Electro Recommendations November 2014

Review: Following the series of Drexciya retrospectives on Clone, Tresor has dug their own sizable archives to revisit some of the work James Stinson and Gerald Donald committed to the Berlin institution in their time working together. Having already reissued the Drexciya LP Return To Neptunes Lair, Tresor now present a reissue of The Opening Of The Cerebral Gate, the 2001 LP from the late James Stinson's Transllusion project. Initially released on Tresor offshoot Supremat, this new triple LP edition from the label includes three cuts that were not present on the original vinyl version. Given how much og copies command on the second hand market, Drexciya fans without a copy should consider this an essential purchase!

Review: Even if you weren't aware of his affiliation with the long running Bleep43 collective, a brief glance at the Plant43 discography of producer Emile Facey would suggest heavy involvement in underground electro. Frustrated Funk, Semantica, Central Processing Unit and AI Records are all labels Facey's work has surfaced on and it's great to see him add the blossoming Shipwrec operation to this list with his first Plant 43 LP in some four years. Programmed to be equally suited to home listening or club play, Scars of Intransigence feels like a classic LP in the making with eight tracks of deep, rippling electro that haunt and excite in equal measures. Spend more time with the album and the undercurrent of dystopian despair does begin to seep through as Facey uses his machines to translate his dissatisfaction at ill-run governments and greedy corporations with little regard for how misused and abused Earth is becoming.

Review: We've lost count of the various projects Robert Witschakowski has been involved in this year, but the Some Other Places series of releases on Clone's West Coast Series is up there with the German's best work as The Exaltics. This hand-stamped purple 12" is the third and final part and contains some fine electro for both the dancefloor and the living room. Opening this five-track release is the snare shaking and in your face ambient intro of "Getting Closer" which is followed by a melodic and grouchy key driven "Never Be Enough". The EP's highlights are "Can You See It" and "SL-W D-WN", which respectively are dubby and mellow and dusty and break beat. Seriously, does Witschakowski sleep?

Review: If you haven't heard of Nu Era, both the artist name and the title of this new EP would suggest a synthy, possibly modular affair with little structure or seductive beats. In reality, Nu Era is Marc Mac's techno project, and it was last year's "The Third Adam" which caught our attention onto his style of beat-making. This new gatefold 7" with CD contains an incorrigibly diverse set of club sounds for the more daring of DJ's. From house to techno and broken beat, Mac certainly knows how to set a part on fire. Our picks from here are the instantly alluring groove of "Changing Form", the jazzy breaks of "Oscar Styles", and drum machine deviation that is "Finding Time". Top notch!

Review: These tracks are simple experiments using the TR808 triggers with the Dot Com Modular, SH101, Oberheim Xpander, Roland System 100/101, Jupiter 6 Europa, Pro One and other vintage synths. All tracks recorded at real time. This EP include two versions of the main track Titan's Cycle composed by Heinrich Mueller aka Gerald Donald, Arpanet, Dopplereffekt...

Review: Alongside Irish producer DeFeKT, the somewhat mysterious Jeremiah R. is steadily earning a reputation for putting out quality electro, so much so DVS1 closed a recent Panorama Bar set with "Illuminated Process" from the producer's last release on Enklav. Having first surfaced on London label Organic Analogue, Jeremiah R now boosts his profile further with a seven-track mini-album on the supreme Tabernacle operation which shines further light on his Drexciyan inspirations. It's not all deranged synths and brittle snares shots though, with tracks "Far Sight" and "Twin Paradox" suiting the Tabernacle mould of jacking, Chicago-themed house music. As for the rest: quality stuff.

Review: This being only the second Sequencias release of the year does confirm the NYC techno outpost has been somewhat quieter than usual, but their commitment to working with quality artists remains undimmed. Dcantu is of course Nation and Creme regular D'Marc Cantu, and the Ann Arbor native is no stranger to Sequencias having featured twice on the label before. Some Kind Of Strange is however Cantu's first full 12" for the label and granted the space, the artist has elected to lay down a pleasing range of sounds across the three tracks. The title track is Cantu weaving a spell of high octane cosmic techno from his vast array of machinery, whilst "A Space Age Function" dips into the same sort of star gazing rave Legowelt has been focussing on of late. A complete switch in mood is offered on final track "September", a sprawling beatless production that could easily be mistaken for Carpenter and Howarth in their pomp.

Review: The secretive Bedouin label may only be three (left of field) records old but it's making a name for releasing a mean assortment of threatening electronic music. This time they call upon Elektronik Religion label founder Dez Williams to provide some dirty, 808 thumping electro. "Acid Bath" as you can imagine gurgles with a seething 303 bassline and trademark snapping snares, while "Silvaphish" is melodic, slightly eastern in tonality, and once again 303 driven. The remixes here are well curated with Dutch producer Ekman turning in some more of his usual deranged acid and sewer techno for a remix of "Acid Bath" while an always beat down Bintus adds gabba-esque kick drums to his remake of "Silvaphish".

Review: In the canon of certified party starters, few tracks deserve their place as much as "Set It Off" by Strafe does. Mixed by disco legend Walter Gibbons, "Set It Off" was hugely ahead of it's time when originally released back in 1984 and it still goes off today when the more considered selectors drop it in their sets. US label Hard Soul has form with the track and Strafe in general, enlisting the likes of Jovonn to remix it for a 12" release a few years back and this dinky 7" edition of "Set It Off" is a must for anyone that doesn't yet own the cut in their collection.

Review: Surfacing earlier this year with two 12"s on Planet E, the anonymous Korrupt Data now deliver a debut album for Carl Craig's label. Korrupt Data's music straddles the divide between Kraftwerk and Model 500 without the crazy frenetics of Drexciyan electro. Said to be made with 'old kit' this 11-track album is spread across two discs and it's very much geared for the dancefloor and sounding distinctly Detroit. Highlights include the vocoder electro space pop of "Inter Arrival", the glitchy tones and rigid beats of "Photons, Protons, Microns, Mutrons" and the emotional techno acid of "Memory Loss".

Review: The name Roger Semsroth will be eminently familiar to fans of monotonal, bleep laden techno thanks to his canon of material as Sleeparchive for his own label, Tresor, Repitch and more. Prior to becoming the staple of Berlin techno he now is, Semsroth was creating child like melodies and toy tones as Skanfrom, a project which now returns to Jason Amm's Suction Records for the first time in 12 years. Combine themes tunes and motifs from the original Zelda video game with the sounds of older Rephlex and Skam Records and you are somewhere close to understanding what Postcards, this new Skanfrom album, sounds like.