Juno Recommends Techno June 2021

Review: Trauma Collective mean business. Should you be in any doubt, just drop the needle on their third release and feel the wind blowing your hair back instantly. Following 12"s from ASC and Monrella, this latest payload comes from Kwartz, the Spanish producer also found lurking around Horo and other cutting edge labels. Hard as nails techno is the order of the day here, as Kwartz exorcises some industrial demons on the brilliantly clattering 'The Nature Of Our Anger'. 'Reinforced Control' is marginally more restrained, but only just. Meanwhile, Monrella returns to Trauma to remix 'Reinforced Control' with a deadly, swung groove that begs to be rocked in the club. 'Beneath The Surface' brings a total KO with a searing line in high-frequency texture and a rugged, relentless undercarriage of rhythm. What more could you ask for from a bruising beast of a techno record?

Review: Previously, we'd have known exactly what to expect from a brand-new Paranoid London release: TB-303 driven acid house jack-tracks. Annihilate The World and Start Again, their first EP of fresh material since 2019, bucks this trend, setting aside their beloved acid lines in favour of a more mixed-up selection of hardware-heavy workouts. Check first the droning, mind-mangling bass, hypnotic techno beats and creepy chords of the excellent title track, before admiring the breathless, psychedelic techno-jack of 'External In'. Warmer and dreamier fare is provided via melodious electro number 'The State of That', before Detroit veteran Paris Brightledge adds a wonderfully emotive, almost melancholic vocal to analogue deep house-meets-Motor City techno cut 'Linked In'.

Review: REPRESS ALERT!: EYA Records has a big one on its hands here as two big names in Innershades and Do or Die join forces for four searing cuts that draw on multiple genres. 'Digital Modulation' is a jacking cut with high speed synth lasers shooting over mechanical beats. 'Exit Level' is an acid laced, rave tinged techno banger for strobe lit warehouses and 'Function' then gets more mysterious, with an ethereal vocal sound and more acid all going deep. 'System Error' closes on a scintillating percussive energy and broken beat techno.

Review: Setaoc Mass' SK11_X offshoot calls upon the services of Brighton-based producer Rene Wise for its seventh outing. The producer is in a real purple patch right now after collaborating with Rodhad and landing on Luuk Slater's pivotal Mote Evolver imprint. He has a loopy, stripped back sound of pure techno brilliance that is all about precise drums, dubby flavours and deft design. There is some real static skating over the surface of 'Pleasure Note' to get us going while 'Swamp Dancer' sinks into underwater dub territory. 'Hollow' is a spooky and empty tunnel of deep techno bliss and 'Changa' closes with pulsing, bleeping intensity.

Review:  Mental Groove offshoot Music Pour La Danse knows a thing or two about tieless techno. And they don't come much more vital than the self titled 1994 debut album from Jonah Sharp (aka Spacetime Continuum) and David Moufang (aka Move D). It never quite got the props it deserved back then and has been an underrated gem ever since but this reissue should put paid to that. It is a holy meeting of lush ambient design, cavernous dub spaces, hints of glistening IDM melody and deeper than deep techno drums that leave you feeling cleansed inside and out.

Review: Techno terminator Levon Vincent never misses. He doesn't release often but when he does it always feels like an event. Here appearing on his pwn Novel Sound he opens with 'So Good', an intense track which layers up the steel plated synth stabs, vast, grainy hi hats and swooshing and swwobpgin synth sounds. It's a powerful track that will make for an intense dance floor experience. '4am Rush' is even better. It has futuristic synths searching a late night metropolis with distant sirens and crashing hits all making for a serene, uplifting vibe that will take you to a place of subtle euphoria.

Review: London based DJ and producer India Jordan is heavily tipped as one to watch this year and for good reason. Their sound is an all out assault on the dance floor that collides rave, techno, breaks and video game sound designs into high impact, high octane tunes unlike any other. 'Only Said Enough' is a throwback, high energy breakbeat monster, and 'You Can't Expect The Cars To Stop If You Haven't Pressed The Button' has the same sort of adrenal as you might have if you were indeed in a car heading towards a wall at a hundred miles an hour.

