Polegroup Vinyl & CDs

Review: Exium continue to strengthen their working relationship with Pole Recordings, gracing Oscar Mulero's label with A Sensible Alternative To Emotion, their second studio album. Having spent over a decade refining their own vision of hard edged techno, Exium use this platform of a second album to expand on their established sound, at times easing down the tempos and intensity for a more balanced listen across the 10 tracks. Productions such as the granite heavy "Massless Particle" or tunnelling abstraction of "Absolute Magnitude" demonstrate this is no drastic departure from the Exium sound but there's an equal consideration for melodic arrangements and more subdued moments.

Review: Ribe is back on PoleGroup which is always going to get our attention, as well as that of any real techno head. This time it is with Las Tres Puertas which is a superb eight-track double 12". The title track opens in dramatic fashion with chords full of tension and train track beats that loop infectiously. There is a more experimental feel to the fuzzy loops of 'La Rabia', 'El Sutil Arte' is full of edge and tension thanks to a loud, centred drone and 'El Nuevo Mundo' is a dystopian and swampy soundtrack to a dark day on a distant planet. In between are many more intriguing sound designs and unusual rhythms.

Review: Christian Wunsch is becoming as much of a formidable force as his fellow Spanish and Pole Group patriarch Oscar Mulero and close cohort Developer. Last year Pole Group released the debut album of Spanish duo Exium and now they move the spotlight over to Wunsch, who shines brightly from the first track onwards. The album is of course full of huge club productions like "Auger Electrons", "Ionized", "Graphene" and "Radioactive Decay" - but Wunsch delivers the type of techno in productions like "When The Process Is Expected", "Nuclear Transition" and "Fixed Fraction" that makes Internal Conversion more than just a heavy weight slab of booming DJ tools. One of the best releases to come from Pole Group yet.