ROMAN FLUGEL Vinyl & CDs

Review: Techno-titanic title-holder Roman Flugel needs no introduction. On his latest vinyl EP, 'No Solutions', the artist returns to Erol Alkan's Phantasy Sound with his second release of 2024, keeping the hype afloat with just three short rain-makings in the vein of glistening, retro trance and house - contrasting to some of his earlier, more percussive outings released round the turn of this decade. This time, Flugel plugs the sensibility of 80s dance music and pop production into a more kick-implantable, danceable dream, bridging gaps between retro and modern dancefloors. 'No Solutions', 'Sapphire' and 'Dragged' each plod through finessed synth flicks, torrential Moog mambos, and dizzily detuned decontractions, all of which portray a blued, armoured alternate vision of an eighties that never crossed the threshold of the next decade, continuing frozen in time while we nonetheless bowled towards the oncoming singularity.

Review: Roman Flugel is back with his seventh full length titled Eating Darkness. The nine tracks were created during the coronavirus lockdown of 2020, and are testament to the Frankfurt legend's penchant for mixing elements of pop with sounds of the underground - a scene he has been affiliated with since the early '90s. A variety of moods and grooves are all delivered in his idiosyncratic style: from the woozy and broken slow burner 'Chemicals', to the majestic and spellbinding dancefloor drama of 'Wow' or the raw hardware acid jack of 'Jocks And Freaks' which harks to his days as Alter Ego. Elsewhere, there's the heartfelt and bittersweet ambient house of 'Cluttered Homes' and the downbeat bliss of closing epic 'Charles'.