Back catalogue: Minimal/Tech House

Review: Señor Villalobos is back again on Playhouse so roll out the red carpet for his "Fizheuer Zieheuer" monster which is no longer than 37 minutes!!! Represented here in its full glory, we added Ricardo's special "stripped down to the bone" beat version, the "Fizbeast", to give you the chance to enhance your creative DJ skills and add some extra sugar on top! "Fizheuer Zieheuer" has been around for a while now as a special secret weapon in Ricardo's sets all over the world, causing mayhem wherever he plays it! 100% pure hypnosis, this track plays with certain sounds that you would not really expect from this minimal master. It's the way he uses the East European horns which make it so good, and their integration in the beats that makes the track so exciting. There are slight changes throughout the whole 37 minutes, morphing and transforming the twisted melodic horn stabs all the time, sucking you deeper and deeper into a very very special state of mind. It's definitely an experience and worth a try! Villalobos, master of hypnosis, magician of the groove! And all you black gold enthusiasts, don't forget to check the vinyl version of "Fizheuer Zieheuer parts 1 & 2".

Review: Earlier this year, A Guy Called Gerald (Gerald Simpson) made his Laboratory Instinct debut with a "Drop-Tech Infusion" mix of Dell & Flügel's "Superstructure" that appeared on the duo's "Study For A Skyscraper" EP. Now the British acid house pioneer and drum'n'bass legend issues his own superb full-length on the German imprint, the appropriately-titled "Proto Acid - The Berlin Sessions". Having literally influenced generations of music-makers with an incredible discography that's grown incrementally deeper since the 80s, the Manchester UK native and now Berlin resident executes the infectious 71-minute jam with a masterful meticulousness. Drenching Detroit-styled techno in sparkling electro, the set, recorded live in one session using two laptops and a DJ mixer at Gerald's Diehold Studio on February 11th, 2006, flows with a relaxed ease. With one exception ("Auto Rebuild," the third track, is a remake of 1990's "Automannik"), the album's 24 raw, club-oriented tracks are all new and were created over the last year in Berlin. The collection departs from the style of his last full-length, "To All Things What They Need", in many ways, the most obvious being the absence of singing. Asked why he decided to make "Proto Acid - The Berlin Sessions" wholly instrumental, Simpson doesn't mince words. "On my last two albums, I felt pressured to include vocals," he replies. "Nowadays, I feel singers should be put on a bale of hay with a piece of straw hanging out of their mouths while playing acoustic guitar-keeping it real, if you know what I mean. I want to make music for clubs and sometimes you just have to get down and dirty into the machines and, to take it there, you can't hold anyone's hand. Some things just don't need a vocal. What I'm trying to do is keep myself entertained as well as give the punters something new." Asked to describe the album's sound, Simpson says, "To me it's proto acid; it's how I feel house/techno music would have sounded if the whole rave thing hadn't happened in England. When I was younger, I would go to soul and funk clubs and you could easily mix a techno/house track into your set without spoiling the environment. Could you imagine playing a techno track at an r'n'b club today? Things have splintered and fragmented and floated so far apart that funk seems to have dropped through the cracks. I'm one of those preserved creatures that basically loves to use genres as a palette. So when I say proto acid I'm saying this stuff has direct lineage to Chicago and Detroit in the mid-to-late 80s." Don't think that, for Simpson, acid's definition is limited to something as obvious as the 303 either. "I find it really interesting how the TB303 has come to be fetishised as an acid machine," he says. "For me, acid was all about the tweaking of synths and riding a groove, you know what I mean? Like, before the masses thought the Transistor Bass machine was a special tool for doing acid house music, I was already bored with it and had moved on to tweaking envelopes on other Roland machinery, so I never really possessed that value for the 303 like everybody else did. I feel like I followed my own path and was inspired by what was going on in Detroit and Chicago but always did my own thing. To me, the new album is acid and acid's a part of everything I do." On the disc itself, Simpson doesn't waste a moment but immediately invigorates the set with the pumping tribal groove of "Marching Powder" before moving on to the steely funk-throb of "The Strip." The mix's strutting electro strain makes its first appearance in "Auto Rebuild" and dominates thereafter, though its presence is subtly modulated from one cut to the next, at one moment oozing a house vibe and the next techno. While differences distinguish one track from the next (though Simpson avows that his influences are more machines than particular artists, a seeming Drexciya influence emerges in "Droid" and the dark synth-driven "Feel the Heat" while dub rears its head in "Xray" and "Bass-o-train", there's clearly a unified feel to the album. "Skitzoid" casts a mechano spell, "Night Flight" breezily rocks, and the jacking cut "Voltar" broils feverishly for almost eight minutes. Bringing the mix to a chilled close, "Sweet You" floats in a billowing haze of jazzy pianos and locomotive drum brushes before vaporizing in a cloud of cymbal accents. At this stage in his career, one might assume that Simpson has covered every base imaginable, but apparently that's not so. Referring to the new release, he says, "It's the culmination of a dream I've had since I started making music, and that's to take the studio into the club; this album is snapshot of those possibilities."

