Juno Recommends Techno: July 2023

Review: Titanic French techno talent and famously nice bulk Laurent Garnier has announced recently that he will be stepping away from touring quite as much as he currently does in the future. He softened that blow, though, with news of his new album 33 Tours Et Puis S'en Vont', via his COD3 QR label. It is his first solo long player in some eight years and finds him firmly focused on the dancefloor. His fizzing, synth-heavy techno style dominates, but there are plenty of lush vocal cuts, influences from hip-hop and broken beat, with even a drum & bass experiment appearing in the form of 'Sado Miso'. A fine return for this true legend.

Review: Multidisciplinary artist Seth Horvitz aka Rrose returns to their own EAUX label here with a new album, Please Touch, which comes after their Lotus Eater collaboration with Lucy and a number of influential EPs on the likes of Sandwell District and Stroboscopic Artefacts over the years. These potent, stripped back and synth-laden techno cuts explore new vistas while building on what has come before. Rose has studied with West Coast avant-garde trailblazers at Mills College and feeds their sounds through "elaborate webs of interrelated audio processing" which means a change in every element of the music has a knock-on effect on all the others. It means this is music in constant mutation.

Review: Long before Karen was a universally accepted epithet for entitled middle-class white woman, there was Karenn, an uncompromising techno duo who do artful things with menacing noise. Pariah and Blawan have been on and off making music together since first launching this project in 2011 but whenever they do, it's worth hearing. This one on Voam is another case in point: 'Feeling Horizontal' is a monstrous and ghoulish stomper with twisted vocal darkness, while 'Happy Birthday' is a more lithe and bouncy cut with rubbing low ends and zippy synth texture. 'From Hunk To Husk' carries on the brutalist approach with more intense voices, bass and drums, and 'When Lutes Were A Thing' is a brain-bogging mix of sludgy sounds, spangled percussion and metallic surfaces.

Review: Detroit-based Code Industry, for those who know, were a highly regarded and influential EBM-techno outfit. The always reliable Dark Entries has been digging in their vaults to serve up this vital reissue of their Structure EP. The quartet of Rob Myers, E.N. Sevy, Kyl Crys, and William Keith formed in 1989 having previously worked as Code Assault and were rare black artists working in the world of EBM and industrial. They were socially and politically minded so issues of racism, the media, and the hypocrisy of patriotism all comes up in their music which is denied by taught synths and dark vocal whispers that echo the work of acts like Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb. Add in high tech grooves and you have s fantastic EP that was originally released in 1991 on the Antler-Subway label.

Review: James Pennington remains one of the cult veterans of Detroit's techno legacy, right there at the beginning and wholly revered by those across his work. Even if he still exists a little on the fringes compared to some of his peers, releases like this remind you how respected he is, and for good reason. 'Winds Of Fear' just hits that balance between the true, deep-rooted, classic kind of techno and the otherness which makes the best of the genre memorable instead of forgettable. The trombone-like synth line forming the melodic bedrock of the track is just not something you hear often in techno, but it sounds powerful especially on top of the rough, urgent slap of the Suburban Knight drums. As if the original wasn't enough, we get Robert Hood going in on the track with a tight but funky as hell edit and a dusty beatdown version from Eddie Fowlkes. Legends, assemble!

Review: Fresh, cruddy electro dreamatics from mysterious production outfit Lazer Worshippers here, joining the Atmosphere label to stake their claim to their very own 'theme'. A name like Lazer Worshippers gives off vibes of a apparent machine cult with a penchant for building sonic monuments to our AI-mech overlords. The music is similarly vaunting and numinous, with its synthetic choirs and trilling arps dancing between the left and rights like heavenly visions of a mechanized future. B-siders 'On A Rise' and 'Free Flight' are just as teary-eyed, yet bleepy, recalling the entrancing, oldskool breaksy trance work of Spooky or Digital Justice.

Review: Vinicius Honorio, Brazilian techno producer and master atmospherics harnesser, comes through with his latest 'Sem Rumo'. Kicking off a new direction for the once-again-sure-to-dazzle label Blueprint - not least the one founded by James Ruskin and Richard Polson in 1996 - the EP contains four original bits: 'Sem Rumo', 'Reiki', 'Uruk' and 'Visions'. All plod forward with the weight and urgency of a stone giant, whose might is made ever more concrete by the integration of alien technology.

