Techno’s Outer Limits :: November 2014

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Latest in a series of postcards from Techno’s Twilight Zone of 12″/EPs and LPs with notes in the margins.

First up, Belgium’s Token, last seen in our August update in the form of Tech-vet Inigo Kennedy, brings back another old school-boy, Surgeon, for 2 tracks of twisted broke-beat techno, Fixed Action Pattern: ‘A Side …a searing, peak time wall shaker…B Side dub version the label quite aptly compare to Lee Scratch Perry dabbling in industrial electronics.’ (sez Juno). Relative newbie Rødhåd follows up Spomeniks with more music for cosmo-industrialists on Haumea. There’s a deep’n’bleep hihat-cut version and low-end fixated dirt mix, with label-mate Ø (Phase) dialling in a sneaky remix with a nifty breakdown. Both 12”s serve as teasers for Aphelion, a Token triple comp showcase for label regulars and like-mind artists that has UK techno-eminences like Surgeon, James Ruskin and Luke Slater’s PAS, with Token-virgins Lucy and Karenn, and label faithfuls, Inigo Kennedy, Ø [Phase] and Ctrls. Aphelion denotes the point in orbit when a planet is farthest from the sun, and the label would have this connote ‘that the magnetic force of Token, unfazed by the shadows cast by popular opinion, will proudly shine light on their artists and given styles.’

Meanwhile, back in Berlin, old faithful Tresor give one of techno’s more liberal floor-fillers, Jonas Kopp, a first full run-out. Beyond The Hypnosis weaves discursive strands into a single narrative–here a cosmic there a neo-retro touch, with tracks like “Seven” and “Green Square” showing sleight of hand in spatial subaquatic atmo, while there’s ample 4-on-the-floor-fodder too–less stringently functional than previous. In parallel comes an EP featuring highlight “Red Plented” and two exclusives. A revitalized Tresor also hosts another EP from their fave Frenchman, Marcelus. Shine radiates an air akin to some of his Berlin Brüder, but with a certain élan. “Red Dance” has shiny metallic beats and razor-sharp percussion driving stepping beats, while “Worship The Bass” is more direct–propulsive kicks and hi-hat shuffle with subsonic pulsing. The title track smears some strange ambience with metallic clangor into trippier terrain, breaking the kick anchor for cowbell and tweaked rides to synch-in-and-out, “Astral” ending in beatless oscillating strings in echo-space.

London-based Public Information served notice of SF-based Austin Cesear‘s talent for bleak yet beautiful sonics with a beguiling debut, Cruise Forever (2012). A new release is most welcome then, West Side seemingly inspired by time spent amid the industrial machinery and wildlife of a dockside location at Oakland Port, CA. The outcome ranges widely/wildly in mood and tone, a cohesive whole emerging thanks to Cesear’s production prowess. ‘Beside black water in the darkest hours, white sodium light bouncing across the surf. Searching across the bay, industry stands proud in the early morning haze. Cargo, containers, machines. Cranes pierce the sky, gulls scream, motors grind – the rush and roar of a new working day in his ears. Back in the studio these sounds, these sights manifest…’ (Public Info).

Next is Maurizio Cascella with a first single, Oil On Canvas, on Wonder Wet Records. Recent founder of Concrete Records, Cascella and his Elettronica Romana marked a specific period in Rome’s electronic music history, with the likes of Donato Dozzy and Giorgio Gigli. Here Cascella impresses most with “Black of Mars,” which purportedly ‘takes you into a hypnotic and unravelling world.’ Yikes! Taapion gives you some further purchase courtesy of PVNV, whose deep space journey (natch), Consortium, constitutes the label’s third 12” (cf. notes on the second on our last postcard). Resident label wordsmith waxes: ‘The overlayed but slightly merged pads, give a feeling of a group of persons like a community, wich is leading to an hopefull goal on a gloomy way. …Intrasolaar on A2, the track is more floor-fit, a mental loop which holds you on this spatial field. The deep pads give a feeling of wide space graven on the speed of the rhythm section and the bells patterns. …B side, STERAC …The remix …gives a rythm accent by using 808’s elments and transforms the ambient side into a beautyfull and powerfull club track. … Shlomo’s remix of Intrasolaar …Straight, effective, the second label’s owner is showing is techno side by withholding pads more than often, focus on this very well crafted rythm part.’ The music gives it up in a way Taapion’s would-be author’s words don’t (and, in re: his day job, he shouldn’t).

