V/A :: Full Spectrum (Touched Music)

Full Spectrum, a perplexing assemblage put together by Richie Welch, includes beautiful and colorful artwork by Matt Hampshire (Pulse State), distinctive mastering by exm, and a start and conclusion without any fuel loss along the way.

Being passionate about experimental electronic music is entangled in our DNA, and labels such as Touched Music facilitate this easily and often. Full Spectrum, a charity release for REACH, felt like it was teased months in advance, and the results obviously exceeded the efforts. The overwhelming support and social media posts of the upcoming collection were well-deserved.

A few of the amazing acts on the roster are Future Sound Of London, 808 State, Yunx, Mrs. Jynx, Scanone, and Skurken—just to name a few. To curate and assemble some of the top practitioners of energetic and timeless electronics on the planet can’t be an easy feat, yet it all comes together fluidly here. Full Spectrum, a perplexing assemblage expertly put together by Richie Welch, includes beautiful and colorful artwork by Matt Hampshire (Pulse State), distinctive mastering by exm, and a start and conclusion without any fuel loss along the way.

With 27 tracks on full display, highlights come in a variety of forms, and it’s difficult to resist listening to them all on a good sound system one by one. 808 State begins with “Wadi Batna,” which features pummeling bass works and squelchy synth rhythms. Karsten Pflum’s contribution, “Play Street,” is a powerful glitch’n bass mid-90s electronica track standing as a beacon on this compilation. Pentagrams of Discordia (“El Segundo Blue”) features psychedelic and woozy grooves—a saturated and thudding beauty—while Keiss releases an expressive and forceful slice of life on “Principles Of Paradigms.”

Inkipak offers drum-heavy waveforms on “Megasoma” as exm’s “eeer” cascades with low-profile and magnetic warbling soundscapes, demonstrating a fluid excursion of intense auditory textures and shapes. Promising/Youngster and ScanOne deep dive into explosive braindance and sci-fi bleeps on “Back On Track” and “Sylva” respectively, easily infusing their contributions as solid sonic peripherals, as Full Spectrum is a behemoth to fully digest.

We would advise taking your time on this one, as this compilation seriously covers the entire color spectrum.