Techno News

Serious Breaks/IDM on the new mysterious hand stamped Ryoko label from Japan.. Limited copies..

US-based, South Africa-born Brendon Moeller has been hugely prolific over the years under sever different aliases. Pathways is his newest album and is another signature blend of deep techno, dub, and ambient sounds that explore fresh ground. This one comes on cassette - a fitting medium for his always hazy, lo-fi sounds, and opens with a gorgeous stargazer loosely tethered to a dreamy groove. 'Movement' is just much of a cosmic floater, 'Accident' has static electricity fizzing about an underwater chamber and 'Through' is a slow-motion dubscape. 'Exodus' and 'Calm' close out this beautifully unhurried exploration of the deep.

One year after its original release, the Placid Angles album Touch The Earth is being remixed by an impressive array of artists from the extended Figure family. With John Beltran being a distinct voice within the electronic music scene for over thirty years now, Figure is thrilled to reveal a whole LP’s worth of reinterpretations, including two works by the original artist himself.

Opening up is Marcel Dettmann, who seamlessly has integrated the lush soundscapes of the original album into a beat-driven but equally serene journey. Picking up on the LP’s underlying dark garage tropes, Planet Mu headmaster M-ziq infuses his rework with even more rolling drums and ethereal vocal chops. The also inherent IDM roots of Touch The Earth have been kept close by Warp-veterans Plaid who deliver a shuffling flurry full of horns, synths and syncopated rhythms. More straightforward interpretations include Dauwd’s dazzling piece of feathery, fast, atmospheric techno; a gorgeous melodic house remix by Baltra and Cassy who turns in a rigid UK stomper.

Amidst all the reworks, John Beltran himself makes two appearances across the record. As Placid Angles he adds another heads-down percussive/ambient swirl, which represents exactly what the producer has been hailed for since more than three decades now. His own remix finishes the record on an epic note, with an organic drum track that celebrates life and the necessity for communal gathering in order to dance.
Beltran’s own additions to this LP are like the essential glue that makes it all bind together, forging the old and the new into something equally exciting as already intimately familar.

2022 Repress

Oblique Music is proud to present Polish wonder-duo Private Press. Through their debut EP on Technosoul, they made an immediate impression with their matured taste and signature sound design, subsequently followed by releases on Indigo Aera proving that it wasn't a fluke.

Here we have a diverse, yet coherent four-tracker. Blending inspirations from early 90's Detroit- and dub techno to early 00's UK tech house, the duo manages to offer an EP that respectfully winks at the past, while keeping an eye out to the future.

Tikita return with more of their deep and groovy techno, this time from Lapien, who is one half of Artefakt and a master of deep voodoo sounds. His 'Brumal' EP includes a remix from label mainstays natural/electronic.system. that completes a deep and powerful three track disc.

Lapien s 'Brumal' kicks off with deep, swirling pads and punchy drums. It s soft and atmospheric techno with a dubby bottom end and cosmic moods that is soothing and warm. The natural/electronic.system. remix of 'Moonset' is simmered down into an absorbing ambient soundscape with rolling, rubbery drums deep down below. It s thoughtful mind music to get utterly lost in. Last of all, the original 'Moonset' is another richly layered and spacious techno groove, with gentle percussion over underlapping drums and synths smearing out in all directions. It s brilliantly expansive music for intimate dance floors.

Luck of Access, Andrey Pushkarev's tastemaking label, is back from a year’s hiatus with a new release from an iconic name. No stranger to the world of the finest dub-techno, a Mancunian producer about whom we still don’t know much, J.S. Zeiter delivers three elegant tracks that connect the dots between Detroit-dub and ambient. On the A-side, you’ll find “Scatter” — a rolling and intriguing journey through melancholic and enigmatic dub techno that’s enhanced by drifting delays, gentle forthright drums and crisp percussion. Over on side B, you’ll meet an impressive duo. “Silent Running” is the epitome of surreal broken beats and could become a perfect set-closing track. “Absence” reveals epic and immersive soundscapes that give you a glimpse of what a dystopian future may sound like. Absolutely unmissable.

