Dmitry Distant

Review: Electronic Leatherette continue their trips into the ethereal and seductive world of minimal wave with this new single from label founders Dmitry Distant and Arnaud Lazlaud. "De Ton Absence" is an artfully sculpted synth ballad bathed in reverb and Lazlaud's dreamy vocals - the end result is something both yearning and sinister, like the best minimal wave should be. On the flip, the balladry gets a shot of pure adrenaline as Timothy J Fairplay creates a taut, feisty electro belter out of the raw ingredients for a remix that should find favour with more uptempo dancefloors.

Review: Helena Hauff's label is back, this time presenting a various artists 12" that heralds the start of the No Return series. The release starts on a mystical bent with the Eastern-tinged death electro of "El Carmel", sounding ripe for a Hague-friendly warm-up session. Neud Photo then take over with a dystopian trip through rich synth tones coloured in dark hues for the bleakest of robotic fantasies. Antoni Maiovvi fills the B-side with the slow grinding bombast of "The Dig", bleeding out a noirish take on coldwave for the darkest hearts to swoon to.

Review: You'll find a mixture of established and up-and-coming producers on this multi-artist EP from fast-rising Spanish label Waste Editions. Fittingly it's the most established "name producer", Volta Cab, who gets things going via "Politics Of Saturday Night", a bubbly and forthright club cut that wraps post-punk guitar lines and bright-eyed motifs around sweaty machine beats and a druggy arpeggio-style bassline. Arguably even better though is Gravedad Cinetica's "Cliche", a sparse electro cut powered by sweaty drum machine beats, undulating synthesizer lines and a Giorgio Moroder style bassline. Elsewhere, Anbau's "Radioactiva" sounds like Kraftwerk going for a night out in an Italian open air club circa 1983, while Dmitry Distant's "Tur" is a doom-laden darkwave throb-job.

Review: Snuff Trax sub-label In The Dark Again is, by all accounts, up to their tricks... again! This time, however, they've managed to pull together a few new artists to their roster, Latvian underground sensation Igors Vorobjovs and Bass Agenda's Dmitry Distant. Igor opens the A-side with the grainy, distorted quasi-electro of "Reloading", followed by the comparatively cleaner and more suave bumps of "Broken Synthesizer". Distant's "Deviation" is a breath of fresh air by comparison, coming through with a much cooler strain of deep-minded electro, before Vorobjovs tears down the house once more with "The Future Was Here" and "Free Your Mind"; "Multiple Allelism" by Dmitry Distant makes for the perfect closing tune thanks to a starry landscape of synths and aqueous beats.