Mulen Germany Vinyl & CDs

Review: Fresh from releasing the third and final part of the Oldivibes trilogy of EPs, Mulen Records co-founder Io (real name Aleksandr Voznichenko) offers up some aural 'Ecstasy' to get tech-house dancefloors moving. The EP-opening title track is a retro-futurist delight, with the Ukranian producer peppering a tactile, turn-of-the-90s warehouse groove with raw hip-house stabs, whispered vocal snippets and spacey synth sounds. The old school flavour continues on 'Deep In My Soul', where a 'Bombscare'-inspired lead line combines brilliantly with an organ bassline, smooth beats and swirling electronics, before Voznichenko reaches for psychedelic TB-303 style motifs, rolling drums, funky stabs and glassy-eyed riffs on 'Edge of Infinity'. Finally, 'Air Gap' is an attractive mix of bold, ear-catching bass, heady organ riffs, mind-mangling electronic motifs and loose-limbed peak-time drums.

Review: By now a very well-recognised trailblazer of the minimal house and techno circuits, iO Mulen (Aleksandr Voznichenko) shares his third album, Rock Like This, through his own Mulen imprint. Refusing to fall back on heavy-handed press notes, the eight tracks on this perfect composite storm are enough to bewitch us of their own accord. These house and techno retrofusions play out like the kind of sounds that the impossible dangling contraption depicted on its front cover might generate; 'Rock Like This' throws back to Chicago deep house and jankout acid trance, magicking up a shockingly good fusion of disparate styles in a bionic mode, while the rising actions of 'How Do You Say' and 'Emergency' teem with twin enjoyments of and reverences for 90s Euro and acid techno. There are cosmic-trancier subplots on there too, such as 'I'm Waiting For', which selects its constituent sounds with an aesthete's ear, striking a difficult balance of the raw and the fine. Voznichenko refuses to privilege one referent genre over another, and it results in a respectfully done, carefully made and truly exciting dance record, unafraid of cheese nor sophistication, and reconciling the two.