Great piece of dark chug this. Suffused with the spirit of new beat and off-kilter acid, this is a decadent piece of kit. One for the heads down crew. Off to Convenanza at the end of next week so I hope to hear some similar stuff while I’m there. And I’d like to write more, but after a very long run this afternoon, I’m cream crackered.
Kontakt Records out of Denmark have a great back catalogue. Mostly pressed on coloured vinyl and with a wide swathe of remixers. This is a very random choice from 2020. It’s a Roger Gerressen ‘Pressure Dub’ of ‘124NUN’ by Bioroot. A lovely piece of dub techno that can easily cross over into a deep house set. Lovely stuff!
I came across B. Calloway a while back. He’s a Detroit artist who either prefers to operate within the shadows or has been unfairly ignored. Either way he’s under appreciated. And this track from 2019, remixed by JShaw, aka Shawescape Renegade, is a great piece of jittery sci-fi electro. The type that could only come from Detroit. The production is deep and clean and is over much too soon. It does from the ‘3000 B.C.’ release which is, according to Discogs, B. Calloway’s most recent vinyl release. A digital-only release called ‘Lost In Time Vol. 1’ came out in 2020. So how about a follow up?
I couldn’t find the video for this on Youtube, if it even exists. However, it was Colin Dale’s most recent Abstract Dance show which brought me here. This track comes in between forty and fifty minutes and it’s brilliant. You just know when you see the track list and you randomly select a part of the show that the title fits. Biz is a gentleman from Australia whom I know nothing about., but I shall be buying the eponymously titled EP this track comes from. “Why?” I hear you say. “Because it’s ace and shows an intuitive grasp of high level machine funk” I say. And that’s all there is to it really.
A very sophisticated piece of deep, sci-fi techno with obvious Jeff Mills influences, but also standing apart. This is pure atmosphere building, deep sci-fi space music with a kitsch twist. That is to say that although this is s serious tune, it also soundtracks a parallel vision of the future. One that is deep[lying embedded in a post-war, cold war ‘reds under the bed” threat. It’s difficult to know how much mileage an apparently future proofed genre such as techno has. However, the best of it always looks back in order to go forward, no matter how counterintuitive that ,may be. And this is such a tune.
I posted the original of this a while back, so there’s no reason why this version shouldn’t go up as well. Haventepe doesn’t release enough music, that said, he’s probably Turkey’s most under appreciated export. He does keep a low profile though, so it’s probably something that doesn’t worry him that much. For this remix of ‘Subsync’ he inhabits the softer, more gossamer frayed layers of dub techno and turns in a masterclass of ambience, restraint and longevity. It’s cut from a different cloth than Basic channel, but it’s every bit as good in its own way. More rhythmic maybe? What it lacks in surprise and mutation it makes up for in pace and groove. Brilliant!
New .VRIL on Delsin is always a reason to celebrate, and ‘Signum Ex Auro’ delivers insofar as grainy dub techno with a penchant for the portentous and panoramic are concerned. When I listen to music like this I always wonder what inspires it and how does it make the journey to its manifestation. The sum total of influence, and that influence itself, that goes into the birth of this tune is completely beyond my comprehension. Where did the idea come from. Was it a random thought while buying a frozen pizza at a well-known discount supermarket? We might never know.
Marvellous, otherworldly (which is the point innit) electro from Kalkulator remixed by Nullptr. Slow and insidious which maximises the funk, this sounds like a description of an alien and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since I first heard it. I don’t know of any other tracks by Kalkulator, this one comes as part of a gargantuan 51 track release on a usb stick. Thankfully it’s available separately on Bandcamp. Lovely stuff. Let’s put ‘The X-Files’ on.
This track came out in 1998, a time when Treibstoff was in full ascendancy. It was a label which effortlessly blended deep house and techno and although I don’t own many of its releases, (two I think), it was one I always monitored. I remember buying one release at Flying Records in Soho just before going to a Faith party with some of the DJs there. They opened the shop late on Saturday evening and we all piled in after the pub and played records together before going to the party. All I can remember about that was Maurice Fulton & Justin Robertson played, as well as the residents. And I’m going off on a tangent, which is a pity because this track by Rene Breitbarth is a killer. It’s mid-paced and as deep as you like. And what really raises the hairs on the back of the neck is the little vibey flourish that hovers above the bass which blends in with what sounds like a short wave radio being tuned. Lovely analogue warmth.
