Back in stock: Techno (All)

Review: ANAZANAUT is a time-bending audio artefact stitched together from decades of disparate sonic moments. With recordings spanning from 1984 to 2024, the techno project feels like a cosmic scrapbook-fragmented memories reborn through meticulous remixing and remastering. From the icy atmospherics of 'Voice on the Air' to the vintage grit of 'Poacher Path (Extended Mix),' these tracks vibrate with echoes of past lives stitched together by a logic only time understands. ANAZANAUT doesn't follow a linear path; it loops, folds, and bends with compelling grooves and myriad occult sounds adding character and curiosity.

Review: Polish label FOMO_ debuts with the first in its news Spectral series, and who better to kick off with than the ever innovative ASC. He is a master of musical tension and abstraction and shows that with four tracks that build up the pressure and never let it go. 'Calm Under Pressure' is soothing up top with its smeared, spectral pads, but there's pent-up tension in the low end that keeps you on edge. 'Dark Arches' soundtracks an underground cavern with haunting pads and icy, watery droplets and 'Maelstrom' gets more direct with jostling broken beats, hissing trails and unsettling deep space mystery. 'Torsion' is the most maximal of the lot - an in-your-face collage of loopy, snappy drums and sordid synth sludge.

Review: Here's an interesting proposition: two new takes on one of Italo-disco's most celebrated tunes, Charlie's throbbing, synthesizer-powered 1983 masterpiece 'Spacer Woman'. Valentino Kanzayani steps up first, delivering an epic, 11-minute interpretation that subtly beefs up the beats and stretches out the spacey, arpeggio-driven groove before finishing on a lengthy, loved-up ambient section. Dana Ruh's flipside remix is a little more revolutionary, with punchy electro beats, a brand new, TB-303 driven bassline and undulating acid lines underpinning deep space chords, slowly shifting electronic motifs and snippets of the original vocal. It's tastefully done and pleasingly different, which is what you want from modern remixes of classic cuts.

Review: Derral is a young and exciting producer based just outside Barcelona. But if you didn't know that and were to judge purely off his music then you would assume he was some Italian producer from the 90s who had been digging in his archives for some unreleased material. These are lo-fi, dreamy house tracks with a real sense of bang but also quality emotional depth. 'Tree Man' is particularly glorious with its neon details and old school piano chords while 'State of Mind' brings a touch of acid to a jacked up Chicago house beat.

Review: Helena Hauff's distinctive musical vision has made her one of techno and electro's most unique and celebrated selectors, and it's this side of her work that's showcased on "Kern Volume 5: Exclusives & Rarities", a triple-vinyl set that focuses on the numerous hard-to-find and previously unreleased tracks featured on her new DJ mix for Tresor. As you'd expect the quality threshold remains thrillingly high throughout, with Hauff focusing on fuzzy and scuzzy heavyweight slabs of electro, techno, ghetto tech and industrial-strength hardcore. Amongst the unreleased highlights are tracks from Umwelt, Machino, Galaxian, L.F.T and her good self (alongside Morah), while crate diggers will note the inclusion of rarities from Esoterik, Andrea Parker and David Morley, and DJ Godfather and DJ Starkski.

Review: Kessell (Spain's Valentin Corujo) returns with his new EP 'Savage Garden' on Polegroup. The EP's name is certainly not to be confuddled as a reference to the boyish queer-affirmative trip hop duo of the same name; the emphasis here is rather on a truncated techno paradise, with a five-horned satyr gracing a classically styled front cover. It marks but one of many pummeller techno releases put out by the artist since 2013, though it's only his second after 'Nothing Left To Say' (Pole, 2023) to surrealise academic or Renaissance cover art. 'Hidden Echoes' and 'Seeing Beyond' stand out as the main darkened, textural edenics to saturate this utter floor stressor of a record, as though a giant hydraulic press were menacing the crowd from above.

Review: While not one of Kraftwerk's most celebrated albums, Techno-Pop (known on its original 1986 release as Electric Cafe) has actually stood the test of time rather well - as this re-mastered, re-packaged clear vinyl reissue proves. The A-side suite of 'Boom-Boom-Tchak', 'Techno-Pop' and 'Musique Non-Stop' provides the perfect mix of clanking, metallic electro percussion, addictive melodies and sassy synth-pop sounds. 'House Phone' - an alternative version of 'The Telephone Call' - is also amongst the German band's heaviest, most club-ready cuts, thanks in no small part to Francois Kevorkian's superb mixing. As with the band's other 2020 reissues, this edition also comes packaged with a glossy booklet containing rare and iconic images of the group.

Review: Island Beats welcome the return of Dani Labb for his second release 'Inclementia', converging sonic memory and dystopian fiction: the DJ and producer from Rio Negra culls his inspirations from the the many grim realms glimpsed in the video games that defined his youth, daubing a claustrophobic, hard-acid breaks pixel painting. Though the game realms aren't named, we're hearing hellish sonic level design in this one, be that in the Half Life security breach voices of 'Locked Away' or the dungeon crawling Doom acid of 'Hijack'.