Outis next, and myth-lovin’ Dino Sabatini, he of Mnemosyne in our April postcard (not to mention Shaman’s Paths). After a dalliance with Dozzy for Journey Back to Ithaca, Dino goes back to old flame, Gianluca Meloni, to put their Modern Heads together again for Chapter II, an upgrade of their refined designer take on underground techno–soundscape textures, sequenced ostinatos and percussive hyp-gnosis; deferring the gratification of the pointless pound and vacuous whoosh, “Beginning” centres on liquid acidic motion and serpentine sequences; “Unknown Route” darkens a shade, bass tones more resonant, percussive waves break, a churning filter rising like grey billows on a turbulent sea. From the aforementioned Dozzy it’s but a degree of separation to SA (cf. Terzo Giorno), where Lucy has launched a series of EPs celebrating 5 years since its inauguration. The first of five, V – Five Years of Artefacts – Chapter One, features four label-definers: Rrose throws “Drowned by Sight,” a psyched-out low-rider of a droning trance-tweak, Perc countering with “Tri-City,” a rolling barrage of tribal-industrial pummel; Pfirter hitches eerie atmo to big bang drums on a dub-daubed “Atman,” Lakker (seen in our last update on Monad), getting in a lather of queasy fizz/fuzz on “Pier” at the end of the show. Zeitgeber (Lucy & Speedy J.) and L.B Dub Corp (Luke Slater) split Chapter Two, with soon-come Chapter Three threatening Kangding Ray, Xhin, Tommy Four Seven and Dscrd.

Prologue has seen a late Autumn flurry, with the Cassegrain debut LP trailed for later this month. The Berlin-based pair have had five EPs out via the Münich label since 2012, last of which, Blood Distributed as Pure Colour, was spotted in our August missive. Soon-come Centres of Distraction is trailes as ‘a 10-track expedition into a wilderness of rugged, challenging sonics,’ marking ‘development from adventurous new-bloods to fully fledged Techno explorers,’ purporting to take its cue from ‘the classic ’90s electronic album format,’ spanning ‘a wide range of tempos and genres.’ We’ll see, but before that, Mod21, peddles some downtempo-inflected mesmerism in prime Prologue pukka on first EP, Ben’s Wolves. And a few repeat remix offenders have been sniffing round Mike Parker and his Lustrations, resulting in Lustration Remixes—three retools from Svreca, Cassegrain and Edit Select drilling down in headf**k house style into the base track. Mr Select’s been remaking himself on his own label lately–and why not, with fare as filling as Selected Edits 4, which teams him up with Giorgio Gigli, Markus Suckut and… yep, Cassegrain, again. GG’s “Substance” is a flat tract of unrelenting pummelling with itchy percussion onto which claggy kicks are clamped for some drone-dusted grind’n’roil; Cassegrain’s “Asperity” is reduced to a thrumming acidic distillate–sci-fi synth motif, broken chord iterations and bassbin bugs; Suckut’s slant is another jacking 4/4 floor-thumper with eerie chord-shapeshift.

The same label offers Glasgow’s Deepbass a platform with his Sequence EP, the A-side in return being given over to Edit Select’s own take, “Sequence 1,” which he dubs to a placid fluidity belying its hefty bass pressure; Deepbass makes a more spaced-out PASs on “Sequence 1” and a Parker-esque ”Sequence 2.” Elsewhere the Sleepwalker EP for recently emergent Rising find DB in engagingly hypnagogue mode, his own “Sleepwaker” the best take, a minimalist affair with signature blend of ambience, hypnotic rhythm and low-end presence; remixes from Abstract Division has the Dutch men flying with an eye to the dance floor, and Italian M_Rec mainman, Max_M, punchy and energetic from the get-go. Spain’s P.E.A.R.L. (also trailing his Ordeal EP on Planet Rhythm) comes on shadier and harder with more of a broken loopy take to round off a satisfying EP.

