Back catalogue: Minimal/Tech House

Review: A second round of equine tech-funk from Alexander Skancke, Foehn & Jerome and Henriku, none of whom present solo tracks, but rather collab as a trio on every number. Following up May 2024's debut edition of 'The Black Horse', we're met with a fleshed-out sophomore amble come gallop here. Opener 'Maximalism Minimalism' bowls us over with its muted flutes and hip-house samples, while 'Satt' moves more fay with its wind chime tinkles and festive woodwind riffs. On the B comes 'Hungry Beat' - by now, our steed is raveonous for a bite to eat and an oasis to drink from, lest it perishes from dancefloor thirst - and 'Eins' - on which said colt (a work-horse from a hobby) - is finally let to graze, and rest.

Review: Swung Selections is back with a second volume of club ready tech house bangers. There is a great blend of retro nostalgia and fresh and forward-facing sound designs across the four-track selection. Soulfreq's 'Holiday Break' begins with twisted old shock bass and slapping hits. Retrospect then keeps it smooth with the nice cool tech bubbler 'Pickled Moose,' No Results Found wigs out the floor with the wriggling synth madness and electro rhythms of 'Tackle Maestro' then Harrison BDP shuts down with the thumping house of 'Buggin Out.'

Review: Dub techno don Steve O'Sullivan's Mosaic label is back with a new dubs series and vol 1 kicks things off with a real doozy on lovely red wax. The boss himself offers up a Bluetrain special edition dub of Hidden Sequence's 'Synapse' which is all icy lines and liquid rhythms which make you think of some frozen lake on a misty morning. Sub Basics (Temple of Sound, Lion Charge Records) opens up with a fresh dub laden track with rippling chords, tons of echo and rolling drums on 'Quarters.' Both are timeless dub outings, as you would expect from this label.

Review: Tiga's stripped-down electronic funk and Hudson Mohawke's bold beats share a common threadian idea Tiga dubs "hardcore romance." Recorded in Los Angeles, their collaboration evolved across various tracks that ultimately shaped their debut album, L'Ecstasy. Turbo revisits the project with a series of club-ready remixes featuring Keinemusik's Reznik, Montreal duo Priori & Patrick Holland as Jump Source and Berghain regular Quelza. These hard-hitting remixes are pressed loudly on a striking 12" picture disc featuring iconic imagery from renowned photographer Wolfgang Tillmans.

Review: Detroit house hero Kyle Hall returns with his biggest project in some time in the form of Transmissions, a new double album on his own well-regarded Forget The Clock. All six tracks have enigmatic, functional titles and the music is as idiosyncratic as ever. Each one veers more towards techno than is Hall's usual style, with pulsating synth lines and tight, dusty drum tracks making for stripped-to-the-bones grooves. Later on, things grow ever more abstract with twisted acid lines screwing their way through the increasingly ragged and roughshod drums. These are perfectly imperfect jams from a master of the form.

Review: Kyle Hall and Steven Julien have been working together on and off for a whole decade now as Funkinevil. To mark the occasion they have pulled together their first two releases - namely 2012's 'Night / Dusk' and 2013's 'Ignorant' - on one new double album that very much sums up their raw house sound. The Detroit-London duo draw on plenty of their hometown's signature aesthetics, from well swung drums to soulful synths, and the results are still fresh sounding and captivatingly deep. Importantly, all these years later, there is still real emotional punch in these tunes as well as damn good grooves. Essential stuff from this vital pair.

Review: Per Hammar and Berlin-based label Sushitech are a match made in heaven as both have long since proven their credential in the world of dub techno. As the label turns 20, it kicks off its year with an album that has been two years in the making and features a top-quality array of dub techno sounds. Malin Genie features on two of the more kicking and propulsive cuts, while Jannik Jivung adds an organic touch to two more. In between those sounds are percolating slow-mo jams like 'Representant Dubb' and more kinetic sounds like 'TX Files' with its fresh kicks and rolling bass.

Review: The now 20-year-strong Sushitech have been working on this one for two years and finally it drops - a new album from cultured dub techno don Per Hammar. This is a seriously deep journey into his signature sound that melds the genre's most classic side with a fresh modern twist. Cuts like 'Generation Drive' have a nice crisp sense of motion as well as lovely warped pads, while 'Juvial' brings a sense of curiousness with its undulating drums and bass. 'Defender' leans into sleek techno styles and will have you cruising in no time. An instant classic album, for sure.

Review: Having built plenty of hype over previous outings, Hardacre finally drops this long-awaited debut on Alien Communications. It's a standout long player with acid, house, electro and techno all jumbled up into effective, 'floor-facing sounds that are high on power. There are lithe, metallic twitchers like the Kraftwerkian 'Transmission' as well as more future-facing and acid-laced bumpers such as 'Alien Intelligence' with plenty of cinematic and atmospheric bits like 'Radio Command' in between. A classy take on a classic sound.

Review: Detroit dub techno don Luke Hess says that this is his "most eclectic and techno-driven album to date" and that it blends together his signature subterranean sounds with his indelible Motor City touch. It again works well on cultured dance floors but is also a deeply spiritual album that will have your mind wandering to some lovely places. From the opening moments of 'Dokimion' you're sunk into widescreen soundscapes that pair painterly synths with immersive low ends. Cuts like 'Stoicheo' bring serene melodies and closer 'Hiketeria' is a misty, foggy cut that oozes late-night intimacy.

