Back catalogue: Techno

Review: Way beyond its New Beat roots, Boccaccio was one of Europe's most influential clubs and known for operating at the cutting edge of house, techno, acid and beyond, and for shaping a distinct sound that defined Sundays in rural Destelbergen. Curated by Olivier Pieters and Stefaan Vandenberghe, Boccaccio Life 1987-1993, released by Belgian label Music Man Records, captures the raw energy of a scene ahead of its time. Four VA Eps from it bring the tracks to wax and this one has four seminal US artists at their most visceral and impactful.

Review: Javier Marimon returns with a set of amb-immersers shaped by architecture, memory, and the shifting continguities of sound and physical space. Made during his time in Saigon in 2018, the tracks lean into absence, with subtle, bass-free constructions predominating over a musical space that exists to be inhabited. A further remix from Vand , meanwhile, reinterprets the original material through a thinner lens, offering a contrasting perspective without overwhelming the source. A quiet but affecting punctuation mark in an already rather grand artistic discography.

Review: Recorded live on September 10, 1993, for BBC Radio 1, this set strips back the studio polish in favour of raw, surging energy, breathing new life into core tracks from their Brown Album era. Their explosive 1993 John Peel session was a broadcast that captured the UK rave pioneers at their most visceral and unfiltered. The versions of 'Lush 3-1', 'Walk Now...' and 'Semi Detached' found here are looser, leaner and more urgent. 'Lush' in particular throbs with a relentless momentum, shedding its original texture in favor of a tougher, more improvised drive. It's a perfect showcase of Orbital's gift for live manipulation, transforming structured studio pieces into kinetic, spontaneous soundscapes. This reissue boasts newly commissioned artwork by Intro and aligns with the legacy of the Peel Sessions as a proving ground for boundary-pushing talent. Critics and longtime fans have praised the EP for its intensity and fluidity, supporting Orbital's status as live innovators. Radio Sessions is a nostalgic artifact and a reminder of how thrilling and forward-thinking Orbital's sound was.

Review: Belgian label Music Man Records continues its deep dive into local club history with a standout 12" drawn from a wider retrospective on Destelbergen's legendary Boccaccio club. This release centres on the early house and techno that defined its Sundays-an alternative narrative to the better-known New Beat story. The A-side opens with Steve Poindexter's 'Computer Madness', all skeletal drum patterns and jacking minimalism, before UK crew Age Of Chance explode with 'Time's Up (Timeless)', a proto-rave anthem remixed into cut-and-paste chaos. On the flip, LFO's self-titled 'Leeds Warehouse Mix' drops like a techno blueprint-bleep-heavy, bold, and unmistakably northern. Closing the set is Alice D In Wonderland's 'Time Problem (Techno Speed Work)', a hyper, squiggly take on acid techno that feels like a high-speed trip through late-80s futurism. With selections curated by Olivier Pieters and Stefaan Vandenberghe, this 12" captures the rawness, friction, and thrill of a scene that still resonates across Europe's underground.

Review: Belgian label Music Man Records has assembled Boccaccio Life 1987-1993, a 40-track compilation honouring the legendary Destelbergen club that helped shape Europe's electronic underground. Far more than just the birthplace of New Beat, Boccaccio championed raw, futuristic house and techno long before the genres went mainstream. Curated by resident DJ Olivier Pieters and regular Stefaan Vandenberghe, the collection features classy cuts that are also being served up on a series of VA EPs. This one hits hard with jams from QX-1, Fred Brown, Mr. Fingers and Laurent X all going dark, deep and moody.

Review: Boccaccio was one of Europe's most influential clubs back in the late 80s and early 90s. Based in rural Destelbergen, it was a place where new beat, acid, techno and house all collided, and Boccaccio Life 1987-1993 is a deep dive into the electrifying soundscapes of the time. It comes on Music Man Records and is a 40-track compilation that reclaims Boccaccio's legacy beyond the overly reductive new beat tag. Resident Olivier Pieters and club regular Stefaan Vandenberghe are behind it, and have split the full selection into four vinyl parts. Bobby Konders's 'Let There Be House' is the killer here, but all four cuts are deliciously dark and heads down club tackle from a golden era.