For Oleg Azelitskiy, known as DJ Slon, the nineties and the first half of the aughts were an era of "firsts". First squat parties on the banks of the Obvodny Canal and more legitimate ones at Tunnel, first proper techno club in Russia. First DJ sets, first vinyl records in his collection, first radio shows at Port FM. He is a true veteran of the Russian techno movement, who carried his love for the genre through three decades and inspired more than one generation of musicians. Album Nr. 1 is the first edition of his music on vinyl. It comprises the music that Azelitskiy made during 1995 - 2005, except for the track My 40th Vesna, produced in 2010.

Azelitskiy's love for techno was born out of contradictions. Thanks to the Soviet synth band Zodiac and the French pioneer Jean-Michel Jarre, he had loved electronic music since his childhood. When he grew up, he got into the dark, introspective pieces by Einsturzende Neubauten and Bauhaus. Not only does the wide-ranging palette on Album Nr. 1 reflect its creator's taste, it echoes the changing times of the Russian nineties. It was the time when confrontations with criminals were inseparable from the parties and get-togethers bustling with local artists.

His affection for various genres led to many monikers and projects, all represented here on Album Nr. 1. He recorded most of his music as DJ Slon. Then there was a project Zhutkiy Lazer (Scary Laser), where Azelitskiy made music that was more experimental but still techno-oriented, with the occasional help of his friend Aleksey Gaponenko (Lazer became a proper solo project of DJ Slon in 1999). There are also tracks under the aliases Mass Fatality, which combined techno and synth-pop, and Razrushiteli Mozgovych Uliev (Brain Hive' Destroyers), with its more direct tight techno tracks.

The music of DJ Slon sounds fresher and more alive on Album Nr. 1 than ever before.
Noticeably, this record, first and foremost, is dance music. As a voice on one of the album tracks boldly states, we came to dance.

blue + red marbled vinyl

"He spoke to the sand. It explained to him that the wind could take him and carry him across the desert and then he could become a stream again. He asked if he would then remain the same as before? The sand answered him that this was not possible, because his essence would be carried away and would again form a stream. He would be called what he is even today, because he did not know which part in him was the essential one."
- Lazarus

Deepening the sound well of the Mantis series' explorations in subliminal club music, Katatonic Silentio arrives with four tracks of spatial, subtle and elegant electronics. Milan-based Mariachiara Troianiello's approach to soundsystem-oriented music has evolved over time, moving from hyperkinetic, breakcore-tinted post-rave music to patient, sound design-rich tapestries on her latest Les Chemins De L'inconnu LP for Ilian Tape. On Mantis 11 she continues her established leftfield approach while also tapping into a particularly restrained, meditative mode which aligns with the loose ethos orbiting Mantis. Snaking, crooked rhythms plot a course through artfully sculpted reverb and delay - a skeletal, dub-informed sonic stamp shot through with especially expressive production, primed for dancehalls prepared to journey further in pursuit of full immersion.

2022 Repress

The new introspective album by Pablo Bolivar is a nine track LP of deep avantgarde techno. Hypnotic and emotive songs that create its own journey through electronic music.

2023 Repress

Canadian duo M.S.L. debuts on the Clone Dub Series with a heady 4 track ep. Walking that fine line between classic headphone IDM and tripped out early morning dance floor cuts. Bleepy arpeggios, melodies and soaring strings, backed by the syncopated rythms of analogue drummachines. Very reminiscent of early F-com releases and, our own harbour city duo, Duplex's early works on Dub and Clone Records.