Review: A taster for Robert Hood's second Floorplan album, this EP puts a spotlight on the radical nature of his musical transformation. On "Music", the visceral rhythms of techno minimalism are gone; in their place is a rolling, tracky groove that boasts a repetitive vocal loop and which has shades of classic Relief /Derrick Carter. "Tell You No Lie" is even more impressive. It sees Hood use a gospel vocal over a stomping, funk guitar-sampling disco house workout. There is an audibly religious dimension to "Tell You No Lie," but Hood's knack for writing a great tune means that it sounds celebratory rather than self-indulgent or preachy.

Review: Main room techno innovators and long time festival headliners Extrawelt are new singings to the agency arm of Berlin club Watergate. They now serve up some of their maximalist analogue sounds on the label and go dark for the opener. 'Alpha & Oma' is all edgy and suspensory synths that wring out your senses. 'Email Auf Klinke' is dense drumming and industrial atmospheres and then things switch on closer 'Automatik Akrobatik.' The melodies here are lighter and brighter, the drums have more air in them too and the whole thing skips along breezily.

Review: You can always count on the mighty Drumcode stable for proper peak time techno tools, and it's no more Mr Nice Guy on this one - we can tell you that much. Industry heavyweight Dubfire of Sci+ Tec fame teaming here with rising Argentinian Flug on the austere warehouse techno banger 'Rubber' which will pummel you into submission via its seething acidic snarl, underpinned by steely rapid-fire rhythms. On the flip, prepare to lose yourself under the strobe light on the mentalist tunnel vision of 'Metanoia' where its powerful locomotive groove follows a hypnotic and droning lead - deep into the Sunday morning hours.

Review: Everyone's favourite house larrikin Mall Grab returns for the 20th edition of his esteemed Steel City Discs. The young Aussie serving up four killer tunes here, jam packed full of classic house tropes and euphoric positivity. Opening cut 'Room Full Of Rothko'' with its anthemic chord progression playing centre stage is sure to get those hands in the air when it gets played in the clubs. Peak time techno banger 'Nonstop Feeling' takes a darker turn, powered by its roaring Reese bassline and throwback trance motifs. The classic KMS sound seems to be a recurring theme here, as heard on B side cut 'III' existing in two epic parts.

Review: Gesloten Cirkel is a techno hero who can do no wrong. The good news is that as Ratsnake he is no less essential. This new record on the Place No Blame label is a "conscious, meditative presentation of single take recordings from recent years." As such it tells the tale of an artist in development, learning and mastering new techniques and styles that have been touched on in his other projects. While we're told by the pros text that the album "explores the confines between society and alchemy," that doesn't really matter once your jacking to the slithering acid workout of 'Haharsh_2' or trapped in a haunting hall of synth mirrors on 'Gwyn.'

Review: Boris Barksdale's Eternal Remorse originally saw the light of day on Portugese label Eye For An Eye as a digital release back in 2018, and now it's getting a vinyl pressing. A physical release feels appropriate for this pointedly dusty release, which leans in on synthwave influences to create a thoroughly dark and gnarly atmosphere. '5.0.5' steps out on a tough, dishevelled rhythm section, with seriously degraded synths falling apart behind the jackhammer drums. '7.0.8' takes the intensity up a notch, hitting with an industrial bite, while 'Sentier' channels even more of that Ministry-flavoured malaise with its disturbing yelps and screams. 'Sramota' has the hallmarks of a mid 80s bedroom beatdown from a blackened soul, 'Take Notes' delivers yet more pounding, percussive punishment, and 'Geezer' rounds things off with a bleak and troubled slab of EBM dragged from the underworld to stalk amongst all nightcrawlers and ne'er-do-wells.

Review: Nu rave sounds out of Amsterdam this week, courtesy of One Eye Witness on their inaugural release. Featuring Tunisian producer HearThuG, who has collaborated with artists as diverse as H.O.S.H., Stee Downes and Darlyn Vlys over the years - he contributes the euphoric breaks of "Alien, All Too Alien". Elsewhere, Jeku of the Finnish label Non-Temporal gets on his tunnel vision with the mental vibe of "Aftermath" and over on the flip the EPs highlight comes from Sohrab - who will elevate you to a higher state of consciousness on "Ataraxia". Cousin from Sydney, Australia also delivers some sublime coastal breaks on 'Surrender'.

