Back catalogue: Minimal/Tech House

Review: Tresor is celebrating 30 years in the game with a series of special reissue projects. This one really goes way back to almost the start, when Juan Atkins was already defining the early techno sound. For this one he linked up with Moritz von Oswald and Thomas Fehlmann in 1992 for a second iteration of the 3 Men in Berlin project. The monumental results join the dots between Detroit and Berlin across a collection of timeless cuts that meld bassline funk, hypnotic minimalism and soulful machine sounds into propulsive, emotive dance floor joy. The unbridled energy and cosmic elegance of 'Jazz Is The Teacher' might just be the highlight.

Review: Eklo head honcho Seuil returns under a new guise as 97.4. Always keen to hop on to the next big thing, with Roots 82 (as the name might suggest) he goes for a very retro influenced vibe. Starting out on the first disc with the rather electro influenced "Rue Des Anciens" or later with "Le Cour Des Miracels" (which features some very dark Derrick May strings), thereds the early noughties micro-house sounds of "Colle 2000" or the funky Detroit inspired techno-soul of "Celeri Rave"or "Savat Yab" too. There are more cool sounds to be found on the second disc such as "Grand Matin" where he shows again his more recent penchant for deeper and emotive sounds. Fans of retro laced minimal at the moment by Binh, Spacetravel or Evan Baggs will certainly enjoy this release.

Review: Earlier this year, A Guy Called Gerald (Gerald Simpson) made his Laboratory Instinct debut with a "Drop-Tech Infusion" mix of Dell & Flügel's "Superstructure" that appeared on the duo's "Study For A Skyscraper" EP. Now the British acid house pioneer and drum'n'bass legend issues his own superb full-length on the German imprint, the appropriately-titled "Proto Acid - The Berlin Sessions". Having literally influenced generations of music-makers with an incredible discography that's grown incrementally deeper since the 80s, the Manchester UK native and now Berlin resident executes the infectious 71-minute jam with a masterful meticulousness. Drenching Detroit-styled techno in sparkling electro, the set, recorded live in one session using two laptops and a DJ mixer at Gerald's Diehold Studio on February 11th, 2006, flows with a relaxed ease. With one exception ("Auto Rebuild," the third track, is a remake of 1990's "Automannik"), the album's 24 raw, club-oriented tracks are all new and were created over the last year in Berlin. The collection departs from the style of his last full-length, "To All Things What They Need", in many ways, the most obvious being the absence of singing. Asked why he decided to make "Proto Acid - The Berlin Sessions" wholly instrumental, Simpson doesn't mince words. "On my last two albums, I felt pressured to include vocals," he replies. "Nowadays, I feel singers should be put on a bale of hay with a piece of straw hanging out of their mouths while playing acoustic guitar-keeping it real, if you know what I mean. I want to make music for clubs and sometimes you just have to get down and dirty into the machines and, to take it there, you can't hold anyone's hand. Some things just don't need a vocal. What I'm trying to do is keep myself entertained as well as give the punters something new." Asked to describe the album's sound, Simpson says, "To me it's proto acid; it's how I feel house/techno music would have sounded if the whole rave thing hadn't happened in England. When I was younger, I would go to soul and funk clubs and you could easily mix a techno/house track into your set without spoiling the environment. Could you imagine playing a techno track at an r'n'b club today? Things have splintered and fragmented and floated so far apart that funk seems to have dropped through the cracks. I'm one of those preserved creatures that basically loves to use genres as a palette. So when I say proto acid I'm saying this stuff has direct lineage to Chicago and Detroit in the mid-to-late 80s." Don't think that, for Simpson, acid's definition is limited to something as obvious as the 303 either. "I find it really interesting how the TB303 has come to be fetishised as an acid machine," he says. "For me, acid was all about the tweaking of synths and riding a groove, you know what I mean? Like, before the masses thought the Transistor Bass machine was a special tool for doing acid house music, I was already bored with it and had moved on to tweaking envelopes on other Roland machinery, so I never really possessed that value for the 303 like everybody else did. I feel like I followed my own path and was inspired by what was going on in Detroit and Chicago but always did my own thing. To me, the new album is acid and acid's a part of everything I do." On the disc itself, Simpson doesn't waste a moment but immediately invigorates the set with the pumping tribal groove of "Marching Powder" before moving on to the steely funk-throb of "The Strip." The mix's strutting electro strain makes its first appearance in "Auto Rebuild" and dominates thereafter, though its presence is subtly modulated from one cut to the next, at one moment oozing a house vibe and the next techno. While differences distinguish one track from the next (though Simpson avows that his influences are more machines than particular artists, a seeming Drexciya influence emerges in "Droid" and the dark synth-driven "Feel the Heat" while dub rears its head in "Xray" and "Bass-o-train", there's clearly a unified feel to the album. "Skitzoid" casts a mechano spell, "Night Flight" breezily rocks, and the jacking cut "Voltar" broils feverishly for almost eight minutes. Bringing the mix to a chilled close, "Sweet You" floats in a billowing haze of jazzy pianos and locomotive drum brushes before vaporizing in a cloud of cymbal accents. At this stage in his career, one might assume that Simpson has covered every base imaginable, but apparently that's not so. Referring to the new release, he says, "It's the culmination of a dream I've had since I started making music, and that's to take the studio into the club; this album is snapshot of those possibilities."