2022 Repress

Mr. Ho shows again why he is a favorite producer for so many! A double album full of bleepy breakbeat tunes and robotic electro, all with a strong focus on the dancefloor. His debut album 'Michaelsoft' is a perfect and sophisticated summation of the talented producers skill at making sonically slick groove-led music, ranging wide in genres and moods. The album is a journey of sorts, kicking off with the dreamy breaks of '000Baby' and the slightly broken beats of the spine-tingling 'Ngomee' before venturing into hectic and threatening electro with 'Quit Startin' and ghetto-funk stylings of '14me'. After listening to 'Michaelsoft' the listener is reminded once again of the subject of time, specifically the time the producer has spent silently honing and calmly perfecting his craft whilst the rest of the world seems to descend into chaos. Recommended!

'Since 2018, João Pais Filipe (drums) and Burnt Friedman (electronics/synth) have investigated into automatic pattern–composition rooted in doubling and halving; the unimpeachable laws of motion. The offer of freedom can be seen as a way to get in touch with necessity.

On "Mechanics Of Waving" the attempt is made to succumb to such a mode of action, the drilling of a method, not through individual cunning or displayed musicianship.

Through constant practise Friedman & Pais discover the principles of rhythmic phenomena while dis–associating the music from cultural idioms. Inspired by rare infrasound–ratios ranging from 11 to 23, Nonplace releases the results of a 4 years long operation.'

Drums recorded and engineered by José Arantes.
Mastered by Kassian Troyer, Dubplates & Mastering.

Handstamped whitelabel with 4 dubby techno grooves from Jancen.

Mastering & lacquer cut by Kassian Troyer at Dubplates & Mastering Berlin

Jamie Russell and Alex Jones set up theHypercolour imprint back in 2006 and the label continues to dish up genre bending bangers two decades down the line. For the label’s milestone 100th release, KiNKcues up a killer four track release with ‘For The People’.

One of house music’s most in demand producers and remixers, KiNK has delivered time and time again for labels such as Running Back, Royal Oak,Macro and his own Sofia Records label, and so it’s with great honour that the Bulgarian artist commemorates the label’s centenary with a kaleidoscopic bundle of hyperactive bangers!

Vinyl only. w/p by octaedre
mastered by sven weisemann

Vinyl only. Fine exercises in minimal house from Katie Drover, label-head of Dokutoku Records and long-time resident at Melbourne's Revolver club, now living in Berlin. For Bluetrain, Stephan G or early
Force Tracks and Telegraph releases fans.

repress !

DVS1, aka Minneapolis-raised Zak Khutoretsky, will release a new Klockworks record on the 16th of July 2014. It will be his third outing on Ben Klock's label, following acclaimed records in both 2009 and 2011.

DVS1 is not just a techno DJ or producer, when the time is right his sets will gladly diverge into other styles to take the dancefloor where he sees fit, and his studio work too. 'Black Russian' sounds DVS1 like in house mode, as dub techno-inspired piano chords repeat to infinity, floating above padded kicks and moving hi-hats. This is one of the lightest tracks released under the DVS1 alias, but it's still equipped to create blissful ecstasy when played - a favourite closing track for both DVS1 and Ben Klock.

Flip over to the B-side and it's back to Zak's usual tone of dark techno, the style exhibited on his previous two Klockworks 12"s. The eerie bleeps and haunting atmospheres of 'Creeping' evolve for seven minutes, driven along by shuffling high-end percussion. It is understated and subtly arranged as a tool, the kind of track DJs rely on to keep momentum building with energy and elegance.

'Spying' is another prime example of DVS1's take on minimalism, it is stripped-down and makes the most of the fewest possible elements. 'Spying' cropped up in Ben Klock's Fabric mix last year, and has been been a staple in his DJ sets; for good reason, it embodies the deep pulse and light/dark contrast of all Klockworks output.

2014 has already provided three stellar DVS1 releases, two on his own label Hush and this. It's all evidence that this producer's work in the studio is now on par with his exceptional talent behind the decks, quite a prospect for fans new and old.