Drumcode Sweden Vinyl & CDs

Review: First cropping up in 2012, the mammoth A-Sides series from the titanic Swedish techno label Drumcode charges ahead into its 11th installment (can you believe it?) while also managing to split said installment alone across seven slices of vinyl. This is the fourth record of seven in part eleven. Only gigantic-room techno could justify this waxen audacity; the music is braggadocious to boot, with contributions from Nicolas Taboada, BEC, Avision and Cosmic Boys. The tracks here are as dreamy as they are goosebump-inducing, easily seguing between massive transitions and drops to cathartic reesebound trances.

Review: Adam Beyer's Drumcode remains out in front of the pack when it comes to big room techno. Whether going to new school artists or old school legends the results are always the same - epic and explosive. This time out we get both on one EP with Teenage Mutants going first with 'Dark Clouds (feat Heerhorst & Peter Pahn). It has synths fired from a hadron collider as they shoot over the face of the acid and bass-laced drums. On the flip side is the mighty Slovakian Umek with 'Footmachine,' a dark and heavy banger with flat-footed drums and all sorts of cosmic synth turbulence. Potent stuff for sure.

Review: Pretty much all Drumcode releases are colossal and anthem-like - it's the imprint's niche, after all - but this two-tracker from Stockholm stalwart Tiger Stripes is particularly sizeable. A-side 'Nocturne', for example, is as driving, mind-altering and breathless as they come, with Hardfloor style acid motifs, twinkling piano breakdowns, trancey riffs and enveloping aural textures rising above a blisteringly tough and intense beat. The pulsating tech-trance vibe is further explored on 'Renegade', a track whose elongated, slowly rising breakdown - which comes complete with glassy-eyed vocal samples, does a brilliant job in stirring the senses and raising the pressure out on the dancefloor.

Review: The all powerful Drumcode label still does a fine line in big room techno after countless years and even more releases of the stuff. This third part of the A Sides collection brings together a towering selection of names from that scene including Tiger Stripes with the smooth cruise that is 'Altar'. Veterans Pig & Dan vs Gregor Tresher get more intense with frosty loops and dubby hits building a vibe and Wehbba ups the ante with acid daubs and fizzing drums on 'The Next Step.' Nicole Moudaber's 'Come To My Beat' (feat Romina) then hammer home a hefty techno groove.

Review: Wehbba and Drumcode are a great match for one another given the big room potency of the techno they both like to deal in. This new two track kicks off with 'Awaken', a urgent, hard techno slammer with flat-footed and unrelenting drums, bright as you like trance synths that light up the floor and pervasive energy that cannot fail to electrify. 'Revelation' then gets more raw with frazzled, tightly woven loops, rising synth tension and monstrous drums designed to get vast strobe-lit dance floors locked in and losing their minds.