Back in stock: Hard Techno

Review: Continuing their mad limited series, Scotland's fiercely independent techno label welcomes back the Australian artist Mickey Nox with his most intense release yet. Following the success of his debut on RIOT Radio Records with 'Mad As A Cut Snake', he returns with a relentless assault designed to shake you to the core. And he is armed with an arsenal of bashing implements from full-bore mallets to heavy metal clubs and frantic frying pans which help him cook up a relentless barrage of driving, pounding beats. Not for the faint-hearted.

Review: Lithuanian hardcore techno producer Somniac One returns to her very own Somniverse imprint for a rabid new EP release, 'To All My Soggy Creatures Of The Night'. Chronicling four eldritch horrors on a goopy green vinyl record, this 12" opens on a sense of berserk immediacy with 'Poly Nightmare', its crunching hardstyle kick-tears seizing upon a restless crossrhythm that only then settles back a four-beat bed after giving us a certain fright. The EP continues as rhythmically expected from there on out, although 'Damp Dreams' is similarly prodigal and pliocene, its huge overhead string synths set against hard acid, and implied to sound as though they were the harmonic calls of a leviathan rearing its huge head above water.