Review: Alien D is the NYC-based producer Daniel Creahan, and he's back with a debut on Theory Therapy that taps into widescreen worlds of techno immersion. Departing from the ambient abstraction of his previous work, this album as a subtle kinetic pulse with tracks like 'Soil Dub' and 'Sleepy's Gambit' propel listeners forward with dubwise rhythms crafted for deep dancefloors. The album builds on an infectious, steady groove with repeating phrases and subtle shifts that keep the music in constant motion. Conceived in the first days after the COVID lockdown, these sounds exude a hopeful quality and capture the transcendent moments of early-morning parties when the moment is full of unbridled hope for what might come.

Review: Richard Fearless, London-based DJ and producer, returns with a daring reinvention of his electronic vision, delivering an unpolished, analogue-driven techno masterpiece. Stripping away any semblance of commercial sheen, he dives headfirst into a world of disintegration and overload, where every track feels like it's teetering on the edge of collapse. Drawing on his deep affinity for the rough textures of underground techno, the work channels influences ranging from the industrial growl of Ramleh to the acidic pulse of TM404, with moments that recall the claustrophobic minimalism of Mika Vainio and the haunting drones of Loop. Fearless is unafraid of pushing boundaries, his machinesifed by years of use and a tangled web of circuitryiemitting strange, almost sentient sounds, as if alive in their own right. What emerges is an album that doesn't simply reflect the artist's influences, but speaks with a distinct, personal voice. Tracks like 'While My Machines Gently Weep' and 'Death Mask' bear the hallamrks of live takes and dub-inspired mixing, creating a haunting, almost otherworldly quality, the machine noise blending with echoes of the past. Fearless has long been obsessed with dub and here, he allows its principles to guide him, distilling decades of musical history into something that feels deeply present. A vivid portrait of an artist grappling with his own sonic ghosts and the fractured landscape of modern dance music, it's quite the spectacular.

Review: E-bony's Digital Dawn album is about "defining his identity as an artist" and it comes through INDUSTRIAS MEKANIKAS. This 12-tracker welds together electro and techno with plenty of personal sound perspective and dark textures that keep it decidedly underground. Collaborating with Noamm on four tracks, their creative synergy adds depth and elevates the record's complexity with the likes of 'Matrix Kod' getting gritty and eerie, 'Aurora Noir' bringing snappy kicks and coruscated acid lines and 'Data Delight' fizzing with pixelated synth sugariness.

Review: Legendary video game soundtrack-er Motorhiro Kawashima is best known for his efforts on the iconic Streets of Rage 2 and 3 titles. The latter is remembered as one of the hardest to define scores of all time, certainly in terms of a playable titles, and even 30 years on still amazes and baffles anyone who encounters it. Less well known are the artist's solo and standalone efforts, which came much later. Acrobatizm and Prepared Wave were the first two of those records, and emerged in the pre-pandemic late-noughties. Both draw heavily on the glitch and leftfield experimental techno worlds, which were in rude health at the time, doubling down on staccato rhythms and mind-blowing arpeggiation, with the punchiness and jerky vibes more than nod to the glory days of 8-bit gaming.

Review: Cape Town ambient producer Jason van Wyk pares his sound down to its barest, most expressive elements, doing sound justice to the name Inherent (though he's always interested in ideas of transparency and simplicity, with the similarly themed Opacity dropping on Home Normal in 2017). He now leans into stillness in motion, folding ghost-traced piano lines and gauzy drones into long, slow exhalations, where just when things threaten to dissolve entirely, he rejigs the frame. Brittle guitars now creak in, synth arps flicker like faulty neon, rhythms emerge with princely precision. It's not a departure so much as a consolidation, as van Wyk revisits old tools with rewed restraint, preferring unembellished ambiences. Like the innate returns of close reading, we're invited to closely listen here, since glints of detail glister just below the surface.

Review: Norm Talley has put together a second volume of his Unity series on his own label Upstairs Asylum. It features his nearest and dearest from Chicago and Detroit, all of whom of course serve up perfectly smoky and stripped back deep house and techno grooves to make you move. Delano Smith's characteristic loops lock you in from the off on 'Big City Nights,' Norm himself pairs dub techno chords with suggestive techno stabs that keep you on edge and Brian Kage's 'Poly-Phonic Phonk' is heady, dreamy, richly melodic house bets listened to in a cosy back room at 4am.