Review: Chicago extraordinaire Jamal Moss aka Hieroglyphic Being's third solo album is titled There Is No Acid In This House, and sees him return to Soul Jazz Records. Using his idiosyncratic electronic sound, Moss takes influence from the experimental minds of fellow Windy City innovators such as The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, The Art Ensemble of Chicago and Sun Ra, through to icons of his hometown's house music scene like Ron Hardy, Marshall Jefferson, Lil Louis and others who have defined Chicago's musical universe over the last half a century.

Review: The inimitable Jamal Moss comes forth with his second offering for Madrid's Apnea records. 'The Moon Dance' unfurls over 11 tracks- in turns pensive, elegiac, and slammin'. Between the sedate expanse of opener 'When The Earths Shadow Falls On The Moon' and the final cymbal strokes of gauche, machine funk closer 'Mawu', Moss lifts us on yet another Afrofuturist space flight of fancy, passing through superclusters of deep house, tactile techno and stroboscopic piano jams along the way.
Standout moments include the smoove-as-u-like-it intergalactic lounge jazz diversion 'The Moondance Moon Walk Version'; its steezy stride-piano vamp seamlessly intertwining with Moss' signature babbling acid intrusions, the irresistibly groovy bump of 'Tethered 2 The Divinely Spaces With In' and the hypnotic sway of 'Celestial Poems Of The Lady With 10000 Names', which opens up from Terrence Dixon-esque introspection into broad windy city string washes and synapse-tickling bleeps. With this collection, Moss pens yet another crucial chapter in the seemingly bottomless hieroglyphic being scroll. While 'The Moon Dance' is one of his most accessible and harmonious works to date, it doesn't lose an ounce of the rawness and immediacy of his previous work. Essential listening!

Review: Sushitech has always done a fine job of preserving and spotlighting the roots of house and techno and some of its key protagonists. This second volume of A Sillybration does that once more by bringing together some of the most sought-after tunes and vital classics from legendary UK talents Terry Francis, the late Nathan Coles, Laurant Webb, Dave Coker and Justin Bailey aka Housey Doingz. Of these 16 plenty of them have only ever been released once so are pricey if you want an original, and some have never been on wax before, at all. They have all been re-mastered directly from the original DATs and make for a vital collection of dance floor heaters that have aged like fine wine.

Review: Much missed Detroit techno legend Mike Huckaby created The Down Under Kit for the Australian leg of the Red Bull Music Academy's world tour and it's so much more than a simple sample pack, as Huckaby gives a narrated tutorial on creating templates and generating ideas, a fascinating glimpse into his philosophy and techniques. Obviously, there are lots of thumping kicks, distinctively trademark pianos and pads and more to load up, but this pack not only gives you the means of production, it also gives you a guide to how to put it to its most effective use.

Review: Brian Leeds is the US outsider behind the well known Huerco S project, and also behind other alases like Royal Crown of Sweden, Pendant, and Loidis. One Day is a new album from that last moniker on the revered Incienso label and it taps into minimal, dub and tech in stylish fashion. These often dusty and perfectly undercooked beats have heady pads and locked in grooves that travel to the cosmos on 'Wait & See', subterranean worlds on 'Wait & See' and to breezy open air dances on 'Sugar Shot'. It's a smooth and seductive work.

Review: Canadian artist Tiga and Scotsman Hudson Mohawke's creative bond thrives on, they say, a mutual love of "hardcore romance," which is a unique blend of euphoria, melancholy, and raw friendship power. From 2019 to 2023 in Los Angeles, their mutual inspirations shaped L'Ecstasy, which is their debut album on Tiga's Turbo label. It was originally envisioned for 6am rave catharsis but then the project evolved to embrace 90s rave influences. It features chill-out ambient tracks like 'Exit Warehouse at Dawn' and 'LMZNIN' but also bangs with more immediate anthems like 'IN ORDER 2,' 'VSOD,' and 'Ascending into the Clouds', all of which leave indelible marks. This album captures this accomplished pair's journey through sonic landscapes and celebrates the highs and lows of their musical kinship in a space of creative ecstasy.

Review: The creative partnership between Tiga & Hudson Mohawke expresses a mutual love of "hardcore romance," a liminal state where the bounds between euphoria, melancholy and the raw power of friendship disintegrate completely. Recorded in Los Angeles from 2019-2023, these commonalities ebbed and flowed through various recording sessions, culminating in their debut album - L'Ecstacy - the sounds in which "all come from the same place, the same musical universe," in Hudson Mohawke's own words. Referencing the album's locus of bouncy elasticity and cinematic gloss - "we're building a particular kind of zone where it all fits together. A place lost in time." With guest appearances by luminaries like Abra, Channel Tres, and Jesse Boykins III, as well as album artwork by Wolfgang Tillmans, the result is delivered with "no apology, no cynicism, no irony, no winking."

Review: HudMo is on rampant form at the moment, firing off collaborations left, right and centre and, as usual, never missing. That said, this project feels like something very special indeed, as he doubles down on kinship with Canadian techno legend Tiga to make an album in thrall to the surge of feelings that hit us when we submit to the possibilities of the night. It's a romantic kind of techno that comes on like early B12 or Artificial Intelligence-era techno in places, but there's also some crafty hooks and flamboyance as you would rightly expect from such a heavyweight studio pairing.