Time to get DEMENT3D again with new EP, VéVé, from Hiss:1292—odd nomenclature not a sign of some wannabe mystique-creating anonymous DJ, but rather label owner Francois X and sidekick Opuswerk fusing (Paris and CH) postcodes. Nobody’s hiding here… Nobody? Well, it does hide something, the label propose: ‘some mysterious spirits that may have chosen to haunt these vinyl grooves …namely Augun, Damballah, Eshu and Simbi, four Veves of the Dahomey and Yoruba Voodoo traditions, four ‘complex and intense spirits that have seized Hiss:1292′s music to make it their own.’ The writer then gets seriously DEMENT3D, invoking voodoo-techno linkages: ‘intense experiences one can endure in some effective techno installment can sometimes approach the mental images we have of mystical trances and seizures,’ before declaring: ‘once the project was finished, it seemed like a spell had been cast on the record, and the artists were bound to name their music after the spirits that dwell within.’ Complete tosh, really-the shamanic/ritual conceit is de rigueur by now with Techno tribalists seeking a sliver of substance to hang some repetitive beats and grainy synth-wash on. Sardonic reductionism aside, it’s a good fit (geddit?!)

The most adventurous recent full-length from these parts is unpronounceable Swedes SHXCXCHCXSH and Linear S Decoded (Avian). No time to tarry on it–suffice to say there’s loads of variety of tone, mood, and beat as well as a mother of invention on this baby. While on a Swedish tip, Stockholm’s Evigt Mörker follows up last year’s 1 EP with, incredibly, 2 EP! Evigt Mörker means Eternal Darkness (Swe.), which should alert you to what he’s about, and, if not, his soundcloud page will induct you through a beatless dark ambient mix of a similar kind to the tenor harnessed here and hitched to repetitive beats. The long-form “Sol som får tidens hjul att stå stilla” is all reverb and delay-drenched atmospheres built round minimalist motions, breathy pump and ambient swirl–hell, even some spectral rave-derived synth thrown in. “Epikles” and “Nixa” are steeped in a glaze of extending-retracting glacial metallic ambience with deep kick-pulse propelling both. Overall, the EP captures some of the essence of old school Ambient Techno. And back at Hypnus HQ (featured in our last round-up), more quality deep techno comes in the form of Geonosis from Rome’s Luigi Tozzi, sometime aka Tozzy. Revisiting, we find Deepbass (hello again) consorting with Luigi, and another Italian chum, Claudio PRC, on Tozzi’s Deep Blue. Finally, Thanatos by Elle finds Lorenz Perrotta further deepening Italian-Swedish techno relations.

A new Conforce is always welcome, and there’s one upcoming on his own Transcendent white label series. The Travelogue EP is the usual high grade futuristic deep techno designed to solve the mind-body problem. With A1 “Phase 7” a moody brooder, it takes A2 “Informatica” to get the pulse racing, clinched by a strong B-side of the IDM-y “Coast to Coast,” wrapped up nicely with the eerie lyrical “Zero five eight”. Back in Blighty Resin hosts Divided for a fine balance of atmospheric space and gritty heft in Moment (Historical). “Eigen” leans towards a dry scuffed sound with a percolating sui generis funk, while “Eventide” is a sneaky roller with sharp breaks and spectral dubbing; “Dawn” unites agitated tech-groove and open space, before “First Light” ends up in darker industrial zones stalked by such as Milton Bradley. Similarly shadowy quarters are inhabited by mysterious Italian SNTS (on various RA/Juno types’s radar (cf. Giorgio Gigli, Edit Select, Teste, Takaaki Itoh, Ryuji Takeuchi‘s Top 10s)). The compelling Scene II, off the back of, yep, Scene I, offers four fine-grainy ‘scapes, three thrumming, all with satisfying unpolished finish. And a return to Horizontal Ground, scene of HG 016, for HG 018 issues in a quartet of drone-draped steppers and ghost-pad navigations. Not far removed is Fanon Flowers, another low-light producer with a bag of texture tricks and kicks. His Hunt Patterns (Mechanisms Industries) finds alignment of Detroit deep and Berlin bass in three variations on a vein of brooding thump–the thick (atmosphere) and the kick inside. Taking on a bit of a BC/CR torch, “Hunt Pattern 1” cuts stifling smears of synth-string shudder with sharp hi-hat and bass stab, while “HP 2” inhabits a similarly bleak house with a hint of harmony from a sulky synth in nagging zig-zag, ending in “HP 3” with more internal, smouldering below, metallic riffage mid-way colluding with percussive ticks to clinch the deal. The Michigan Mystery Man and the Italian Cipher from above provide a great way to sign off below.