Electro Recommendations March 2016

Review: Rotterdam's DJ Overdose inaugurates new Budapest label Dalmata Daniel with some dark and twisted Drexciyan/Ectomorphian electro nodes. He gets straight down to business on the thumping speaker attack that is "Path To Wrath". There's that dark electro sound so reminiscent of The Bunker heard on "That's Right" complete with jacking vocals. Fellow Hungarian S Olbricht gets on board for a remix of "Path To Wrath" which is some seriously sub aquatic 4/4 electro that works rather well. You'd be forgiven for thinking that "05 Poly 800 Loop" is a locked groove, it's not! But it certainly is a killer DJ tool in the vein of classic Aux 88 Detroit electro. Final track "B(eh)anger (12z remix)" is the kind of gothic electro that people like Visonia and Beta Evers would be in awe of.

Review: In late 2014, Cultivated Electronics undertook a series of releases that would see label boss Sync 24 working with some of electro music's finest contemporary acts. It's been a slow process thus far, with two 12"s in the series featuring Sync 24's work alongside The Exaltics and Finnish pair Morphology. The ever-busy Ed DMX becomes the third artist to work with Sync 24 for the series, joining forces under the MMT 8 name for the Sequencer EP. Taking their name from the Alesis 8 track midi-sequencer, the pair throw down a quartet of raw analogue electro jams for the dancefloor and mind which leave us hoping this is not a one-off collaboration!!

Review: We knew that Egyptian Lover had had a revival of sorts over the last five or so years, but we really weren't expecting an album of new material from the man, and as soon as this dropped onto our laps, we just had to throw it onto the HQ turntable. More than thirty years might have passed, but Greg Broussard is still doing what he does best, that is to release gnarly, off-the-chain electro with a Far-Eastern edge. Featuring twelve tracks of instant dance delight, the Lover develops his '80s sound further by stripping the grooves back further, and letting the beats do the majority of the talking. There are, of course, the inevitable bursts of vocoder voices, but unlike other artists, Broussard manages to make them sound fresh and compelling, utterly fun and cutting-edge. Highly recommended!

Review: London's Brokntoys hit double figures and do it in style with the Perfect Language 12" which canvasses another cross section of electro's finest. Artmechanical boss Junq is up first, with the gloriously squelchy acid electro stylings of "303 Days On Kepla-47c" which stands up well against the more unhinged Lowlands approach of Syncom Data's "UnphAzD" (Strings Attached mix). Warning: watch out for the razor sharp bass on this cut from SD duo! Vienna pair Microthol add a touch of underwater adventure with the crisp "mod_electro_mix4" whilst Swede Etcher ends the record with a good old fashioned exercise in banging the box. Heres to another ten releases Brokntoys!

Review: Since 2003, MinimalRome has been a shining light for all things electro in the Italian city, welcoming the likes of JTC, The Hacker, Danny Wolfers, Polysick and Alessandro Parisi into the fold along with the numerous projects of founders Valerio 'Heinrich Dressel' Lombardozzi and Gianluca 'Feedback' Bertasi. After a relatively quiet 2015, MinimalRome spring into action with a real sense of purpose here on the latest TeslaSonic offering from Lombardozzi and Bertasi. Entitled Electrical Oscillator Activity, the six-track mini album is a prime slab of MinimalRome goodness stepped in conceptual mystery, paying homage to Nikola Tesla, "electricity, its applications and its revolutionary place in the history of mankind."

Review: Having previously forged his reputation with a series of hard-wired releases on his own Power Vacuum label, Milo "Bintus" Smee makes his first appearance on Shipwrec. He goes in hard from the off, combining distorted techno kicks, punchy electro percussion hits and winding acid lines on the buzzing "Acid Shores". There's a metallic intensity about "SEG", with pitched down drum-machine cowbells and throbbing electronics helping to drive the track forwards. Flip to the B for "Live Section (#1)", which effortlessly joins the dots between Dexter-style Rotterdam electro, the more stripped-back work of Legowelt, and the no-holds-barred world of dark and funky techno.

Review: The last time we'd heard from Anokie was back in 2010, when they released a powerful electro EP on the Zyntax Motorcity, a long-running German imprint dedicated to the more punchy-side of techno and electro. Anokie's return comes as a welcome surprise, particularly because it comes in the form of an album, six explorative tracks to be precise. From the vast and wondrous sonic plains of "We Catalogue Events", to the funky electro swings of "5th Circuit", and the broken, dubwise drum machines of "Somewhere South", it's a synth lovers' guide to heaven.

