Back in stock: Minimal House/Tech House

Review: Analogue pressure from Bufobufo, who stops over in Japan for Cabaret Recordings after earlier international stints with Art Of Dark, Partout and Furthur Electronix. His second single for the label, founded by So Inagawa and DJ Masda, proffers a hypnotic blend, binarising the mood with the sliding melodes of 'Watercourse' and 'Armour Plated' with comparatively sparse and gritty perc-slaps of 'Wood Ant' and 'Cinnabar'. That strange but difficult-to-nail split between of hypnotic intrigue and immediacy is well and truly nailed.

Review: ***B-STOCK: Sleeve damaged but otherwise in excellent condition***


Minimal house legend Thomas Melchior and Montreal's Flabbergast duo bring their skills to remix Calcio Club's cool System Check EP. Melchior is one of our favs when it comes to silky, deep, minimal house and here delivers a remix that retains the original's groove while smoothly transitioning into lush synth vibes. Flabbergast's Guillaume Coutu Dumont and Vincent Lemieux have a sound just as distinctive and offer two remixes that push micro-house's limits. Their tracks feature mind-bending effects, Moog-style synth hooks and a burst of percussion that all lead the remixes to a new level of dance floor ecstasy.

Review: Dashiell has been road testing these two tunes in his sets for a while, and they have always done a job. They finally arrive on wax courtesy of Foul Play and are sure to get dropped all over the place this summer. 'dfuse all the tension' is the right mix of driving tech but wonky minimal. The bassline is drunk and all over the place while the lead synth has a retro video game feel, and some crisp melodies and refracted vocals finish it well. On the flip, 'da nastiest' is faster and more direct with some turbocharged and bass-driven tech house characterised by another sleazy vocal and phased synth lines that bring a playful twist.

Review: Fedo prides himself on exploring beyond the usual genre tropes you get in minimal and tech house worlds. Opener 'Sin Titulo' goes some way to proving that with its innovative take on club-ready tech and boiled-down minimal synths. 'Calisthenics & Coffee' is a trippy blend of smooth bass and undulating neon pads. Warped vocals also pepper the mix to keep the brain and body occupied. 'Film Noir' indeed brings a darker energy and 'My Weapon' shuts down with some razor shape precision.

Review: The always-cultured Sushitech is back with another of its well-chosen reissues, this time focusing on the London-based Get Fucked. These tunes dropped in original from back in 1999 on Eukahouse and have since become cult classics. First is an unreleased Sweet mix of 'Dreams Are Made' which is lush, dubbed out tech with some magnificent jazz chords. On the flipside, Kenneth Graham steps up with his She Likes To Ed-It remix which is silky smooth and hypnotic for late-night zone-outs that will lock in the real heads. This is a superb limited-blue splattered vinyl that looks as good as it sounds.

Review: A cornerstone of early 90s electronic music, Orbital's Lush resurfaces with renewed energy through the Orbital LEDs reissue campaign. Originally released in 1993, the EP is a masterclass in melodic techno, featuring the iconic 'Lush 3-1' and 'Lush 3-2', two seamlessly interwoven tracks that exemplify the Hartnoll brothers' knack for crafting emotionally resonant, rhythmically complex soundscapes. Reissued on 12" with striking new artwork by Intro, this edition includes heavyweight remixes by Underworld and CJ Bolland, whose reworks push the tracks deeper into the club stratosphere. Underworld brings a dense, propulsive momentum, while Bolland injects a sleek, hard-edged urgency. Yet it's Orbital's originals that remain the centerpiece. Those epic gliding arpeggios, layered synths and rolling percussion conjure both introspection and euphoria. A vital part of their Brown Album, Lush helped define the progressive techno movement, influencing generations of producers. Three decades on, the tracks still pulse with a timeless vibrancy.

Review: Soft Traffic is an alias for a well-known digi-dub producer who recently turned heads with an outing on Made Mecum. Now they land on the mighty Sushitech with a super limited, hand-stamped 12" featuring Prince Morella. It opens up with the silky smooth 'Meltem I', a liquid dub techno roller with chords rippling out to an infinite horizon as vocal muttering up top heighten the immersive trip. Part II is more icy and underwater, with rhythmic synth undulations and smooth-as-silk drum rotations locking you into a meditative state. Last of all is part III, an ambient sounds scape with subtly suggestive rhythms as you float in an underwater cavern. Classy stuff.

Review: Enshrining its 20th release with a reverent new one from STBR, 'Atelir' on Daydream murks our expectations, bringing a thrilling lowercase slosher to classic black wax. 'Lloyd' and 'Homer' hear two named characters hog the studio, as STBR seizes many an interstitial productive moment in which to vary and excite the mix, though not *too* much. 'Session', meanwhile, brings a parallactic view of the prior two moods, acids squelching and spurting between relatively driven beats, while a closing paroxysm, 'Tourtour', insists we climb back down from our cloud.

Review: Philadelphia producer and DJ Sweater makes a blistering debut on New York's BLKMARKET MUSIC with five cuts that blur the lines between breakbeat, tech-house and low-slung electro. It's a sound rooted as much in dusty record bins he works the counter at Impressions Philly as it is in the warehouse circuits that forged this connection back in 2021. 'The Answer' opens with choppy drums and cosmic static, before both versions of 'Twilight Zone' spin the same eerie motif into sleek machine funk ('Space Mix') and woozy stepper ('Broken Mix'). On the flip, 'Better Ask Somebody' dials up the groove with bumping mids and a ghosted vocal chop, while 'Contact In The Zone' sends things into sludgy, broken-rhythm hypnosis. A bold first outing that speaks in riddles but hits with intent.

Review: Given that he's been active as a producer since the dawn of the 90s, it would be fair to say that Sven Vath is well worthy of an authoritative, expansive retrospective. That's certainly what we get here on this quadruple-vinyl mix of classic productions and fresh, eye-catching remixes. It's the latter that dominate the early stages of the collection - see Adam Port's hypnotic, didgeridoo-sporting revision of 'Ritual of Life', Speedy J's acid-fired stomp through 'Ballet-Fusion' - before Vath showcases some of his choice cuts. There's naturally to set the pulse racing, from the twisted, sub-heavy thump of 'Cala Llonga' and the tactile hypnotism of 'Sounds That Control Your Life', to the electroclash-meets-Kraftwerk flex of 'Dein Schweiss' and the ambient techno excellence of 'The Day After', a 21- minute epic from 1995 produced alongside Steffen Britzke as Astral Pilot.