Secure shopping

Studio equipment

Our full range of studio equipment from all the leading equipment and software brands. Guaranteed fast delivery and low prices.

Visit Juno Studio

Secure shopping

DJ equipment

Our full range of DJ equipment from all the leading equipment and software brands. Guaranteed fast delivery and low prices.  Visit Juno DJ

Secure shopping

Vinyl & CDs

The world's largest dance music store featuring the most comprehensive selection of new and back catalogue dance music Vinyl and CDs online.  Visit Juno Records

Various Artists – The Black Ideal

Released to coincide with the first issue of Monograph, a new Parisian journal about electronic music, it is clear that The Black Ideal seeks to and succeeds in tapping into a loosely defined but nonetheless cohesive techno narrative. This is not music for sun-kissed beaches and soft-drink sponsored parties, rather it is a collection of tracks that delves into the darker side of contemporary techno music.

Various Artists - The Black Ideal
Artist
Various Artists
Title
The Black Ideal
Label
Unknown Precept
Format
2xLP, Digital
Buy vinylBuy digital

It would be easy – not to mention lazy – to dismiss this as neo-industrial gloom, the product of furrow-browed, sincere young men. Yet there is a sensibility, a common thread that runs throughout each track on The Black Ideal, a sense of cohesion irrespective of the sonic approach. The noisy tapestry of sound and tone that Ancient Methods conjure up on “Guardians of an Eternal Bliss” and the acid-tinged drones of Shifted’s “Untitled” might occupy opposite ends of the tempo spectrum to the crunchy broken beats of Violetshaped’s “Black Wisdom White Witch” or AnD’s “Reinforcement G” – a track so brutal that the distorted kicks almost drown out the white noise mid-range – but they belong next to each as part of the overall narrative of the compilation. 

It’s an aesthetic that champions the abstract and textured, but also the brutal and relentless. These latter qualities are most apparent on the AnD and Violetshaped tracks, but The Black Ideal also provides space for others to articulate these qualities in a more understated manner. Svreca was clearly inspired by Terrence Dixon’s sonic pointillism when he created “Linear”, a spaced out techno groove that hangs on the kind of microscopic, pinprick beats that both volumes of From the Far Future propagate.

The Semantica boss is not alone either; the menacingly-named Casual Violence deliver “Beauty Mode”, an arrangement based on slight, pitter-patter rhythms and beautiful but somewhat eerie pitch-bent synth lines, while Saåad and Mondkopf’s “Last Love” starts off as a textured soundscape that gradually reveals scattered vocal samples and kicks that appear in a flash, as if by magic. Slow or frenetic, noisy or calm, it’s all part of the same ideal.

Richard Brophy

Tracklisting:

A1. Ancient Methods – Guardians of an Eternal Bliss
A2. Saåad with Mondkopf – Last Love
B1. Polar Inertia – Antimatter
B2. Shifted – Untitled
C1. Casual Violence – Beauty Mode
C2. AnD – Reinforcement G
D1. Svreca – Linear
D2. Violetshaped – Black Wisdom, White Witch