Techno charts

Review: Dan Piu and Grant's Theory of Movement project has served up gold for lovers of heady tech and minimal. After something of a hiatus, it is now back on When The Morning Comes with more of the sort of tuneage that is going to quickly sell out and soon become the ID request du jour at your favourite underground parties. These are of course sophisticated sounds from the silky house bumps of 'Now & Then' with its seductive vocal allure to the throwback 90s sounds of 'Over Time' (Acid Mix). 'Basis' (Foundation mix) is another immediately classic house sound with analogue and dusty drums and zippy melodies next to more smooth chords. 'Motion Of Objects' shuts down with a more zoned-out vibe and widescreen melodic architecture for late nights.

Review: Two years ago, Italy's Balearic Gabba Soundsystem switched from remixing and re-editing their favourite cuts to curating compilation style EPs of similarly minded fare. They're in that mode again here, presenting a trio of cuts that combine the saucer-eyed warmth and loved-up musicality of Balearic music culture with grooves and rhythms firmly focused on the dancefloor. They begin by showcasing Wallace's sublime remix of Sewell & The Gong's 'Better Worlds', a locked-in, hypnotising fusion of semi-organic deep house grooves, new age melodic motifs and the dreamiest of ambient chords. Over on the flip they dip into slo-mo Italo-disco/acid house fusion via SIRS fine revision of My Friend Dario's 'Tell Aro', before treating us to a Pedro Bertho remix of Verdo's 'Belvourdier' in which sparkling Balearic house piano riffs, undulating acid lines and mid-80s "chorus" synth sounds rise above a fluctuating synthesiser bassline and hustling beats.

Review: Continuing the research project started last year, Sound Metaphors, Transmigration, and historian Ray Castle present an in-depth analysis of the dancefloor scene in Goa during the 80s and early 90s, before trance became a mainstream genre. This tropical underground haven thrived on unique aesthetics, with dedicated collectors and DJs curating the finest "special goa music" from the era's emerging electronic tracks. This compilation features impactful new beat, proto-techno, early progressive, trance, industrial, EBM and house music tracks, accompanied by event photographs in a double LP gatefold with a poster and liner notes by Ray Castle. Re-mastered in Berlin, it's an essential addition to any record collection.

Review: A2L were active between 1988 and 1990 and released two albums and several EPs on labels like 1st Bass, Big One and Force Inc. Their sound blended British psychedelic house with elements of new beat, industrial, EBM and early acid house and in doing so captured the raw energy of the UK rave scene. Notably different from typical acid house acts of the time, A2L's music took in machine funk, samplers and turntable techniques to create trippy, infectious grooves. This collection compiles rare underground gems from them from 1989 and features standout tracks like 'Even Though It's Make Believe' and 'Come On.' It's a great look back to the experimental spirit of the late 80s.

Review: There's plenty to set the pulse racing within this new set of remixes of tracks from Seb Wildblood's superb album "Sketches Of Transition", which dropped on All My Thoughts earlier in the year. Our pick of the bunch is the superb Suzanne Kraft remix of "Amelia", which wraps glistening '80s guitar sounds and fretless bass notes around a chugging, arpeggio-driven groove, though many may gravitate towards the tight but undeniably groovy and melodious Jenifa Mayanja deep house version of "Small Talk". Elsewhere, Ciel re-imagines "Bahn" as an intoxicating chunk of bleep-laden broken electronica/Balearic fusion, while object blue impressively chops up "Sketches" into a sludgy, mind-altering style.

Review: Given her South Korean roots, it's perhaps unsurprising that Peggy Gou has chosen to give a platform to Mogwaa, a producer who has long been a fixture on the South-East Asian country's electronic music scene. His debut EP for Gudu is genuinely impressive, offering synth-heavy, mid-tempo takes on house and nu-disco awash with colourful melodies and sun-kissed chords. Opener 'From Above' is a bubbly, energy-packed affair that gathers momentum throughout, while 'Spacial Bliss' cannily combines live drums and guitars with sparkling washes of sound, cascading melodies and a deliciously tactile bassline. Over on side B, 'Fizz' sees Mogwaa add synthesized Gayageum melodies to a punchy electro beat, before 'Cloudride' rounds things off via turn-of-the-90s Italian deep house sonics and more gorgeous, life-affirming lead lines.

Review: Orpheu The Wizard is a Dutch DJ and co-founder of the infamous but sadly now defunct Red Light Radio. Coming through for the fifth edition of the Sound Of Love International series - which showcases the eclectic musical tastes of the DJs who play at the Love International festival in Croatia - this fresh selectors' comp hears Orpheu crate-fiddle through cosmic disco, Balearic pop, synthwave and ambient, by the likes of Khidja, Benedek, Donato Dozzy and Gaussian Curve.

Review: In 2016, Peggy Gou debuted with her EP Art of War and allegedly sett ambitious career goals, including playing Berlin's iconic Berghain and contributing to !K7's DJ-Kicks series. She achieved both. This 69th edition of the legendary mix series seeks to reflect her musical journey across 18-tracks that blend disco, house, techno and electro-spanning tempos from 90 to 150 BPM. Highlights include her own exclusive track 'Hungboo' alongside works by Aphex Twin and Andrew Weatherall and shows she has wide tastes and the skills to knit those together into a fine, storytelling mix that rides up and down, covers plenty of emotion, and never forgets about the groove.