Review: Italian imprint Clut Communications has never been particularly prolific, often going 12 months or more between releases, but the label's output is always on-point and worth checking. Their first outing of 2023 is a double-header, featuring two tracks apiece from acid/bleep/breakbeat revivalist DAWL and industrial and EBM-influenced techno star Stigma. The latter handles side A, first joining the dots between his moody productions, EBM and Brown Album-era Orbital on 'I Will Make You Understand', before wrapping creepy, post synth-pop riffs and moody chords around a hybrid electro/EBM beat on 'Linearsynthwave'. DAWL once again offers up decidedly nostalgic cuts, with the house-tempo, lightly new beat-influenced 'Intence Perception' [sic] being followed by the rave-igniting bass, breaks and synth stabs of 'Riding High'.

Review: Vapour trails, light trails, sword line tracers, whatever you want to call them... techno maestro Border One lays down an impressive sonic evocation of this visual phenomena on the eponymous EP for Token here. Likening the experience of optical trailing - perhaps the kind you see when tripping on psychs - to chirrupy yet industrial techno moods, tracks like 'Transmute' and 'Radiant' are befitting for just about any smoked-out interzone or squatted-factory rave.

Review: Well Street serves up lush broken beats on this new 12" with an insert and sticker included alongside the serious grooves. They come from Cousin who kicks off with the lurching, bass infused rhythms of '88'. 'Ante' then pairs edgy synth work and aqueous droplets with busted synth loops to make for something truly fresh. 'Otta' is a lush suspensory tune that floats you on ambient pads with minimal elastic rhythms. 'Fifth Wall' sits down with more misty ambient and mysterious atmospheres that float through space.

Review: Dance Music From Planet Earth is a new sub-label from Ransom Note that kicks off with a heritage compilation, Dream The Dream. It looks back in great detail at UK Techno, House and Breakbeat 1990-1994 with Richard Sen as the man in control. He was a DJ back in those days, playing the most epic raves around Europe and taking some of the photos which now form the artwork for this collection. His obsessive record collecting from those days is reflected here across a series of sometimes obscure but always brilliant UK tunes for the worlds of ambient, techno, tribal house, breakbeat and early trance.

Review: Of all the many projects tangled up in the late Pete Namlook's mercurial Fax +49 label, his enduring collaborations with Move D were surely some of the finest. Given they managed to commit to over 20 CDs in that time, it's no wonder many have struggled to get to grips with the sheer volume of material on offer. Luckily Away Records are manning a reissue operation which looks through these vast volumes and offers up some of the finest cuts. They last did this back in 2019 and now they're back from round two, picking the low-slung sci-fi electro funk of 'Silk Route' and the dubby ambient house mastery of 'Sleeplearnin' from 2008 and 2006 respectively as the abundant gifts to spoil our ears with.

Review: LDS takes no prisoners on this blistering new techno workout for Exos' Planet X & X/OZ labels. Opener 'Karplusfunk' is a 100-mile-an-hour assault with caustic hit hats over clipped, kinetic drums. Manic synth lines ride up and down and the energy levels are off the chart. 'Mvoper FM' is slightly paired back but is still warp-speed icy techno to take dance floors on a white knuckle ride through the cosmos. The Exos remix of 'LD5' has snares that sound like sheet metal blowing in the wind while solar clouds peel off the groove. The flip side offers two more cuts of head-melting techno experimentalism.

Review: Funk Assault is the duo of Chlar and Alarico and they make their debut here at the same time as inaugurating the brand new Primal Instinct Rec label with music that they say perfectly embodies its sonic vision going forwards. Their take on techno is a synth-heavy one with dynamic designs and slamming drums overlaid with some quirky hooks. The pace is irresistibly high on opener 'Signing Your Own Post' while 'Screenshots Of Compliments' is a more textured and elastic techno groove. 'I Am A DJ Too' is another one in a hurry with linear drums and twitchy synth details. 'Pre-Gig Selfie' closes down an EP full of superb track titles with some excellent drum funk.

