Techno News

Kovyazin D returns to Craigie Knowes for the first time since 2017. 'Last August' is packed from start to finish with post-apocalyptic club-sludge, forged with the slap and kick that has been woven into Kovyazin's productions for the best part of a decade. A long-overdue reunion between artist and label that does not fall short of expectations.

LPost-Heretic Dracula X Chronicles is Nicola Kazimir's debut album. It features 30min full of diverse, rough, evil, melancholic electronic music compositions either partly sampled out of important melodies in his life or fully produced by him. Post-Heretic Dracula X Chronicles LP draws from contemporary and past cultural references evolving around institutional-critique, occultism and dividualism and manifests those via metatags or sonic compositions.

Nicola Kazimir is a part of the collective Les Points based in Zürich, Switzerland.
His art/music draws from 90's rave utopias, decentralized & dividual thought, institutional-critique, occultism, progressive & accessible frameworks as showcased at their offspace Mikro -
a physical room which has no doors and opening times during exhibitions and raves - making an institution available to all social layers.
His recordlabels "Les Points" and the newly founded "Gentrified Underground" appropriate those ideas and transfer them to the distribution channels of electronic music.
Nicola refuses genre-stigmas and explores a vast number of genres in his dj-sets and productions - his newest LP "Post-Heretic Dracula X Chronicles" being an example of that diversity.

Delsin are pleased to gather together some of the highlights from the rich and varied catalogue of Manchester-based producer Claro Intelecto. From his earliest works on Ai Records through a prolific run on Modern Love to his more recent outings on Delsin, Mark Stewart has continually presented a vision of electronic music that uses the Detroit blueprint as a launch pad for his own distinctive strain of techno. Moving from elegant beauty to rabid intensity while grounded by a firm sense of rhythm, his catalogue runs deep and wide. The second volume in this expansive compilation series filters out select highlights from across his discography, and reframes them as a compelling overview of a truly distinctive voice in modern electronic music.

The Panda Men were an ancient warrior cult, fabled to roam the deep African forests in search of the elixer Bonfirma which would grant them super human strength, allowing them to transform into Pandas and thus continue their bloody reign. This classic early Legowelt is finally back in print for the first time in 13 years, celebrating Creme's 20th birthday!

Censor Music welcomes London Modular Alliance with four original tracks from key member Phil Ventre and a remix from Censor Music boss Alex Jann.

The record opens with title track Glass Cannon - a paranoid and spatial electro bleeper. Jann elevates the dystopian feels with some bang in his Corrupt Data Mix, working some wigged-out mechanics up into this kicking dance floor mover.

On the other side Ventre plays with beat constructions having full on fun with his creativity. Lo-slung drums and floating synth stabs open up Mom’s Knife before it builds into a pacey shuffler. Super Hang On launches off tumbling, cut-up amen’s which land on a jumpy kick and dirging bassline. Low Swung shows off Ventre’s beat programming at his most syncopated and frantic, a neat ending for this varied release from a modular synth expert.

Salt Mines / Life Sciences Division label-head Rudolf C joins Craigie Knowes for both party's first EP of the year. "Gamma!" hits hard across 4-tracks spanning acid, futuristic garage, and peak-time rollers. This is the first coming together of label and artist in the form of an EP - following on from Rudolf C's stellar contribution to the latest release in the label's War Child Fundraiser VA series.

Repress

Malta-born Keith Farrugia aka Sound Synthesis has been highly productive through a great amount of quality releases during the last two years. This time he joins eudemonia for his next strike. The record consists of three masterly crafted tracks which evidence his talent to produce wonderful melodic electro music. Each of them tell their own unique story, rounded up with a remix by Motor City mastermind Shawescape Renegade.

Lunar Orbiter Program is pleased to announce the first solo mission for Turk Turkelton. Mastered at Reel Mastering, London

Remastered repressing of Stephan Bodzin´s and Marc Romboy´s biggest common classic track „Atlas“ plus „Hyperion“, an insiders tip on the flipside. The pressing comes along with the original signature artwork which made the imprint Systematic popular. Go and get this temporary released collector´s item!

Kuldaboli returns to bbbbbb records, this time with a 6-track EP on which his idiosyncratic sound of icy, cryptic electro fully emerges. BBB015 being the second release of Kuldaboli on bbbbbb records is destined to be a historical release for the Icelandic dance music scene and a very important one for Kuldaboli’s legacy. The EP title ‘Ekkert nema ískaldur veruleikinn’ roughly translates to “nothing but the ice cold reality” and that is exactly what is delivered across the six tracks laden with poetic lyrics and spoken word.

In the opening track ‘Ég er bara ég’ Kuldaboli’s signature sound of uncompromising electro is overlaid with haunting vocals recited in Icelandic saying “I am only me and you are only you, people exchange words measuring each other out, trying their best at discerning life’s riddles’’. It is easy to say that Kuldaboli knows how to capture the listeners with deep reflections on subjects that most people are aware of but hardly ever speak of.

A2 ‘Ískaldur veruleikinn’ or ‘the ice cold reality’ is the most bouncy dancefloor track of the EP with the openings lyrics saying ‘’Are you telling me the truth? If I were to guess you are lying cold to my face’. The power of word play in this release is by far the most interesting poetic turn for Kuldaboli to date, where he shows great insight to the subconscious and human behaviour.