Review: Prince De Takicardie delivers a new four-track set of tachycardial heart-racers as reinforcements to his own Prince's Castle, which is both a label and a proverbial princely citadel. This is also the Barceloni producer's second edition to the powered 'Force Bleu' EP series, matched colourfully by the equally propulsive 'Force Rouge' counterpart, for which there have also been two records so far. Increasing in both pace and intensity, this raw and jammy follow-up reaches its crescendo at the rough 15-minute mark with the hypnotic 'EX-ecute (Execution Mix)', which conclusively yields to mesmeric acid and mystical three-tone entrainments, contrasting the first three track's relative utilitarian sense.

Review: The Fourier Transform label outlay an arresting sonic journey on their debut release, bringing together breakbeat, ambient IDM, ambient techno, and prog house under a single banner. Opening with Inkipak's 'Betwixt', we're met with sonorous low-mid square waves and machine-gun-fire breaks, recalling the breathtaking, verging on apocalyptic expanse of a warehouse rave turned laser light show turned warzone. We break from this warring weir with 'Omnicron Acid' and 'City Of Tomorrow' by Gimmik and Brian Kage respectively, which lowers the intensity and sonic flow via spacious atmospheres and dudding percussive pops. Finally, the perfect fusion of the former two moods is achieved on 'Corrosive Tongue', the lead synth on which sounds like just that.

Review: 'Let The Spirit' is a new tune by Michael Reinboth on Compost that reworks a stone-cold deep house classic. The original was one of the many peerless tracks laid down by Chez Damier & Ron Trent back in the 1990s and is a perfect mix of steamy synth work and rumbling drums that locks you in and leads to rapture. Here it becomes more cosmic as the chords shine a little brighter. Also featuring on the 12" is 'RS6 Avant' as both a starry-eyed Cosmic version and a more driving, drum-centric club version. This one is worth it for the A1 alone, and that's just for starters.

Review: While she's been making moves as a club DJ in recent times, Paula Tape has not released a record since 2021. This EP, whose title doffs a cap to her Chilean roots, is therefore well overdue. It's rather good too, as proven by opener 'Acid Latino (Sonido Real)', where distinctively South American melodies, TB-303 tweaks and echo-laden spoken word snippets rise above a bold acid house bassline, tough beats and layered percussion. 'Feel 2 Real' sees our hero reach for sparkling house pianos, deep bass, sharper acid lines and spacey synths, while 'De2 Locura' is warmer, heavier and more melodically complex. To round off a fine EP, she joins forces with Caravan for the sax-laden South American house excellence of 'Ibis', a track as percussively intense as it is sonically seductive and sub-heavy.

Review: Highly curious, difficult-to-pin-down techno/Italo-ish stuff from Prince Of Takicardia and Rifeno, who here jointly assist Backward Futura in its mission to explore the sounds of 1980s and 1990s through the lens of the new Millennium. We find this aim to be something of red herring, since these tracks sound almost entirely new in their composition, and not necessarily of those times, not least since they were made in the 2020s; while taking obvious cues from those eras, the likes of 'Arte Del Sexo' and 'La Casa Del Ritmo' flesh enough out of their respective influences to sound untied from them. Through cinematic breaks and tropical bleep, Rifeno and the Prince portray their wild but no less at easse imaginations, bringing the sunned and stressless feel of the Balearic Isles to the darker worlds of EBM and industrial, making for a complex sonic flavour.

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.

Review: Multi Culti introduces Orchid's vibrant tribute to Spain's trance era on this album which merges Balearic allure with a rejection of modern techno's commercialism. Orchid, isolated in a psychedelic-deprived nation, yearns for the cultural fusion of sex, power, love, and sweetness found in Spanish-speaking music scenes. Techno Valencia beckons listeners to immerse themselves in a nostalgic journey, evoking the soulful resonance of a bygone musical era. Through exploration of archival sounds, Orchid resurrects the essence of pure musical expression, inviting a return to a time when music was deeply felt-a testament to passion and fun in an age of commercialisation.

Review: Deep In Dis make a defiant comeback with their latest V/A, across which five new jaunty minimal house cuts are heard. Beginning with an expositional slow-burn - Pily's 'Bailo En Circuito', which samples Alma Matris' vocals - we then move into the juddering trance of 'Buahh Trance' by Marcos Coya and then the first mix of 'Badalona's House' by Prince De Takicardie, the latter of which is far rougher and classic in sound. Jnjs' 'X Money' brings up the B with a UK garage turn, a mood which continues with Eren Arif's 'High Volume'.

Review: The Milano Undiscovered series has been expertly overseen by Fred Ventura and now clocks up a third installment. It again delves into Milan's dynamic techno and house scene between the years of 1988 and 1992. Unveiling a trove of unreleased demos, it highlights the city's burgeoning underground culture during this period. Influenced by the pioneering sounds of Chicago, Detroit, London, and Sheffield, Milanese producers embarked on a creative journey, crafting their own distinct interpretations of electronic dance music. These demos offer a glimpse into the innovative spirit and diverse sonic landscape that defined Milan's contribution to the global dance music scene during this transformative era.