Review: Angel Sánchez Borges, the man behind AAM (Antiguo Automata Mexicano) takes techno to the next level with his second album and first release with Static Discos.
Previously AAM released the infamous 'Microhate' album on Germany's Background label. Inspired by German kraut and space rock, minimal techno and screwed-up
digital antics, AAM's 'Kraut Slut' is the stuff of wicked dance dreams. Angel Sánchez Borges also records as Seekers Who Are Lovers on the Soundsister label. In a
recent interview on URB Magazine, Borges says his secret to the AAM sound is his love for "My Bloody Valentine, a gentle way of dealing with strange layers of sounds.
I want people to dance to these noisy grooves". Pitchformedia recently described his music in "the glitch/dub/minimal techno vein, with carefully constructed rips and
blips stretched across a wide, white sonic canvas".

Review: Aera returns to his own Aleph Music for another ear-shattering hodgepodge of sonic brutality, and as per usual, the guy is just doing things his own way from start to finish. "Kiss Off" is a gnarly display of semi-bassline swirls and improvisational beats, whilst "Baby/Comet/Face" injects some more constant kicks in there, but "Fever Beach" really starts off the weirdness with its wonderful and almost droned-out melodies taking control of the arrangement. There are plenty of keepers here all on a wide-eyed, bass-heavy tip, but "Die Pferden" flirts with a housier tempo and "Chevere" sounds like something Richard D.James would dig...strange, cosmic beats and harmonic madness all round.

Review: Given that eight years have passed since French techno stalwart Agoria released an album, it's little surprise to find that "Drift" sees him taking what he describes as "a new musical approach". On the accompanying press release, the Gallic veteran has described the set's sound as being inspired by "sitting on your sofa between your guilty pleasure and your tasteful opinion". In other words, it's a more open-minded and eclectic affair that mixes accessible, laidback vocal numbers (see the sparse tech-house-pop of opener "Embrace (feat Phoebe Killdeer)" and cheery chugger "You're Not Alone (feat Blase)" with nods towards wonky, off-kilter electronic hip-hop (STS hook-up "Call Of The Wild") and a swathe of heavier, club-leaning cuts inspired by his love of techno and Italo-disco.

Review: Long awaited debut album. Influenced by the Detroit sound, Agoria has a unique groove, melody and a distinctive edge to his music. An album bristling with energy, distinctive basslines for the dancefloor, perfectly balanced with ambience & melody.

Review: Last year, Akase duo Harry Agius and Robert Redway set out their stall with a pair of impressive singles on K7. Here, they return to the long-running German label with a similarly atmospheric and otherworldly debut album. Sitting somewhere between intoxicating outsider house, woozy synth-pop, undulating tech-house and heartfelt blue-eyed soul, but with a radio-friendly vibe all of its' own, Graspers is the kind of set that should appeal to a wide range of listeners. Certainly, it's full of memorable songs, enjoyable late night moments, emotion-rich compositions and evocative productions. As debut albums go, it's quietly confident and boasts an unfussy beauty.

Review: Given the plethora of Ibiza tie-in CDs that clutter up record shop shelves every summer, it's nice to see Cocoon doing things differently. While the first disc is a traditional DJ mix from regular Ilario Alicante - think shuffling deep techno, post-minimal grooves and subdued hedonism from the likes of Omar-S, Head High and Trus'Me - the second disc is something a little different; a recording of a live set from Argentinian producer Alejandro Mosso. Made up entirely of his productions and remixes, its shuffling grooves, bubbling electronics, liquid atmopsherics and melodic flow are particularly impressive.

Review: Given his status, it's a little surprising that it's taken Fabric this long to ask Erol Alkan to contribute a mix to their long-running FabricLive series. Pleasingly, the Phantasy Sound-founder is in fine form, laying down a mix heavy on gnarled electronics, ragging acid and strobelight-friendly future anthems. Alongside thrillingly riotous moments - see Tom Rowlands' jacking "Through Me" and Fumes "Jack 2000" - Alkan also finds space for the melodious tech-house of Ghost Culture, the spiralling, synth-laden rush of Daywalker & CF, and, most pleasingly of all, a self-made mash-up that blends his own "A Hold on Love" with Saint Etienne's piano-laden Balearic anthem "Only Love Can Break Your Heart".