Touch From A Distance Germany Vinyl & CDs

Review: Dance music is rife with megalomaniacal personalities eager to carve their names in, well, whatever the techno equivalence of blue-plaque posterity is. Here, however, the producer Brother Nebula (Lance DeSardi), from Texas, flips the desire to delusively status-climb for such trifles on its head, inverting the idiom "delusions of grandeur" in naming their EP 'The Grandeur Of Delusion'. Informed by delusion or not, this is a grand EP, rendering the problematic of grandiosity somewhat moot: from dark future garage faceoffs ('Ice Giant', 'God's Green Earth') to brooding halftime ice floes ('The Grandeur...'), Nebula has thoroughly honed his craft since relocating to London, not failing to blur genre categories across borders, nor to compel with huge, still technical broken beats.

Review: Touch From A Distance is a Berlin based label run by Panorama Bar resident Nick Hoppner. Following up a terrific inauguration by Holding Hands boss Desert Sound Colony, the label returns with Japanese duo Opal Sunn aka Al Kassian and Hiroaki OBA. Opal Sunn are a well seasoned hardware only live act, who are very much in control of their repertoire, but also capable of captivating improvisations. They have a recognisable sound driven by smart, often arpeggiated synth lines, on point drums and textures. Highlights are the slinky and hypnotic tech house cut "Parallax", followed by the discofied slow burner "Mirage" and the deep electro journey "Phantom" on the B side.