Techno Recommendations August 2011

Review: Autoreply Music marks the coming of the summer season with a very tidy little 10" from OCH. This man recently recorded for Baby Ford's PAL SL imprint, gaining support from a diverse range of DJing luminaries including ZIP, Sammy Dee and Efdemin. Now the mysterious producer steps up with a big room floor rocker that has been described as Ian Pooley's "Chord Memory" meets Christian Vogel. Thunderous drums, hypnotizing chords and a cheeky sample that the old house heads will be sure to recognise make this one for the peak time. Claro Intelecto's Warehouse Sessions on Modern Love is regarded by many as one of the most definitive collections of contemporary techno to hit the shelves in recent years. Fresh back from remixing Depeche Mode he takes time out of his busy schedule for remix duties. Taking his cues from the warehouse classics that accompanied him through years in Manchester's revered clubs like the Hacienda, Home and Paradise Factory, he serves up a powerful, stripped down reworking of the original track that is equally suited to sweaty dance floors. Fasten your seatbelts.

Review: Some of techno music's real heavyweights have been commissioned to rework Marcel Fengler's "Thwack". Fellow Berghain resident Norman Nodge is first up, delivering a tough, filtered techno groove, which shows a more abrasive side to the Berlin DJ's palette. Mike Parker's version is just as intense, but with the US producer's distinctive signature, as dense layers of subsonic bleeps encase a claustrophobic rhythm. Not to be outdone, label owner Luke Slater drops a superb version of his own under his Planetary Assault Systems guise, with a menacing, pumping bassline underpinning the incessant ringing of a car alarm.

Review: Funkineven's ascendance to big things continues apace with the release of Roland's Jam, a dextrously rough around the edges three track insight into what we can expect from his forthcoming album. There's been a massive crank in expectation over the title track since Eglo unleashed it upon select tastemakers and it's easy to hear why, as Funkineven serves up a end of year list worthy slab of tempo shifting, tuff 303 circulations that pretty much demand the shaking of booty. The B Side elicits further acid soaked deviations with "Take It Back" unfurling heavily lysergic lines over spring rolled drums and delicious Hardcastle style vocal and synth hooks. There's a charming scattergun approach throughout, slipping between shards of forgotten 80s pop and ascendant zigzags of acid house delight. "XXX" operates on a similar plane, with the added addition of risque vocal samples throughout making it an altogether thrilling experience.

Review: The Bricolage EP sees Mike Dehnert continue his streamlined assault on our affections - returning to his own Fachwerk imprint after Framework, that superlative album shaped endeavour for Delsin. Whilst all four clean and powerful tracks here achieve the same goal in their impact, each arrangement contains its own unique character, making this a neatly diverse release. The A Side splays the dubby, industrial textures of the elongated "Montage" with the more urgent, fractured "Isolateur" which slips powerfully dark rave stabs over insistent subterranean bleeps. On the flip, "Treibholz" presents an almost house bump which rides through a gliding array of crystalline rhythms before Dehnert spooks us out with heavily pitched vocals slurs. "Picon" ends proceedings with in a decidedly disjointed fashion with stuttering beatdown drums and abstract vocal intonations the backdrop to Dehnert squeezing out frosted smudges of sound dripping with Motor City emotion.

Review: A bulging 4x12" release from Styrax to round off their In Loving Memory series. Featuring venerable and fledgling talent alike from both sides of the Atlantic - including Ian Pooley, Laurent Garnier, Morphosis, John Daly, John Beltran and Sven Weisemann to name just a few - In Loving Memory 4:4 is a frankly essential purchase for lovers of the more cerebral strains of house music. Picking a favourite out of this lot is an unenviable task, but we'll plump for the dusty beatdown of Morphosis' "They Just Don't Care".

Review: An interesting pair of remixes on this 12", which sees two big producers reinterpreting seminal material from legendary ambient techno producer John Beltran. Kassem Mosse & Mip Mup collaborate on a A-Side that reworks "Brilliant Flood", adding deep bass and a bumping drum machine workout over the top whilst maintaining the hazy, hypnotic quality of the original. It adds a rough, lo-fi quality that is sure to appeal to fans of Mosse's other productions. Sven Weisemann's remix is a completely different prospect, turning in a nine-minute reworking of several different Beltran productions, which is pitched somewhere between ambient and techno, and even displays a leaning towards modern classical. Not one for the dancefloor necessarily, but sublime listening nonetheless.

Review: North West techno talent John Heckle offers an intriguing insight into the direction of his forthcoming long player for the Mathematics imprint with this rather good, and at times mental, full debut for the Tabernacle imprint. Heckle was involved in the inaugural release from Tabernacle last autumn, and since then his stock has risen thanks to a selection of raw wall rattlers for Jamal Moss' label. The four tracks here continue to demonstrate Heckle's mastery of drum machines and synthesisers to create a slant on techno that is infused with roughness and ear shattering potency. "R136" messes with your senses from the off, somehow managing to dice up vocal loops and loose drums in a drunken fashion yet retain rhythmic urgency, whilst drowning the expanses in wide washes of Motor City emotion. In contrast "My Only Hope" exposes Heckle's more experimental side, with heavy reliance on freeform synths muddily spraying around the dirt encrusted drum patterns. The title track withholds the aforementioned mental streak, with an army of percussion, jagged arpeggios and concrete bass quite battering your senses into submission.