Review: We're never short of new Ricardo Villalobos material and he's generous with his time as a mixer, but this project offers something different from the Chilean mad scientist of minimal. A Mountain Of One are a duo who deal in Balearic-leaning pop with a subtle charm and an adventurous spirit, and they initially approached Villalobos for a single remix of one of their tracks. As a fan of their sound, Villalobos ran with the project and it wound up as a full remix album of seven different versions. On the earlier tracks Ricardo takes a surprisingly light touch, while the later stages find us knee deep in the mesmerising roll of his minimal house, shot through with dubbed out ingredients from the original songs. It's surprising and satisfying in equal measure, showing Villalobos at his best and quite the scoop for A Mountain Of One.

Review: ***B-STOCK: Sleeve damaged but otherwise in excellent condition***


We're never short of new Ricardo Villalobos material and he's generous with his time as a mixer, but this project offers something different from the Chilean mad scientist of minimal. A Mountain Of One are a duo who deal in Balearic-leaning pop with a subtle charm and an adventurous spirit, and they initially approached Villalobos for a single remix of one of their tracks. As a fan of their sound, Villalobos ran with the project and it wound up as a full remix album of seven different versions. On the earlier tracks Ricardo takes a surprisingly light touch, while the later stages find us knee deep in the mesmerising roll of his minimal house, shot through with dubbed out ingredients from the original songs. It's surprising and satisfying in equal measure, showing Villalobos at his best and quite the scoop for A Mountain Of One.

Review: ***B-STOCK: Creasing to corner of outer sleeve but otherwise in excellent condition***

Review: As the artist alias kind of suggests, Abyssy takes a deep dive into the unknown depths of the human spirit. It finds the artist returning to Simona Faraone's label after several years and finds him exploring electronic sounds of the 70s and 80s, blending Berlin school minimalism with Detroit techno's soul and funk. It is a record that ranges in mood and tempo as it heads into oceanic depths where wispy pads and chattery percussive patterns collide in unusual ways. It's a largely abstract album of unusual sound designs and genuine electronic discovery that often has you wondering just how certain abounds have been made.

Review: The Achterbahn D'Amour pairing of Johannes "Iron Curtis" Paluka and Jurgen "Jool" Albert (formerly Edit Piafra) return to the Acid Test series with a debut album Odd Movements. Since the project first emerged on Absurd's dedicated acid offshoot in 2011, Achterbahn D'Amour have become mainstays of the series and encapsulated the experimental ethos of the series and displayed a true reverence for the classic 303 and 606 Roland machines. After a relatively low key 2013 with just the two Acid Test releases from regular contributor Tin Man and famed Frenchman Pepe Bradock, Odd Movements is a statement of intent and sits nicely alongside the other Acid Test long players from Recondite and Tin Man whilst demonstrating the format suits Albert and Pakula well.

Review: Ada makes us dream and rock at the same time. That's why she has put such a spell on us. Great album!

Review: R&S sublabel Apollo are back at it with a new release from Romanian composer and DJ Ada Kaleh, bringing four long-form trance movements to a singular slice of mind-body-unifying vinyl. Originally working in minimal and tech house, Kaleh here demonstrates a more recent spate of 'getting a bit more trippy with it', reawakening every moving part of his productions to produce a sentient, ambulatory sonic organism. There's not an 808 or a squelch-funk bass in sight; every minimal cliche is upended for spectacular, time-stopped visions. Also clock track 4, which opts for a metric modulatory mode and odd time signature. Clearly, whatever entheogen Kaleh has been ingesting, it's paid off.

Review: Since releasing his fine debut album Offseason Traveller in 2013, Aera releases have been sporadic at best. Although there have been odd singles here and there (including a brilliant 2017 out on Hivern Discs), fans have been made to wait for this long-promised sophomore set. Aera (AKA Aleph Music founder Ralf Schmidt) claims it's his most personal and coherent work yet, and we tend to agree. Largely unconcerned with making people dance, the album offers up a melodious, far-sighted and largely ear-pleasing blend of ambient, electronica and IDM cuts variously inspired by new age, kosmiche and krautrock. Of course, there are hints of the producer's usual left-of-centre take on house and techno throughout, but it's the uncluttered beauty of the album's more downtempo tracks that makes the biggest impression.

Review: AFFKT sets out to take listeners on a journey of positivity on this new album for Mobilee. The Spanish producer draws on a wide sphere of reference for its inspiration, with techno, indie dance, industrial and new wave all colouring the grooves. 'Abre Los Ojos' has an avant-pop feeling with its dreamy and angelic vocal, while 'Boom' is a breakbeat laced post-rave comedown. There are also searing dance effort workouts such as 'Let It Burn' and 80s synth-pop anthems like 'Zambomba.' There is plenty of artistry on this album which takes it way beyond the dance floor.

Review: Agents Of Time are a unique Italian dance duo whose poppy dance music blends well with a live 3D show that has dazzled punters the world over. Here they debut their first album, Universo, which plunges into the cosmos through a distinctly lo-fi dance lens. With a slew of vocal performances from Audrey Janssens to Vicky Who?, our favourite track has to be a tie between 'Vocal Ghost' and 'Liquid Fantasy'. Perhaps comparable to Bicep for cosmonauts.

Review: Resopal Red proudly presents the long awaited debut album by the talented, Geneva based artist Agnes. Agnes is known for his unusual, deep, dubbed-out minimal techno productions and is also exploring house-influenced rhythms and textures. His album "Dumbles Debuts" contains some incredible and deep tracks.