The best new singles this week
Our writers on the week’s must have singles
SINGLE OF THE WEEK
I-F – The Fetish Death (Viewlexx)
When it comes to gutter-dwelling techno, the Dutch have a fair claim to the throne. You only need look at Bunker Records and the Hague-orbiting miscreants from their acid-laced fantasy world to find some of the gnarliest club tracks ever committed to record. Ferenc E. van der Slujis is a fine case in point – he was part of the infamous Unit Moebius which were at ground zero for this particular scene. Over the years he’s released an intimidating amount of music across the techno and electro spectrum, some of it wholly melodious and approachable, but some of it as grubby and gritty as jacking machine music could ever hope to be.
It’s the latter mode he clocks into on his latest drop on his own Viewlexx label, maintaining a stance which he’s held down since the early 90s. It might well be that you’ve heard every beyond-the-grave beat track you need in your life, but equally there’s a seductive nihilism in the sound which remains refreshing in these times of high fidelity production techniques. The Fetish Death is pure monochrome abandon, tooled up with the raw ingredients to send you thrusting into oblivion.
‘Executrix’ summons this spirit from the very gates of Hades without even breaking a sweat. The tempo is slow, and yet the impact of the disgustingly distorted bass synth and unrelenting rhythm is profound. This is the real death disco, with not even the slightest crack of light breaking the dank atmosphere. ‘Diana’s Lab’ is marginally faster, but devastatingly minimal all the same. ‘Erotic Bongo’ is perhaps the spiciest of the tracks with its demonic vocoder growls and nagging, oddly catchy riff, while the aptly titled ‘Clammy Cellar’ turns up the pressure with a squashed mix that leaves no room to breathe. It’s utterly nightmarish, in the best possible way.
OW
Hassan Abou Alam – Ice (Nehza)
Egyptian upstart Hassan Abou Alam strikes out on his new EP ‘Ice’, finding a new joy in an experimental dance style outside of tired old house, techno, bass and breaks funnels.
Alam’s former releases have appeared on bog-standard house labels like Banoffee Pies. but ‘Ice’ is a much more compelling claim to creative independence. Unlike the churny, functional industry of most imprints, Nehza Records spurns the idea of functionalism over artistic expression, viewing its releases from an eco-anarchic POV. In its own words, “posing questions about our natural environment through the medium of sound.”
As is fitting for such a bold mission statement, ‘Ice’ strikes forth with slimy lettering superimposed over an HD image of a hammerheaded dragonfly, enticing the listener with visual themes of natural biotechnotic ingenuity, and matching the music therein. We’re more than soon propelled into ‘Smoolaire’, a minimal dubstechno wrecker that recalls the resonant production styles of Minor Science or Bare Noize.
‘Lost In A Jar Of Thyme’ is straighter, sounding like Deekline’s breakstep classic ‘I Don’t Smoke’ if it was stripped of its agency and made in a totalitarian techno-state. Finally, our favourite, ‘Hollow in C’, is sure to open the smokiest of DJ sets with massive ambiences converging into hollow and bare sci-fi skirmishes. This whole EP sounds like a divine pocketwatch being put together, except this timepiece is made of keratin and carbon fibers, not brass hinges and cogs.
JIJ
Web – Another Perspective EP (Acido)
Nearly 30 years since his first forays into exploratory techno, the work of Web is reaching a new generation thirsting for that quintessentially mid-90s sound. There has, in the last five years or so, been a strong revival of that deep, heady strain of machine music which sprung up on the fringes of harder, more direct techno. As well as the mind-tripping delights from Detroit courtesy of Carl Craig, Kenny Larkin et al, there was a vibrant scene in London often said to orbit the Fat Cat record shop. Takuya Sugimoto released one EP as Web on the shop’s label in 1996, and from a European perspective it helps place his sound even if the majority of his work came out on Japanese label Syzygy.
Acido’s Dynamo Dreesn was instrumental in bringing Sugimoto’s work back from the Discogs hinterland, starting with a casual enquiry while on tour in Japan which led to Sugimoto digging out a DAT archive of tracks from 1994-95. Eight of those tracks were released in 2020 on The Sound There, and it seems that more of those gems have been gathered together to form this new 12”.
The interesting thing about this particular pocket of techno is that it’s instantly identifiable in terms of era and like-minded artists, but there’s still space for individuality. To hear ‘Eternal Moment’, it’s clearly crafted with the traditional mixture of intricate x0x sequencing and synthesis, but Sugimoto’s approach is pleasingly idiosyncratic. The beat has a broken quality which leans on the snare and almost becomes a soca break, primed to merge with UK bass styles despite its spooked out, threadbare melodics and lack of a bassline.
‘Syn-the-sizer’ meanwhile teases towards a kind of drum & bass as made by someone very far from the nexus of the scene. As has always been the case, evoking a certain style from far away often leads to unique results. ‘Out Of Place Artifacts’ has a steadier roll to its groove, but the discordant synth work puts this firmly in the freaky category, while ‘Hidden Figures’ plays with ravey urgency in the drum programming and machine soul expression in the synth work. There’s a naivety in these tracks, as though you can hear influences being accidentally mutated as Sugimoto finds his own way through the machines. Therein lies the magic of the release – much more than just another cookie-cutter clutch of archive 90s techno.
OW
Kerrie -Beauty In Industry (Dark Machine Funk)
Now more than a decade into a grass roots cultural resurgence — most visible in the wealth of talent currently calling the place home and an abundance of venues that have opened to provide spaces for those faces to work in — it wouldn’t be ridiculous to assume they’re putting something in Manchester’s water, all that rain ensuring there’s plenty to go round.
