Back catalogue: Techno (All)

Review: Fourth part of the compilation celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Milanese record shop. This collection is entirely composed of previously unreleased music, exclusively produced for the occasion by many artists of great relevance in the worldwide music scene, who supported the store over the last ten years.
This EP features Ellen Allien, Kreggo, Timeslip89, Itinerant Dubs and Heith.

Review: On the A1 Chekov follows up their moves on Peach Discs and Timedance with a proper peak timer, they've been described by Ben UFO as 'king of the build up' and that's evident on this one. At the A2 London's Doppelate makes their Cong Burn debut with an elegant tech-house roller. Fresh from Russia's underground is Camin, on this, his debut 12" release he drops a useful tool which squeezes between electro and techno. Cong Burn founder Howes closes the B side with some warm hypnosis that could have landed in the golden era of Workshop.

Review: Some three years after making her first appearance on Central Processing Unit, storied electro star Annie Hall (real name Ana Artalejo Moreno) returns to the Sheffield-based label with another fabulous four-track missive. It's a pleasingly varied affair, with the sometime Semantica contributor confidently striding between deep, melodious, laidback, IDM-influenced fare (the undeniably emotive, occasionally bittersweet 'Memories That Never Happened'), shimmering and sparkling, sci-fi-seeped 21st century electrofunk ('Problematic Tape Recorder'), Autechre-influenced glacial IDM excellence ('Subsequent Experiments') and warm and dreamy downtempo electro bliss (the sustained chords, gentle melodies and slipped hip-hop beats of 'Unparalleled Comfort').

Review: Yaleesa Hall's track record over nearly 10 years is nigh-on flawless, evolving to form an integral part of the Dutch techno and electro stable Will & Ink with release upon release of inspired edginess from the dark and sticky shadows of machine music. That's as true as it ever was on this latest Will & Ink drop, which follows four variations on an excursion into pneumatic, taut electro loaded with weapons-grade bass throb and bolstered by iron cladding. There's detail and dynamic sound design fizzing in and out of every bar, and that's where the magic lies on this latest transmission from one of the best doing it right now.

Review: Elusive techno silhouette Yaleesa Hall drops three new ones for their very own co-run Dutch label Will & Ink (alongside fellow artist Malin Genie). High-tempo techno and electro with the occasional sprinkling of EBM essence, this trio of tunes are as jackhammery as they are dreamy, with 'Newman' providing the gloomy foretaste; 'Shanks' the dreamy, electrified meat-on-the-bone; and 'Williams' the rapturous coda.

Review: "Way back in the 1990s, Mark Hand, Neil Iceton & Jez Nicholl channelled their love of sci-fi-fired Motor City techno into a string of inspired releases under the alias Cubic Space Collective.

After reuniting for a memorable machine jam at Freerotation festival in 2016, Hand & Iceton headed back into the studio for a one-off session and recorded 'Holiday in Beta Centauri', a musical love letter to Mad Mike and the rest of Detroit's most militant futurist techno crew.

Sending us surging skywards via 'Binary System', where lilting lead lines, fizzing electronics and enveloping chords dance atop a snappy, cymbal-heavy drum machine rhythm, before 'Arps in Hyperspace' sees them step things up a notch via layered waves of synths, sparkling melodies and a driving, hyper-speed groove.

The North-East-based twosome then attempt to warm us to the core in the shape of 'Rigil': restless organ stabs, undulating Michigan bass, alien electronics, psychedelic acid lines and Galaxy 2 Galaxy style chords catching the ear. Bringing us gently back down to earth, they complete their deep space mission with 'Beyond The Nebula (Holiday in Beta Centauri)', a bustling electro number full of stabbing analogue bass, star-burst electronics, meditative ambient chords that shimmer full of night-sky melodies.

A fine return to action for this Teesside UR-loving techno twosome... 3,167 miles away in Detroit, their achievement will be noted."

Review: Following on from last year's impressive Redlight debut, Scott Hess is back on his Adeen label with another selection of warm and inventive house cuts splashed with colour and analogue wobbles precision-engineered to catch your ear. Lead track 'Sirius City' leans on a harmonically rich lead line and plenty of off-kilter wriggles to appeal to those who want some cheekiness in their tunes. 'UFO' sports a tasteful acid tweak running in between plush pads and snappy drums, while 'Call Me, Acid' plays around with telephone tropes to make a bleepy jam that will have the ID requests flying in. 'Stars' offers something sweeter to complete the set, spacing out the beats to leave the synths plenty of room to cavort around a celestial name-checking session for deep house dreamers.

