Back catalogue: Techno (All)

Review: Past Inside The Present welcomes back accomplished and prolific ambient master zake, this time alongside Oss and Fax who released the original featured track, 'Polymorph' on Module. Here it gets revisited by a top contemporary team after the hazy and absorbing extended mix kicks things off. ASC then goes dark with his mood rework and Zake himself remixes with a more optimistic sense of crepuscular synth lushness. Aural Imbalance layers in some fizzing and malfunctioning electronic sounds, Ossa suspends you amongst his heavenly rays and Influx brings gently broken beats. Fax shuts down this varied offering with a more edgy ambient sound.

Review: .While he's contributed to the label's output before, Vayu The God of Wind marks the first time ADILR (real name Hampus Johan Karlsson Andersson) has served-up a full-length excursion. Given that his brand of deep and dubby techno is arguably tailor-made for the album format - it's all about immersive sound design, slowly shifting electronic motifs, and grooves so deep and hushed that they're practically subterranean - this is something of a surprise. There's no doubt he's delivered, though, serving up a set of largely elongated workouts that sit somewhere between the outer-space explorations of Echospace, the icy soundscapes of fellow Scandinavian producer Biosphere, and the deep techno work of his Greyscale label boss Grad_U.

Review: After four appearances on Lithuania's Greyscale, Ajnkana delivers his first long player Integers Equations, with more than an hour of "tangibly eerie, atmospheric chords", ambience but not ambient-edged beats and dubby effects either destined for play on deeper dancefloors or comedown soundtracking post-party living room sessions. The titles may be blank as anything, all binary and consisting of 1s and 0s in slightly different orders, but the instrumental, slowly-enveloping tracks have plenty of personality. Fans of Sahko, Chain Reaction and Ilian Tape's more esoteric offerings will love it.

Review: Back in 2002, the Detroit Electronic Musical Festival concluded with something rather special: a rare live performance from the Aux Men - an expanded and upgraded version of legendary Motor City electro outfit Aux88. This must-have CD presents that performance, complete with the original introduction from Eddie Fowlkes and DJ Bone, from start to finish. Full of spacey synth sounds, heavy beats, weighty bass, it's effectively a whirlwind trip through the history of both electro and Detroit's contribution to electronic music history. Thus, we get killer versions of 'Planet Rock', 'Shari-Vari', YMO's 'Computer Games', tons of Kraftwerk classics, a breathtaking interpretation of Art of Noise's 'Moments in Love' and rip-roaring takes on foundational tunes by Cybotron and Funkadelic..

Review: By his own admission, Daniel Avery's previous albums have been inspired by escapism and a desire to avoid focusing on the growing darkness of the world outside his studio. On Ultra Truth, he's flipped the switch, "directly looking into the darkness, not running away". That doesn't mean that he's left the dancefloor; far from it, in fact. While some of the aural textures, chords and melodies tend towards the melancholic, moody and overwhelming, they still feature club-ready rhythms or beats that tend towards the bold. Basically, it's heavy and dense, but sonically attractive enough to work outside of nightclub environments, with the contributions of various friends and contemporaries (HAAi, Kelly Lee Owens and Sherelle included) only enhancing the album. For proof, check out ultra-deep D&B roller 'Higher', the sparse and spooky electro shuffle of 'Chaos Energy', and the intergalactic breakbeat hustle of 'Wall of Energy'.

Review: LILA has got five or six albums of artful ambient dropping all in quick succession and this is a third from Ludvig Cimbrelius, who has dropped one under his Eternell alias, one as Abraco de Vapor, and one under this, his oldest moniker, Purl. He also works as Illuvia and with all his projects he has mastered the art of sonic daydreaming and musical journeying. Ancient Skies is a record packed with a more intense, textural, heavy style of ambient that builds tensions and in some places has subtle implied rhythms. It makes for an involving listen that is much more than simple background music.