Review: Romansoff is Romania's prime craftsman of raw, gritty house that breaks away from the country's traditional minimal sound, and leans over into the more LIES sort of territory. His Raw Tools label has been successful ever since the firs pellet came out in 2013, but he's up on Signal Code this time, and the dude has moulded three absolutely grooving licks. "Forbidden Land" is a contained, pad-heavy house mutant made of you to stretch the sets out to their very limits, and the Privacy remix breaks the 4/4 up and delivers a retro sort of electro vibe. On the flip, "Drone" is a pure house muscle, the sort of tune that contains kick-drums able to shake a dance floor up in an instant, whereas "Pardon My Behaviour" stutters and glitches its house magic all over the shop thanks to a very tight, and jam-packed groove. Classy house cuts.

Review: Mysterious Manchester artist Belly is back with the raw and crunchy rocktronica of "Water" featuring tough as nails rock drums and wailing vocals contrasted by layers of heavenly pads. It gets remixed pretty well too: Brassica gives it a classic UK bass remix that rolls deep, Thinnen's remix however stays more faithful to the original but cuts up the drums in a junglist fashion and is absolutely fierce. Finally Gummerson Rebel gives it a dark electro makeover that would make Carl Finlow stand up and notice.

Review: By now, we've come accustomed to Tabernacle Records exploring the outer reaches of Detroit-influenced techno, electro and ambient. Even so, their latest outing - from regular contributor Jeremiah R - is something special. Beginning with the floatation tank-in-space ambience of "Chorus", Calisto sees the producer laying down a whopping eight cuts that variously touch in Drexciyan electro, Artificial Intelligence-era IDM, and hard-to-define hybrids that confirm the intergalactic potential of electronic music. Interestingly, the music is roughly equally split between horizontally inclined, beat-less explorations, surging dancefloor workouts, and the kind of mid '90s home listening fodder that sits somewhere in between.

Review: Last year, Andrew Weatherall launched yet another collaborative project, joining forces with long-time pal and occasional studio partner Nina Walsh as The Woodleigh Research Facility. Here, they continue their partnership with The Phoenix Suburb (And Other Stories), a fine debut album that marks the first material on Weatherall's Rotters Golf Club imprint since 2013. Rooted in the Detroit end of electro, but with more than a hint of the early, IDM influenced escapades of the former Junior Boys Own man's Two Lone Swordsmen project, it's a set that combines moments of snappy dancefloor heaviness with more evocative, ambient-influenced fare. There are, of course, plenty of intriguing aural references to shared influences - psychedelia, rockabilly, Arabic music, and so on - scattered throughout, making it an intriguing and entertaining proposition.

Review: Post-punk aficionados may already by familiar with Crash Course In Science, a Philadelphia-based band who released two acclaimed singles between 1979 and '81, before going their separate ways. Here, one of the band's previously unheard 1981 demos gets mixed and released for the first time. "Jump Over Barrels" is a song about overcoming adversity, and in newly mixed form sounds like a lost post-punk classic. It's accompanied by a couple of demos - their initial 1981 recording, and an earlier, deliciously skeletal and heavy rehearsal version - and a fresh remix from Tadd Mullinix under his now familiar Charles Manier alias. The Ann Arbor-based producer does a good job of toughening up the track for modern dancefloors, whilst retaining the free-spirited essence of Crash Course In Science's original.

Review: The mysterious Qnete tied off 2015 in fine style, landing on London's Lobster Theremin with a saucy little white label that rocked our speakers out. He's back early doors in this new year, and he's landed on the shadowy ZCKR label with a phat slab of electro that'll wake you the **** up, and take the dance floor by the balls. The one-sided plate, entitled "Grey City Anthem", is a storming slice of dark, neural electro funk that sounds like it's been constructed in 3D. Huge moulds of acid unfold onto grainy drum machine beats, and a swarm of disjointed, raucous bells. Hard stuff, good and proper for this time of the year.

Review: Arcanoid and Diffuse track return to the Odio label - translated as 'hate' in Italian - with their highly singular and dreamy brand of machine-driven electro. The former lays down three tunes, the first "Amor" being a delicate, unwinding jam with sublime swarms of synth, followed swiftly by the beetless strings of "Silence", only to end up at the distorted, computerised rhythm that is "Muerte". On the B-side, Diffuse Arc chooses to go for something a little more light-hearted and house-driven in "Miedo" - still powered by a cold succession of beats and low tones - the same going for the acidic, wonky balance that drives "Soledad". Chilling, minimalistic, but inherently warm and soothing.

Review: Caustic Waveform was the epitome of consistency in 2015, and Diffuse Arc has been using the label as a primary home for his sub-zero-temperature techno-electro hybrids. He's back, this time joined by Arcanoid at the tail-end of the B-side. The label boss' own tunes are playful and glide over various dance genres: "Inner Tour" is a highly musical and mystical pseudo house track, while "School Life" is deeper, more ethereal and broken, but it's his own interpretation of "Set It Out" which grabs the attention - the tune famously done by Omar S on his own FXHE. ArcanOid's "Funky Heroes" is acidic, bouncy, and veritably old-school.