Review: Kenny Hooper is a fresh talent from one of the true meccas of electro, Detroit. He's stated his place in the city's storied machine funk narrative with Detroit Orbiter Vol. 1, and you can absolutely hear the Cybotron and Model 500 influences coming through on strident opener 'Deeper'. This is electro drawing from the roots of the sound, working the artist's personality into the music for the perfect cybernetic hybrid with benefit of modern-day production and its undeniable impact. Fun, funky as hell and serious where it counts, this is the real deal - Hooper's destined for great things, no doubt.

Review: Belgian label Elypsia continues its love affair with Kenny Hopper on this third volume of his Detroit Orbiter series. He is a new school Motor City talent with a sound that pays homage to the legendary Mid-Western musical hotbed. 'One Journey Outbox' is a high-speed electro workout with nutty basslines and free-form hits that cannot fail to cut the club loose. There's more physicality to the kinetic kicks of 'Elliptical Orbit' while 'Wishing Pon A Star' goes for a deeper and more introspective sound with delicate melodies. 'Soul Journey' closes out with a totally different look - deep rolling house and beautiful synth melodies over jazzy chords.

Review: Organic Analogue makes it to double figures with a sublime new split EP from HVL and Gacha Bakradze. The A-side is opened up with 'Infinitesimal', a stripped back and icy bit of minimal dub techno, then 'AgneffC01' gets more rhythmically physical with scattered beats and hits and 'Collective Genius' is tense, kinetic techno with a real sense of paranoia. 'Routes' is the first B-side joint with Gacha Bakradze bringing some direct but economical drum machine grooves under meticulous percussion and then 'Chain' layers smeared cosmic pads with twitchy details and 'Widow' ends with a heavy heart. No wonder, then, that a host of eminent DJs like Ben UFO are all over it.

Review: Golden Pudel's number one DJ-turned-producer, Helena Hauff, returns to Actress's Werkdiscs with her debut LP, marking a fine start to the September release downpour! Compared to her last effort for the label and her banger of an EP on Lux, Discreet Desires spans across much vaster landscapes, and while we knew that she was heavily into Detroit electro, the album is heavily focused on fast, broken beats brimming with synths. "Spur" and "Funereal Morality", for example, are a pair of Drexcyian bombshells, while "Piece Of Pleasure" clearly takes inspiration from Kraftwerk and the resulting synth pop wave. Instead, "Silver Sands & Boxes Of Mould" showcases her more experimental side thanks to its cinematic soundscapes and sparse beats, along with the beatless sway of "Dreams In Color". A fine debut LP that cements Hauff's position at the vanguard of current electronics.

Review: Helena Hauff is surely one of the most important envelope pushers in the modern electro scene, able to lay waste to parties big and small with her razor-sharp fusion of early EBM and industrial, slamming, deeply-dug machine funk and thunderous techno. Cutting hard and fast to keep the energy up and our minds fried, her invitation to the Fabric presents series is just another confirmation of the stature she commands. If you're down with Hauff's style you'll get exactly what you crave here - all-time classics from the likes of Clarence G and Radioactive Man alongside up to the minute bomb drops from IMOGEN, Nite Fleit and so many more besides.

Review: In the post-minimal years, and after the deep house revival, dark techno and electro became the most fertile ground for new producers. Hamburg-born Helena Hauff was one of those who brought through such sounds and she has since become a global tastemaker who has perfected the art of dark and hard-hitting soundscapes. She shows that off once more here with her selections for the mighty Fabric presents series. It is raw, fierce and rough yet seamlessly moves through breakbeat, electro and the still magical charms of Autechre's remix of D-Breeze's 'Crazy For Love' from 1999 which closes the mix in style.

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Review: This archival release on Organic Analogue digs back into the prolific '90s period of Swedish techno maverick Jean-Louis Huhta, aka Dungeon Acid. These days he releases on iDEAL, Fit Sound, Borft and Klasse Wrecks, but he cut his techno teeth on labels like Hybrid, Svek and H. Productions. Clad in artwork details by Swedish graffiti legend Nug, Wormhole Of Time comprises unreleased cuts and long out-of-print jams spanning many of Huhta's aliases. The release also comes with a zine featuring photographs and an interview reflecting on Huhta's multifarious life in music.

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."