Review: Trusty techno talent Function keeps it relatively deep on this new EP for the Infrastructure label. It kicks off with the backlit glow and delicate techno hypnosis of 'Invitation' with its funky broken drums and mournful pads, while 'New Designation' is moody ambient from a space mission far off in the future. 'Aeternum Meridian' rides on an electro-tinged rhythm with more sustained chords bringing a sense of finality and melancholy and then 'Desire & Memory Live Extraction' brings a more dystopian sound with thunderous claps and wiry synths. A well-crafted EP with lots to offer.

Review: An extremely impressive exercise in minimalism, Segue's latest EP 'Harbour Cove Dubs' sounds much like the scene implied in its title; that of a secluded cove found in an already remote harbour, and the sounds that might reflect off the rocky walls found within. The Canadian producer is evidently an adept at the dub techno craft, and do actually draw on a sense of place, representing his recent visits to a small island near Vancouver, Bowen Island. Field recordings and an impassioned warmth cut across the EP's ultra-deep basslines, from the opening 'Inner Strength Dub' to the chord-swirly 'Constellations Dub'.

Review: Dub techno don Steve O'Sullivan's Mosaic label is back with a new dubs series and vol 1 kicks things off with a real doozy on lovely red wax. The boss himself offers up a Bluetrain special edition dub of Hidden Sequence's 'Synapse' which is all icy lines and liquid rhythms which make you think of some frozen lake on a misty morning. Sub Basics (Temple of Sound, Lion Charge Records) opens up with a fresh dub laden track with rippling chords, tons of echo and rolling drums on 'Quarters.' Both are timeless dub outings, as you would expect from this label.

Review: Germany's WSNWG offers up the second chapter of its techno story from revered auteurs Ignez and Rodhad. The sound designs in these tracks are next level as the mighty duo waste no time in drawing you deep into their darkened world with 'Verdurous 01 [220207.2]', a streamlined sound but one with punch bottom ends and eerie pads. The tension ramps up with 'Verdurous 02 [221130.1]', a hefty banger laced up with trippy electronics, and then 'Verdurous 03 [220209.2]' is a potent blend of shadowy spoken words and detuned synth madness. 'Verdurous 04 [220208.3]' closes out with loopy drum breaks and wet clasp echoing out into a dystopian world of modular synth magic.

Review: Long-serving rave revivalist The Jaffa Kid (real name Daniel Pringle) is scarily prolific. He's seemingly able to conjure up acid-fired breakbeat and techno bangers seemingly at will. Here he returns to the mighty 030303 imprint with a speedy sequel to his 2020 mini-album Polysynthesis. He begins with a chunk of trance-inducing, spacey techno excellence - the gorgeous, ethereal and life-affirming hypnotism of 'Amazon' - before doffing a cap to classic 1990s IDM on 'Drum Mode'. 'In The Morning' sounds like a melodic techno head's take on Deep Dish classic 'Stay Gold' (that's a good thing, by the way), 'Etafe' is a dreamy breakbeat house treat, and 'Rudiman' is an immersive, ear-catching slab of 90s drum & bass revivalism with added ambient melodies and deep space chords.

Review: The Speicher series feels almost as old as techno itself by now. It has long been one of the many jewels in Cologne label Kompakt's crown and Kolsch, one of the label's chief mainstays, has been behind many of them. This 128th such offering is a dreamy yet dynamic techno sound that sits up there with some of the label's best offerings. 'Cold Air' is urgent and edgy but always awash with waves of melodic sheen even when the ragged bass is in free fall. 'Environ' then has a 90s IDM Warp feel to it with its bright reflective melodies filtered and drawn out, stretched and smeared over a big and bouncy beat.

Review: Spanish music brain Estato Aurora delivers five high-concept techno tracks, ranging from the glassy to the subterranean to the disturbed. Aurora's prior releases on the likes of Semantica, Fanzine and Subsist were all well and good, but it's clear he's gone the extra mile here, taking a chance on a new label by a fellow Spaniard by pouring extra layers of gritty depth and soily subterfuge. The A-siders are danceable enough, moving between techno and halftime drum & bass, but it's the B where things get really intense; 'Dotonbori Neon Lights' delivers landscape-soary and skittish cinematics, segueing into the atmospheric dream team that is 'El Margen' and 'Buenos Con Charcas'.