Electronic music has always had a home in the northern English metropolis, but is in particularly rude health today. Whether it’s cosmic rave from Red Laser Disco, mutant electronic dance-pop by Metrodome, or the perennially present drum and grime of artists like Chimpo, the city is blessed with breadth and depth. Enter Kerrie, a long-standing favourite on the ‘proper techno’ scene, and one of a handful of folk who might actually be more engaging to watch crafting their own tunes in a club than playing a DJ set, such is the feeling of being constantly engaged and interested in what might come next.
Those who’ve managed to catch her live production prowess will attest to the relentless machine funk underpinning every moment, and a sense of something slick creeping insidiously into your mind tank and making itself feel right at home there, controlling limbs so you start dancing before realising anything is happening. Too conceptual? This EP might be a simpler definition. Across four tracks we’re given tense suspense (‘Beauty In Industry’), curveball stepping dirt (‘Desert Power’), stomping build (‘Forged’) and heavy wasp-in-jar hypnosis (‘Machine Operator’), each representing very different takes on the same mission statement: making people move by crafting sounds that are both alien yet unarguably fundamental to and omnipresent in the human experience. Some say techno taps into the background rhythms of modern life itself, here are four tracks exemplifying that point.
MH
Andy Ash – All The Colours: The Prelude (Quintessentials)
Creative dynamo Andy Ash returns to Quintessentials with a tantalising teaser to his forthcoming long-player, ‘All The Colours’, with the label inviting a trio of artists to rework choice cuts from the album. Drafted in are Alton Miller, Black Fan, and Dan Piu, who each manage to bring something novel to Andy’s alluring originals. Liverpool-based DJ, producer and visual artist Andy Ash has been serving high-quality subterranean soundtracks for a good many years. His work has found a home on some of the esoteric underground’s most esteemed imprints, with the likes of Delusions of Grandeur, Still Music and Dessous among those to have championed his sound.
Quintessentials are among his most fervent proponents, so it’s especially pleasing to see them throwing their weight behind his latest collection of imaginative compositions. The ‘Prelude’ remix EP launches with a rework of ‘I’m Here’ from Detroit jewel, Alton Miller. He presents Amber Kuti’s Peach Boys-inspired vocal over a seductive bed of distinctive US house shuffle, with hypnotic synth motifs blended with evocative chords and psychedelic sweeps. Next, Black Fan offers his nocturnal take on ‘The Sound’, with glistening synth motifs and vocal chops gliding over warehouse bass and fizzing drum machine claps. Finally, Dan Piu re-imagines the same track, with the memorable synth line caressed by sumptuous e-piano licks, sub-rooted bass and snare-driven drums. All shades of deep house are represented here, with each mix serving as alluring tasters of the album that will soon follow.
PC
Tokyo band Mizuirazu (‘Waterless’) are pretty much only interested in impressing themselves, espousing an independence that (true or not) results in a very peculiar sound.
The lead brain behind the project, Makoto Inoue, hopes to make music outside of Western market forces, at least sonically. In a recent interview, he observed that Japanese ‘folk’ music morphed, somewhere along the way, into pop, slowly frog-boiling into its globalised form starting over 100 years ago, after the Meiji period. Since then, Japanese popular music has never quite been the same, though it retains certain irremovable hallmarks that seem to call us back to that earlier time.
So how does their new track ‘Su-Mu’ (‘Them-Us’) reflect this trend, while staying rooted in the commercialised zeitgeist of today? How does Inoue justify making music outside of Western market forces, while also selling it on Juno? We think we can answer that question.
The track has rough electronic edges and genderless choral samplework, with its modern hallmarks recalling all the psychic sprawlouts of Animal Collective and the weird found-sound hounding of Tek Lintowe. The band name ‘Waterless’ is fitting, because their sound really is rather dry, lacking in much reverb or delay. A good dose of Japanese maximalism comes to boot: there’s cut-up vocals; dragged drum timing; scooped-out basses, mids and tops.
Finally, its intoned guitars, marimba and drums all manifest in what Inoue calls “native rhythm”, appropriating the South Asian Carnatic ‘Konnakol’ time. We won’t go into it too much: all you need to know is that the Konnakol is a remarkably complex rhythm, normally played on the tabla. Here, Mizuirazu reappropriates the Konnakol to produce a strange phrase division for the 48-beat chorus (mind-boggling, right?), producing an odd beats-per-bar structure – 3+5+7+3+4+4+3+3+3+3+3+3. For all their intelligence, Mizuirazu are certainly deserving of more exposure.
JIJ
Giovanni Damico – The Power (Star Creature)
Giovanni Damico has come a long way since debuting on Movida Records back in 2010. Initially emerging via the deep techno waters, the Italian producer has since voyaged through an evolving medley of sounds and styles, with his most recent work tending to inhabit the realms of imaginative future disco. In the last few years, his releases on Lumberjacks In Hell and Star Creature have amounted to genuine musical delights, with a level of musicianship and compositional finesse that’s helped cement his standing as a producer of note.
Here, he returns to the latter with his latest offering, presenting five Italo-tinged tracks on ‘The Power’ EP. The title track sees a maniacal bassline darting over energetic toms and piercing hats as a spoken word vocal adds a seductive edge to the groove. The stripped topography of ‘Analog Session’ features snarling synth bass meandering across sparse drums and rising polysynth stabs, before the jacking flex of ‘Fashion Tape’ blends hypnotic synth harmonies over muted acid bass and swung machine drums. The mutant disco swagger of ‘Out Of Control’ provides another memorable moment, with suggestive vocals gliding over a mesmerising tapestry of analogue waves, before closing track ‘Moblast’ continues the dance via hyperactive keys, stirring bass and jagged drums. If it’s disco deviance you’re after, look no further.
PC
This week’s reviewers: Martin Hewitt, Oli Warwick, Patrizio Cavaliere, Jude Iago James.