Back catalogue: Techno (All)

Review: Few labels in techno are as consistent as Planet Rhythm. This latest 12" comes on flame red vinyl and Federico Gandin is the man stoking the fires. There is no messing about here as 'The Storm' soon takes off on classically inclined loopy minimal techno grooves with urgent calls and synth pulses. 'Les Intrepides' then pairs a bendy, elastic baseline with scuttling sound FX and tunnelling beats. 'The Hideout' is more glitchy with broken loops and underlapping drums carrying you away while 'The Arrival' actually marks the end in serene, deeply cosmic techno style.

Review: Ten EPs in under this name and the German producer uses his background to land an important EP with this highly revered techno label. These four tracks hit with urgency but never feel one-note. There's real movement and contrast throughout, keeping things charged without being too fast. The opener, 'Fast Process', comes out swinging. It's all steam and steel, driven by a stomping kick and razor-sharp percussion. But just above that intensity floats a swirling melodic line, adding a ghostly presence that hangs over the chaos. 'Miami Nights' digs into a different groove. The low-end rolls heavy, while tough chords and tribal elements give it a more grounded, earthy energy. It's relentless but rooted. On Side-B, 'Clap Your Dubby Hands' explodes with percussion. It feels wild and physical, the kind of track that could lift a set straight into overdrive. There's a rawness here that nods to his early schranz days without feeling stuck in the past. 'Ultra Eight' pulls back just slightly, going deeper and more spaced out. It's colder, more introspective, like the soundtrack to some strange, distant city. Together, these cuts hit hard but leave plenty of air to breathe.

Review: As always there are no frills, no fads and nothing fancy about this fresh slab of techno goodness from Planet Rhythm, just pure and unadulterated rhythms to lose your shit to. Gunlock is the one firing them out and 'Thorax' sure does come at you like machine gun bullets, while 'Mo' Future' is more metal and trippy with its busy, tight synth loops. '19th & Nicollet' keeps things lively with nimble drums and shot, pithy synth details that ping about the mix. There is more brutalism to the hammering drums of 'Good Droids Gone Bad' and still space for two more techno tools that will rewire any dancefloor.

Review: Gunjack indents a lasting impression with the 'Detroit Tango' EP for Planet Rhythm, taking after the distinct Motor Citied techno style whilst also bringing a supremely balanced and original slant. The producer shows off a clinical, precise, nigh surgical approach to texture, gain staging and mixing, building on a genre that otherwise prides itself on 'rawness' (i.e. gritty street-realist unpolish) and moving further into a direction of serenity and clarity. Take the low end movements of 'Rocket Surgery', on which the track's coltish hook and subnautical kick do not sound separate, but rather one sounds to 'emerge' from the other; and 'The Drumz', which evidently takes after Millsart's 'The Bells' for a more enlivened jamboree, albeit one that still somehow fits in with the softer subtleties of the EP's obverse trax.

Review: Planet Rhythm has been one of the premier hard techno labels for over 30 years now. Exploring some different avenues in the last decade, the label recently launched a series of heavy dub techno related records identified as DUBWARS. Volume two features four different artists this time with each submitting a new piece to the label focus. Fans of Basic Channel's 'Phylyps Trak' should quickly head to OFF/GRID - 'One Stab Ahead' for that main room filler. Gunjack's 'Memory Man' is another upbeat killer in its own right adding a bit of acid along with the melodic chord progression. For the second side, Antic Soul's 'Mandalore' stirs in a bit of house culture to the hard dub techno sound to great effect. Lastly, Lenny San bring's the party to their feet with 'Hedonist'. Heavy techno heads should really enjoy this packed 12"

Review: Planet Rhythm's special series continues with a sixth instalment here and this one is another various artists banger. It kicks off with Stipp & Edvvin's 'Everything' which is high-speed and punchy techno before Toni Alvarez strips things back and drops the sleek, percussive minimalism of 'Deep Inside.' Tom Rotzki's 'Signature Groove' is another pent-up and funky percussive techno bumper and last of all comes Gockel, a turbo-charged sound with buoyant kicks and plenty of machine rawness defining the grooves of 'Push The Pace'.

Review: We're always happy to be in the orbit of Planet Rhythm and this time Stipp and Genex lure us in for a dancefloor collision with their macho techno tools. 'Last To Act' is a big old wall of drums and percussive loops with a funky rhythm and 'Overcall' is pure mind music with its twisted, silken synths and ever-present drum pressure. 'Places' keeps things upright and punchy with cantering kicks and whirring machine sounds and 'All In; shuts down with a jacked-up mix of analogue drums and deep-sonar pulses. It makes for quite the thrill.

Review: Netherlands techno titan Planet Rhythm goes full percussive gas giant on their latest V/A, 'Friction', a motorsport motivator full of accelerometric elan - one of several V/As to grace their revving catalogue in recent times. Ramon Tapia leads the motorcade with 'Friction', a stabbing aerator full of overtop claps and rims, while Louis Lp's 'Radioactivity' unsettles with its seething high ringing and affectively isolated chord-stab-melody. Deas' 'Hard Dreams' nods to the real, unshakeably material core of dreams, with its rancorous full-tone acids, while Ramon Topia closes with 'Fear', a restless, chord-throttling, hard trancey, speed demonic rally racer.

Review: Gale-force sonic apneas from Planet Rhythm, the label and unstoppable phonic force from Rotterdam. The imprint's latest V/A release in the Dubwars series this time takes on its own name, 'Minerals', and welcomes rambunctious techno troilers from the likes of Unknown Code, OFF / GRID, and Luca Accardi. Rhythmically dragged, diminished stab-chords define the A1 and A2 against metal girdered kick patterns, with 'Moment' especially nailing that ever-sought-after sweet spot of energy and anhedonia, a mixed feeling perhaps only achievable within techno's ambit. Dub techno inflections turn to infarctions, as Accardi's 'Minerals' sucks the sonic substrate dry with ballistic echoes, giving way to Gockel's minimal mountaintop NDE, 'Meditation In Tibet'.