Back catalogue: Techno (Alles)

Review: An electrifying journey through relentless acid and high-energy techno as Acid Asian goes in hard. The title track, 'Deep Soul', sets the pace with a fierce acid trance vibe, pulling listeners into its hypnotic rhythm. 'Space Colors' escalates the energy with epic, pounding euphoric trance, creating a sweeping sense of exhilaration. Side-2 kicks off with 'Ain't Nobody Like Us', a hardcore techno banger that's percussive, catchy and impossible to ignore. Closing with 'Humans', the EP dives into heavy, intense techno, wrapping up with a powerful and gritty finish. From start to finish, a high-octane, genre-blending ride that masterfully mixes acid, trance and techno, creating a standout release for those who like their beats pulsating and energetic.

Review: ATF's first new release of the year has a little bit of everything across three different but all-powerful new cuts from Andromeda. Cole features on the first one, Cyberspace. which barrels along at 170 bpm and is a high-energy rush of driving rhythms and haunting dystopian samples. Bold, evocative melodies offer a striking contrast to the track's relentless pace then ' Waveride' is a more chilled trancer with lush melodies and delicate percussion. Lastly, 'Time' is a nice uplifting closer with dazzling melodies and a memorable vocal hook that means you get both emotional depth and soaring energy

Review: Concept Werkstatt is an experimental project, not defined by identity but by pure sound and vision. It offers a space, say the eponymous producer behind the beats, where music exists for its own sake, free from ego and expectation. The first transmission is a useful one that taps into tool-like techno. The opener is in a hurry to get you under its spell with dusty drums and fluttering percussion. 'Stahlwerk 102' is more raw with unsettling vocals beaming in as if down a badly tuned radio and two flip-side cuts keep things wonderfully weird.

Review: Two underground artists with many years in the scene behind them in Darwin Chamber and DJ Spun come together for the second in their Episode series on Rong Music. Once again they dig into the sounds of their formative years while also looking to the future as they blend dub, trance and techno into lithe new forms. 'The Revolution' is a mid-tempo and atmospheric roller with hypnotic vocals, while 'The Playa' is a deft bit of electronic minimalism with a deep space feel and ticking 808 sounds. Things get more loose with the warped synths and dusty tech beats of 'Dysfunction' while 'Acid Tounge' closes with trippy designs, a skeletal rhythm and a sense of late-night melodic and afterparty mischief.

Review: Kevin de Vries collaborates with rising stars Y do I on his latest EP and it is a three-track journey showcasing the signature Afterlife sound. Merging emotionally charged moments with driving basslines and electrifying energy, the duo strikes a balance between light and dark while cooking up grooves that resonate deeply. Each track embodies the label's ethos of fostering close dancefloor connections through rhythm, emotion and vibration. This is evocative, painstakingly designed melodic techno with pristine synth work and sleek drums that carry you into all new worlds.

Review: The Holding Hands label is back to pressing up vinyl after a pause during the COVID years and this EP is perfect to be spun nice and loud. Earth Trax deals in big dance sounds and opens this one with 'Amnesia' (dub mix) which has a thudding kick and big bright chords. 'Stars' then brings more euphoria with lush pads and grinding basslines and 'Someday Soon' locks you into a zoned-out vibe with its rich arps and retro stabs. Last but not least is 'Dislocation Blues' which rides on dubby broken beats with swirling cosmic pads.

Review: Tommy Holohan's newest EP is a high-energy tour de force, blending techno, jungle and rave elements. Opening with 'Show Me The Sky', the trance-infused keyboard stabs and massive build-ups create a cinematic techno anthem. The title track, 'Temple Theatre', brings tribal loops, hard-nosed percussion and funky momentum for a relentless dancefloor roller. 'Make Me Feel' dives deep with a rumbling bassline and jungle-inspired drums, enhanced by clever house samples and a commanding vocal drop. Side-2 showcases two mixes of 'Your Lovin Arms'. The Warehouse Mix delivers a heavy rave vibe with raw energy and techno grit, while the Jungle Mix adds a melodic touch with breakbeats, creating a unique fusion of styles. A bold, diverse release, proving Holohan's real knack for blending old-school influences with modern techno innovation.

