MUSIC RECOMMENDATION

TRIBAL TECHNO

Dear Delsin Records, may you release slightly less ageing breakbeat and electronica to make room for more music on your revolutionary Mantis series, which is creating the atmospheric techno of the future? Your young sub-label is getting fresher than its father; it’s maybe time to let Luke win over Anakin, for the sake of the rebellion!! We would like to thank Dutch artist Tammo Hesselink and Terrain, a mysterious British duo, for their epic double release: they brilliantly diffuse the Mantis Force, along with the other masters of the clan, including Dino Sabatini (Darth Sidious?), Lemna (Leia?), Konduku (Count Dooku) (of course) and natural/electronic.system (R2-D2? No, we go too far).

TRIBAL TECHNO

Jumping into these tracks will make you miss the information. Stop. Breathe. Relax. Hit play from the beginning. At the same time: read our little tale: “After Ceres, Vesta is the second largest object of the asteroid belt, between Jupiter and Mars. Less than a billion years ago, during the upsurge of multicellular life on Earth, Vesta collided with another asteroid, and debris have fallen to Earth. At present, in the desert of Sahara, Tunisian artist Azu Tiwaline has been able to hold a fragment: she instantly felt the weight of the cosmic history, a strong emotion impossible to translate into words, but eventually into music…” [Ref.: NASA, Bandcamp’s description]

Vesta is also the goddess of family and home in Roman religion, sometimes confused with Mother Earth by the ancient poets. All the characters are reunited to unveil Azu Tiwaline’s creative inner life, tainted with warm grooves and divine connections to nature.

DANCEFLOOR-ORIENTED

“Back to Basics” could be interpreted as “going back to the original hypnotic techno sound, raw, repetitive and minimalist”, defined for Non Series’ sub-label “Nwhite”, when it got launched in 2012. But did Psyk really ever leave this type of sound in his other projects? Sure, “Bite Back” embeds the deep minimal codes of “Lowdown”, from his first release on Nwhite. However, in “Back to Basics”, the tracks “Out Of Sight”, more dreamy, and “Down”, reminiscent of Robert Hood’s legacy, in fact sound more like a follow-up to his recent EP “Scattered” on Hotflush. Psyk actually often “returns back to some basics” and we are wondering why he felt the need to highlight it here, especially since Sigha’s superb polyrhythmic remix is pretty modern… Apart from these considerations, which may be futile, the tracks are efficient on the dancefloor, which, in the end, is what matters.

ATMOSPHERIC TECHNO

Affin continues to celebrate its 15 years of solid discography with a brand new VA. We had the chance to listen to MTRL’s track in advance, as he played it in a DJ sequence that we used for our very first video documentary. Ultimately, it made the release pretty awaited, and we are happy to discover the rest of the line-up, from Cauê – definitely tailored to the label’s sound signature – to Svarog – deep and electrifying – to the one & only RVO, particularly creative and charismatic in the project. Joachim Spieth himself has worked on one of the tracks, we highly recommend also checking out his breathtaking ambient experience “Flow“, released some days after.

ATMOSPHERIC TECHNO

Greek artist Alexskyspirit impressed us last month with his EP “Wormhole” which, for us, marked his entry among the accomplished producers of the scene. With palpable growing confidence, he’s already back some weeks after with “Dystopia”, this time on Khôros Records. We can imagine the face of label owner Van Morph when he received the tracks: they are basically all what he loves, in line with his own productions in terms of quality and storytelling, built around profound cavernous beats overflown by well-designed atmospheres. The balance between the dark and light forces is particularly remarkable in the EP, creating an instant comfort while experiencing the trippy effect. The journey expands further thanks to well-thought remixes from Basis Change and John Plaza.

TRIBAL TECHNO

The release only contains two tracks, but what great work! In the first track, Nils Edte from Stuttgart confirms his orientation to the forestal techno. Some months ago, he made the wonderful “Wooden Tales” on Secuencias Temporales, which we recommend to check out if you still didn’t. In “Tilia’s Tribe”, he brings us on a journey to Asia, with the help of Magnus Lindgren’s magical Transverse flute, giving a mesmerising analogue touch to the track (and proving that, yes, a flute can utterly be a sexy instrument). About two hundred miles further: Kontinum from Leipzig brings us to the ethereal atmospheres he accustoms us to in the second track, for a peaceful journey particularly welcome during these mad times.

ATMOSPHERIC TECHNO

Some weeks ago, we had a crush on “Matrix of Confusion” by Nao Nhil, for being deep, authentic, unpretentious. Thinking further, there was a specific deep cinematic dimension that also caught our attention, which we find in Diffused Signal’s “Night Fae”: it’s a dark but yet very trippy journey “to the infinite”. The Australian artist doesn’t hide his interest in science fiction and – obviously from his moniker – astrophysics: two fascinating realms that are pretty well translated musically in “Fae”‘s cosmic nights. The musician doesn’t have a lot of releases in his catalogue yet, but he owns a page in the legendary Memoir podcast and got signed by Circular Limited. Things could be worst…

EXPERIMENTAL

The “Hypnotic Techno Circle” is first and foremost a community, but we are small players compared with the efficient families that Michel Iseneld succeeds to build in Facebook, Patreon and Discord, around his projects Hypnus Records, The Memoir and Aedi Records. The latter in particular is basically a community of numerous producers who receive some exercise of production: the best works are then grouped into releases, “Embryos” being the third one. While you may think of some potential amateur sound design, the meticulous selection of the tracks and the care provided by Michel Iseneld and his team actually not only make the project work, but also bring complex and very unique pieces for the releases, highly enriched from the experience. This is mind-blowing.