mote Evolver launches the Parallel series, the concept being that two contrasting but complementing artists drop a brace of tracks each on the one 12". US based Englishman ASC (real name James Clements), known primarily for his forward thinking D&B excursions, turns in two whopping techno cuts on the A-Side. The relentless guttural throb of "Slow Burn" is offset by some slapping synths and barely there vocal snippets, kind of what we'd expect a studio jam between Levon Vincent and Boddika to sound like. This is complemented by the more liquid tones of "Transit", a reverb-laden throbber with menacing sonar bleeps piercing the swampy atmospherics. On the flip, Slater adopts his seldom seen L.B.Dub Corp guise for "Lurcher's Dub" and "Native Dub", with the cavernous sub-bass and twinkling keys of the former demanding play on an implausibly large soundsytem.

Review: Metrolux Music boss Kosta Athanassiadis, aka XDB, joins perennially underrated Danish imprint Echocord for the first time with the deep and dub tinged Apari EP. Collecting new elements as its title track speeds along, "Azari" sheds its seemingly simple beginning as it gathers reverbed synths and filtered bleeps for a trippy and captivating techno journey. Sven Weisemann takes up remix duty with his "Systolic" mix that has simply stolen our hearts here at Juno. Tense and mysterious, Sven's mix strips and re-builds with slow hazy drums, dripping samples and a gorgeously dark atmosphere. Lastly, "Black Pin" follows a heavy electronic path with swelling synths and an evolving percussion section. Essential.

Review: At this point it seems that nothing will stop the Skudge juggernaut, as they drop the first release on their own imprint a mere six months after their album, Phantom. This 12" doesn't throw any huge curveballs, but these tracks display a lightness and simplicity that has been largely unseen in their previously weightier productions. Of course their sense of rhythm is still as on point as ever; "June" is characterised by its beefy toms which drive the track forwards, but most surprising it the simple chord sequence which ebbs and flows throughout, allowing only a simple whistle as its only excess. "Man On Wire" is built around a simple bassline and slowly intensifying synth stab, but again, with a gravity defying breeziness that feels ever so subtly different from their previous productions. The 12" concludes on this note, with a short, bright, arpeggio tool that is an interesting diversion from their usual warehouse sound, and intriguing look at possible things to come.

Review: Italian duo Franz & Shape return in slimline form as F+S with a bit of a 303 banger for the ever reliable Bang Gang imprint. "Acid One" is the kind of ridiculously over the top exercises in lysergic dance music that more than compensates the lack of subtlety with the fact it's actually fun mate. The ever excellent Snuff Crew come correct with an edit that toughens up the drum programming, whilst slipping in their own procession of rave stabs that dovetail nicely with the gurgling acid lines lending the track a different level of euphoria. If you're gonna indulge in some acid tinged madness, who better to remix it than DJ Pierre? The Chicago legend hogs the whole of the B Side with a typically expansive main room acid refix!

Review: Steve Conner, he of the legendary UK electro outfit Bitstream, unfurls a new project in the shape of Adapta, with this classy quartet of gritty machine funk for the newly minted Brutalist Sunset imprint. The Adapta project is the result of Conner's live recording in a studio based around a redesigned Memorymoog synth bulked up with Roland and Elektron hardware. For music fans of a certain hardware fetishing pedigree, this alone is likely to see a limited 250 pressing sell out quickly enough. The music itself will ensure less nerdish types will want to indulge too, poised with a scratchy, dystopian electro flex that will appease to fans of recent Jon Convex material or the [Naked Lunch] output. "Concrete Sun" in particular is an abrasive delight, with jagged textures scraping across a backdrop of scattergun binary melodies and swampy bass. "Duerden Sound" even sees him indulge in doom laden steppish dub techno akin to Blawan or Boddika on an extended studio flex with particularly bleak thoughts running through their heads. Do check!

Review: The second installment in the Sheffield trio's Liber Temple series takes a more hard-edged approach than its predecessor and is focused squarely on the dancefloor. "Heavy Industry" embarks on a panning ride through underground tunnel techno, its heavy claps and malevolent bleeps navigating a path through turmoil created by a tearing, searing bassline. "Greedy Gutter Guru" is somewhat less abrasive, but it is nonetheless equally effective, as the Dogs drop concrete slab beats and, in reference to the first installment, a pulsing, undulating bassline. It'll be interesting to hear what the third and final chapter of this series delivers.

Review: Moustache regular Mark Du Mosch is at the helm for the second release on the Dutch label's techno offshoot with splendid and varied results. "Captain Bligh" opens this release in vicious form, tunnelling deep into furthest corners of machine built cave techno, rasping Roland drums cascading around tape saturated acid textures with the kind of panache that seems so natural to the Lowlands. "Outerworld" provides a nice deviation from the guttural opening, commencing in floating disco house territory before setting off into a bezerk drum machine freakout! The B Side opens with the tightly wound bounce of "Getting Off", which doesn't prepare you for a concrete weight B-more flex that's countered by raising swathes of pads for a production that brings to mind Karizma at his finest. Du Mosch ends on the Martian techno bump of "Shields Up" which bucks through several rhythmic directions in a style Jamal Moss
would be proud of.