Review: Amazing next-gen cyborg dance music from sibling duo Mathame (Amedeo Giovanelli, Matteo Giovanelli) , a self-described "audio project" working in ultra-clean progressive house sounds. 'I Will Find You' sounds like a progressive anthem from an Arcadian alternate timeline; think what might happen if Tiesto performed a DJ set in the Halo universe, to a stadium full of Super Soldiers. Its front cover model - a cyborg girl with an augmented plate face mask - is indicative enough of the sound you might expect, but the brothers Mathame's music touches on more than just futurity, with tautly squeezed vocals and "ouch" synths adding to an already impressive uplifter.

Review: German label Terminal M's place in the techno world has long been established - it deals in fresh sounds for big rooms with hints of minimal. Mark Reeve now adds his work into the mix with this bold and inescapable two tracker. 'Golden' is a wave of techno with textural synth loops spraying about the mix like an untethered hose while chunky drums rattle the walls. 'All We Have' then gets even more extroverted and maximal with tortured synth stabs, big brain frying leads and more dark, all-consuming drums.

Review: Long regarded as one of Italy's most forward-thinking techno producers, Enrico Sangiuliano has spent the past decade carving out a niche between peak-time precision and philosophical intent. From his roots in the country's free party scene to headlining global festivals, he's become known for sculpting tracks that are as emotive as they are explosive. Here, he links up with psytrance icons GMS, whose trailblazing output since the 90s brings a charged, otherworldly energy to the collaboration. 'Transcendence' unfolds like a spacecraft launch, all rising tension and arpeggiated release, with Sangiuliano's signature cinematic monologue anchoring it in the present. 'The Inner World' strips everything back into a meditative synthscape, hinting at future directions while reinforcing his long-standing fascination with the inner journey.

Review: Reissued 30 years on, SYT's 'Deep Drift' first hover-slammed its way onto our turntables as a spinoff EP of the much-nattered-about Shave Yer Tongue free party, which took place every Sunday night somewhere in suburban West London. The night's founders, Scott James and Christopher Hayne, took on this duo-deistic alien guise as a response to the tractor-beaming blisses they'd experienced on the dancefloor, yet which they could not find solid enough expression for in words. 'Siren' and 'Loop Hole' span allotropic forms of the same style, quantum superpositions of trance: cascading, welcoming, introductory; then cautionary, hovery, supernatural. 'Drift' goes big on the surround mix with extra boxy kicks; 'Jitter' then serves as a bleeping, free-teknikal enervation in trance, and is by far the best on the record, for its unguent stereo design and strobing synth patch layers.

Review: BOY Records reissue an early example of legit new beat robo-trance, Time Modem's 'Welcome To The 90s'. The German duo of Joachim and Ulrich Wilhelm first dropped this deathly cold, wan emotion-stripper under the ZYX Music subsidiary shortly following 'The Time Of The Gathering', their debut EP. 'Welcome To The 90s' proves it: most of the cultural collective mind who experienced the transition into the last decade of the Millennium knew ahead of time that this would be the decade that defined dance music. Just one look at the waveform of this future-gothic grinder - as thin as a too-savoured fishbone sucked dry - reflects the loss of affect that was to be expected of this new bionic-sonic era. We hear a faint robotic voice over the title track's tannoy, speaking on themes of deterioration, futility and renunciation; it glides above the track's unpassable early stab lines and end-stop stomps. 'Intensive Worlds', meanwhile, extends the Gregorian voxsynth to underlie a rather flat, detached description of a future Frankfurt street scene, narrated by a female interloper. A historic slab of wax, reproduced for a new age.