Review: Murky, organic and gravelly techno is the Cassegrain sound that we know and love from. Here Munich based label Prologue snap up the duo for the freshly squeezed Dropa EP. No exception to the techno rule, dark, progressing sounds rife with complexity and eeriness strike again on "Dropa", while "Luban" echoes with gruff metallic edges as it progresses through heavy kicks and bounding samples. "EUD" goes for a heftier tempo and piercing cymbal crashes, while "Lop-Nor" offers more of the same in an intricately crafted tunnel of mysterious kicks, hats and echoes.

Review: More explorations of the murky depths of techno in its rawest form from the Analogue Solutions camp, this time with the brilliantly monikered Edwardo De La Calle at the helm. Pressed up on red marble vinyl, the grubby bass of "Jonson Sampler" marginally outdoes the rubbery synth work of "The Concept Sampler" in the 'how to impress Juno' stakes. Flip over for the subtly epic "Food & Revolutionary Sampler" which is doused in swathes of Millsian techno paranoia.

Review: Carl Craig's imperious Planet E label drop this timely twelve which demonstrates that the Detroit imprint has reached the 20 year mark by ensuring the lesser celebrated artists are featured alongside the more established techno artists. It's also further compelling evidence of the inherent brilliance of Oliverwho Factory, a duo who are finally receiving the plaudits they deserve after several years bubbling under. Their contribution to this release, "Jealousy" stands apart amidst three other accomplished productions from Reference, Monty Luke and newcomer Ezana Harris. Obviously some credit must go to Carl Craig as he performs knob twiddling duties, but the track contains enough sweat inducing dancefloor potency to truly shine - if you can picture the best qualities of arch electro house hype merchants Spektrum and apply them to a thickly exhilarating Detroit house template then you'll have an idea of how good this track is.

Review: After a period out of the production spotlight, the masked crimson deviant known only as Redshape demonstrated his technique is as potent as ever with the recent In Trust We Space. He wastes little time in acting upon the clamour surrounding that release by serving up Son Of A..., again on his own Present label, which withholds two further deviations into the depths of machine funk. The title track rattles across the A Side with precision, as twisting piston like textures crank up the pressure over a tightly wound bed of bass and undulating drum rhythms before Redshape casually drops the evilest acid line midway through. On the flip "Kraken's Game" slips expansive rhythms over a driving bassline, with a neat array of off kilter drums demanding your attention throughout.

Review: Should you ever be quizzed as to why exactly Mr Shakir prefers to called "Shake", direct that inquisitive soul to the A Side of the Detroit hero's latest release. Shaking is one way to describe the sensation that runs through "Piper" as drums rattle with a roughness of texture unparalleled to these ears. Faint strains of calypso melodies permeate throughout amidst a sea of huge sounding sub bass which makes for one of the most militantly thrilling techno tracks we've heard in a long, long time! Changing tact, Shakir lays two heaving slabs of Motor City beatdown across the B Side with "So Delivered" alternating between slickly chopped drums and searing pads and Eastern wood block rhythms, whilst "Millenium Blues" provides a more solemn, downtrodden excursion through rusted metallic head nod material.

Review: Polish producer Kuba Sojka has only just released a huge double 12" on Jamal Moss' Mathematics imprint, but here he returns with another record of similarly smoky and nostalgic house on London label Souliner. Title track "Berlin News" utilises multiple layers of expansive Detroit style pads over an ascending analogue bassline; considering how many elements are jostling for position the effect is impressively reined in. The Soul Edit of the title track takes the nostalgia back further, using the same lush pads, and adding a staccato string melody to a deeper, slightly more acidic bassline. On the B-Side, "Electronic Fever", the same kind of arrangements are used, but building up to a complex improvised piano melody. Only "Auster Session" (a collaboration with Electribalt) has any kind of vocal element (and even then, only a tiny sample), but the warmth and humanity really shine through nevertheless. More impressively, though multiple melodies are stacked on top of each other, the whole thing never gets too sickly sweet.

Review: The M>O>S Deep series returns with a three track missive from Chicago Skyway, a producer who first impressed Juno ears with a cracking EP for London based imprint Uzuri in 2010. It was Chicago Skyway (real name Sean Hernandez) who produced the first release for the Dutch imprint's Deep offshoot, and here he returns with some decidedly grubby (in a good way) analogue treats. Spread across the A-Side is an edit of "Bad Driver" by M>O>S chief Aroy Dee, who turns in a classic bubbling acid revision. Drunken, meandering synth washes characterise "Lager Nord", which shares the flip with an excellent Obsolete Music Technology remix by Steven Tang. Essential 12".

Review: Backwards is the album that veteran producer and former Boney M studio bod Tobias Freund has been threatening to make for many years and the work that so many of his peers aspire to but will never reach. It is clear that a huge amount of thought has gone into this album. From the static crackle of album opener "Girts" to the trippy, Eno-esque ambience of "Voices Told Me To Do That", the devil is in the detail as new ideas and nuances loom at every bar. From the insistent stabby techno of "Party Town" and "Skippy" to the glorious Drexciyan electro of "The Key", Backwards is steeped in 30 years of electronic music history but never sounds dated.

Review: Deepchord and Modern Love may have got most of the plaudits for the dub techno revival, but Deadbeat's contribution should not be forgotten either. On Drawn & Quartered, the Canadian producer moves effortlessly between ambience and bassy techno, but his overall approach remains constant. "First Quarter" is a dreamy affair, but sounds and ideas flow in and out of the arrangement at will, as if Deadbeat keeps changing his mind and going off on tangents. On "Second Quarter" this hyperactivity is borne out by the shift from a dubby, drum-heavy groove into a deep chord reverie, while "Third Quarter" does the opposite, starting off with soft-focus melodies before moving into a system-levelling bass techno track.