Review: ** REPRESS ALERT ** Originally released back in 2017 on Demdike Stare's Distort Decay Sustain imprint, Shinchi Atobe's critically acclaimed opus still sounds as fresh as it did back then. We've all heard the story of how Sean Canty and Miles Whitaker tracked him down in Japan and convinced him to release some of his first music in 15 years, and it was certainly worth the wait. From the glassy-eyed and mesmerising deepness of 'Regret', to the greyscale dub techno experiments across both parts of 'First Plate' which hark back to his debut on Chain Reaction at the turn of the millennium. There are even moments of lush ambient texture as explored on tracks like 'The Test Of Machine' part 2 while 'Republic' is a more dancefloor ready cut yet, still very much loaded directly off the factory floor.

Review: A bleep techno classic from '91 for all the proper heads out there. Nexus 21 was composed of legends Mark Archer & Mark Peat aka Altern8, and they had several releases under the project name between 1989 - 1997 - mainly on Birimingham's Network Records. Detroit's influence was abundant on the EP, from the deeply emotive hi-tech soul of 'Self Hypnosis' and 'Mind Machines', and of course The Motor City legend himself Carl Craig appearing for an absolutely incredible rework of 'Still Life' on the flip. This one captures the true zeitgeist of early techno, complete with Kevin Saunderson style chord stabs to boot - a must have!

Review: Following on from last year's impressive Redlight debut, Scott Hess is back on his Adeen label with another selection of warm and inventive house cuts splashed with colour and analogue wobbles precision-engineered to catch your ear. Lead track 'Sirius City' leans on a harmonically rich lead line and plenty of off-kilter wriggles to appeal to those who want some cheekiness in their tunes. 'UFO' sports a tasteful acid tweak running in between plush pads and snappy drums, while 'Call Me, Acid' plays around with telephone tropes to make a bleepy jam that will have the ID requests flying in. 'Stars' offers something sweeter to complete the set, spacing out the beats to leave the synths plenty of room to cavort around a celestial name-checking session for deep house dreamers.

Review: DJ Sotofett is a cult hero with a sound that is never less than eccentric. This new album Braindance on Sued is a collection of material the mercurial one has written between 2002 and 2020. All of the tracks are short but high impact in different ways and despite some of them being the best part of 20 years old and pre-dating all the famous Sex Tags projects they still bang. Thrilling breaks, icy techno, mashed up jungle and deeper, more acid laced late night grooves all feature and offer a window into the mind of one of electronica's most vital talents.

Review: Voltage is the in-house label of the electronic music festival of the same name in Zwevegem (Belgium) which is now into its fifth vinyl release. The highest profile artist featured on the Alternating Current various artists EP is of course Spanish veteran Reeko, who gets straight down to business on the hypnotic tunnel vision of 'I've Seen A Civilisation" which is yet another fine example of the Asturian techno sound. The other artists featured on here are relative newcomers, such as Brussels-based Altibas on the greyscale dub techno dynamics of 'Anaphora', as well as Greek DJ/producer Cirkle with a droned-out and cerebral power groove titled 'Under Their Eyes' - nailing that classic Prologue sound of old.

Review: Definitely one of the standout releases this week, we have a new one by the always excellent Detroit techno legend John Beltran, who inaugurates the Eufonic label out of Romania. Founded in Timisoara, it started from the desire to offer electronic music lovers the quality they need to really enjoy their favourite tracks. It's classic Beltran all the way throughout The Cycles EP, with A side cut 'Energy Cycle' entrancing the listener with its rich tapestry of chiming melodies unpinned by a backdrop of broken beats. Over on the flip Beltran gets deeper, with the emotive dancefloor drama of 'The Sun Also Rises' and closing it out with some proper hi-tech soul on the sublime 'Going Uphill Fast' - which is reminiscent of his Ten Days Of Blue era.

Review: During the 1990s, techno talent Being put out some essential records on the late great andrew Weatherall's Special Emissions label. He also produced for Lord Sabre on works as Two Lone Swordsmen with Keith 'Radioactive Man' Tenniswood and collaborated with Claude Young, so his credentials are unquestionable. Here he distils all that into a moody techno record with machines that brim with soul, rhythm that are full of invention and warm, cavernous grooves as good for home listening sessions as they are club workouts. 'Space Again' is an epic Detroit cut, 'The Akward' is ace new age business and frankly the whole thing needs your attention.