Review: Fantastic Planet (which is also the name of a great 1972 sci-fi flick) is back with a powerful new collection, Survival Mode, which goes way beyond music and is in fact dedicated to the fight for freedom in Georgia. It draws on a diverse lineup of visionary artists who serve up sounds that embody resilience and resistance and call upon the instinct to persevere when all other options are gone. For those in Georgia fighting oppression, it's about unyielding determination to defy silencing forces, and the power of that translates into the music. All four cuts are cutting-edge techno sounds with jungle breaks, empowering spoken word slogans and beats that give you the energy to stand tall.

Review: Given that he's been active as a producer since the dawn of the 90s, it would be fair to say that Sven Vath is well worthy of an authoritative, expansive retrospective. That's certainly what we get here on this quadruple-vinyl mix of classic productions and fresh, eye-catching remixes. It's the latter that dominate the early stages of the collection - see Adam Port's hypnotic, didgeridoo-sporting revision of 'Ritual of Life', Speedy J's acid-fired stomp through 'Ballet-Fusion' - before Vath showcases some of his choice cuts. There's naturally to set the pulse racing, from the twisted, sub-heavy thump of 'Cala Llonga' and the tactile hypnotism of 'Sounds That Control Your Life', to the electroclash-meets-Kraftwerk flex of 'Dein Schweiss' and the ambient techno excellence of 'The Day After', a 21- minute epic from 1995 produced alongside Steffen Britzke as Astral Pilot.

Review: Boys Noize has been tearing up dance floors and serving up arresting electronic assaults for ages, often on his own self-titled label. He branches out here though with a new one, Ones & Zeros, which he has said is a "concept label reflecting new modes of creative and subcultural circulation". it launches with a bumper compilation featuring 22 blistering sounds across six sides of wax. Two of them come from the bas himself, one is a collar with Locked Club, and elsewhere new school and more established names like Skee Mask, Safety Trance and Manni Dee all offer up the sort of high impact tracks that will always be useful to have at your disposal for when the rave really is ready to peak.

Review: Yves Deruyter has spent forty years as a pioneering force in dance music; kown for his huge sets and anthemic musical procurements, his trajectory follows a familiar arc as an early tooth-cutter on Belgium's underground scene heralding later international recognition. His hits like 'Rave City' and 'Calling Earth' shook the earliest and staidest foundations of trance. To celebrate his career, a new ten-vinyl compilation celebrating Yves' work here proves that relevance isn't about trends - it's about a distinctive sound and an undying connection to the dancefloor.

Review: UNTZ Anthems is a wild ride through some of dance music's biggest dancefloor moments. There is absolutely no restriction in terms of genres, eras or artists which makes each one a real selection box of sound. This third volume for example takes in the timeless house classic 'Move Your Body' as reworked by Solar, but also the pop dance of Calvin Harris & Ellie Goulding's 'Miracle' and jump up jungle of Sub Focus & Dimension's 'Desire.' CamelPhat & Elderbrook's GRAMMY-nominated 'Cola' brings a touch of house depth while Riva Starr's Paradise Garage club mix of 'Hey Hey' reworks the house anthem into something more strobe-lit and energetic.

Review: This is the final instalment of Nous Klaer Audio's beloved 3x12" compilation series and it's another classy outing that serves up a diverse range of sounds from deep, immersive rhythms to driving techno, rave-infused house and some in-between surprises. Curated by label-head Oberman, it features contributions from both established artists and fresh talent, including Megan Leber with the serene 'Tides', a textured remix from Pye Corner Audio, the lushness of Eversines's 'Rhapsodia' and more besides. It adds up a real trove of top tackle.

Review: Serbian-born, NYC-based DJ and producer X-Coast returns with a new set of high-energy tracks designed for big arenas and main stages. As shown when remixing Shygirl's '4eva 'and DJ Gigola's 'La Batteria', he blends house, techno, electro, drum & bass and trance on labels like Steel City Dance Discs, Higher Ground and Mama Told Ya. X-Coast's signature sound fuses 90s and 00s rave nostalgia with modern production here and results in the tribal-infused 'Neapolis', soaring trance of 'Desert Storm,' and diva house energy of 'Hold Me Baby'. They all make for a dynamic collection which shows off X-Coast's genre-spanning versatility.