The smooth sounds of possessed Italo disco on A3 ‘Finn innri frið’, along with the funky bassline and trance like synths has perhaps the most positive vibe to it if you are not familiar to Kuldaboli, along with the playful opener of B-side ‘Afi kenndi mér íslensku’.

Following B2 no-bullshit-electro-track ‘Kuklari’, the final track B3 ‘Fönix úr ösku’ shows the haunting dark depth of depressurisation that vocal and electronics can create, where melancholic lyrics convey images of lost dreams of former lives.

Wicked breakbeat / jungle fusions by The Jaffa Kid on Nottetempo.

Beautiful split release dropping some advanced melodic electronica by UNCOU / SKYFARM. Two aliases of producer Artsiom Khudziakou, based in eastern europe Minsk, Belarus. He started as a guitar/piano player in his youth, he progressed to experimenting with electronic music and recording in his late teens influenced by early IDM and modern electronica and the early Detroit techno/electro from 1988 and he is a member of belarussian artists' community called "M-Kultra". His melodic acid electro combined with some experimental elements makes a lovely combination and WeMe records prooves once again to have a fine ear for talented forward thinking artists! Recommended!

In one sense Central Processing Unit is familiar territory for London Modular Alliance - group members Pip Williams (Phil Ventre) and Koova (Gavin Pkyerman) have both dropped EPs through the Sheffield label in the past, the former offering outer-space street-soul on 2017's Outer Limits after Koova had channelled Drexciya for 2015's This Is Not My Future. However, the Cracked Dice EP represents the first time that the trio have come through on CPU in full force, with Simon Lynch completing the lineup alongside Koova and Williams here. Cracked Dice finds them on top form, blending broken-beat machine-funk grooves with latent house and rave tendencies to thrilling effect.

Cracked Dice is ushered in by the weightless atmospherics of its title-track. The combination of synth washes and gurgling electronics here sounds so alien that it could pass for a piece of incidental music from 'The X-Files', but things don't stay that way for long - the track soon snaps into a stargazing club joint in the Detroit mode, one in which spaceship synth wobbles are pushed onwards by lithe, rumbling sub-bass. The combo comes off like an interstellar throwdown between the Midwestern masters of old and modern practitioners of UK soundsystem techno stylings - Lurka, Batu and the like. Following number 'Head Of The Keeper' maintains the energy of its predecessor, warping junglist archetypes around a breakbeat stomp in a manner reminiscent of Special Request.

London Modular Alliance's brand of electro has always been marked out by its playfulness, a feature derived from how snappy drum and synth programming anchor the group's off-the-cuff improvisation. That sensibility is apparent throughout the entirety of this EP, but perhaps nowhere more so than on first B-side cut 'Chemical Peel'. 'Chemical Peel' is at once stiff-necked and rubbery, the hissing hats and old-skool breaks phasing in and out of a boinging bassline which is pure Mr. Fingers goodness. That machine-funk scuttle carries through to closing track 'Lemon Mishap', a piece of insectoid acid-funk so gnarly it will have the crowd convinced that they're hearing the DJ receive an alien transmission in real time.

Cracked Dice sees esteemed electro dons London Modular Alliance whip up machine-funk, junglism and Midwestern house/techno into a quartet of club tools which are as sleek and futuristic as a lazerbeam.

FFO: Baby T, Batu, Jensen Interceptor, Mr. Fingers, Special Request

The classic Aphex Twin album - originally released in 1992. Arguably one of the most influential electronic albums of album time. A total must have.

These run of releases on ‘Existence Is Resistance’ comes from the Legendary Proto Garage Record Label ‘Same People’, and see’s Persian & Long time musical partner DJ Texsta, repressing some of their most pioneering UKG E.P.s.

One track was recorded with each synthesizer in Studio Styrka, Sweden 2005, then and a cassette box with 16 tracks was released in the extremly limited edition of one copy. The Human Pinacolada LP from 2009 is made out of 8 of these tracks, splendidly beatless, harsch, solid & sometimes beautiful. Psychedelic synth freaks, from the excellent Börft sublabel - you are hereby served.

Since 2010, Adam Keith's solo project Cube has been supplying a steady run of records and cassettes that capture songwriterly fixations and frustrations in a dextrous style of wounded electronics. Though Cube has been the centrepiece of his activity for some years, he's all the while remained active in collaborations, playing in bands such as SPF and Mansion to name just a few. Rounding off a decade of dialogues and agitations, Alter now presents Keith's third LP under the moniker of Cube, 'Drug of Choice' Based in New York, though managing a functional transience that takes in California too, Keith's latest iteration as Cube launches a panoramic set of sonic touchstones into a gristly and hypnotic orbit. Seismic drum machine parts partition an album that layers industrial-tipped takes on digi-dub with roaming guitar lines, piano vignettes, and breakbeat theatrics. For all the abrasiveness and rhythmic allusions that Keith employs, his use of voices alongside lush manipulations of errant samples and atmospheres tempers the commotion, delivering something that feels as much focused on artful constructions of private experiences as it does the cathartic qualities of noise.