Back catalogue: Techno

Review: Earlier this year Buchla synth expert and sometime Nine Inch Nails band member Alessandro Cortini delivered one of the most surprising and rewarding long players of 2014 in Sonno for Dominick Fernow's Hospital Productions. The Italian pulls off another surprise move with a new project called Skarn on Shifted's Avian label, swerving from the majestic textures of Sonno into droning techno experimentation. Some three tracks long, Revolver finds Cortini toying with droning tones with the title cut a superb exercise in slowly building up a wall of oppressive, brutalist wave of noise over minimal beats. With material due on Panzerkreuz too, it's clear Cortini is currently enjoying an unpredictable chapter in a long and illustrious recording career.

Review: Original live techno duo, System 7 stamp their mark on the dancefloor once again with their new single on A Wave, 'Space Bird', lifted
from their forthcoming album, 'Phoenix', which opens the label's musical account in 2008. Just starting to escape on promo, this buzzing
atmospheric instrumental sees System 7 push the envelope for a minimal sound that embraces trance in truly hypnotic dancefloor style.
'Space Bird' is the first of the two Jam El Mar collaborations on the new album, and straight out the trap is man of the moment, Dubfire's
excellent minimal trance and brooding tech house remix. Liquid Soul toughens it up with a charged, stripped-down affair that rocks the floor,
fuelled by spacey loops; and rounding off is the original version. Its chunky beats underpin the seductive musical loops building into a
full-on floorfiller that's about to start ripping up floors in Europe.
System 7 continue to defy constraints of the 'trend' side of the music scene, having appeared live at a large number of festivals this year.
Highlights include playing twice at Tokyo's Nagisa Festival, this year with Derrick May and Joaquin Joe Claussell; another mighty appearance
at the Glastonbury Festival West Dance Tent in June with A Guy Called Gerald & Trentemoller; the Main Stage at the Glade Festival with
Longrange, Digitalism & Richie Hawtin; as well as Italy's Sonica festival, Harmonia Festival in Spain and Devon's Waveform event with
Eat Static & Banco De Gaia.