techno
Glasgow duo Jonnie Wilkes and James Savage take their Naum Gabo project into new territory with a vital LP of industrial and abstract sound
Sara Dziri’s Close to Home for Optimo Music defies easy techno categorisation by occupying different spaces that are yet the same space
A quick roundup of short reviews from Concrete Islands HQ, with releases from International Anthem, Soma, Ghost Box, Strut and Jazzland
Mark Churcher discusses the musical foundations of V-Neck and his A Nice Random Meet LP, plus Glasgow connections and the return of Emote
Zillas on Acid’s EP for the Nocturne label delivers free-form acid house, slow rave for dream realms and a genre exploding Vanessa Worm remix
Shadowy techno meets electronic body music on Namesis’s Rave Is Dead EP, the Russian producer’s debut for Glasgow’s Soma label
Junior Tomlin discusses his Velocity Press monograph and how science fiction, surrealism and dub shaped his rave flyers and record covers
Glasgow breakbeat scientist The Burrell Connection delivers a digital-only concoction of open-minded broken techno cuts for Optimo Music
Matt Anniss talks to Stewart Gardiner about Join the Future, his essential book on British dance music’s seminal but unsung sound: Bleep & Bass
The Heartwood Institute & Panamint Manse collaboration on Castles in Space is an otherworldly exploration of reality that is as haunting as it is thrilling
Stewart Gardiner never intended the title of his ongoing reviews column to be about social distancing, but reality has wrestled all meaning to the ground
DJ and producer HAAi’s dancefloor lethal, industrialised machine music debut for Mute gets a very welcome release on 12″
Black Deer’s self-titled album for Glasgow’s Huntleys + Palmers label offers detailed dancefloor transmissions in abstract techno form
The Home Current rounds off an almost embarrassingly productive year by leaning into his house and techno influences on the Palermo Traxx Vol 2 EP
JD Twitch’s Beats soundtrack brings the rave era to life with a mix of formative Detroit cuts, massive hands-in-the-air trax and choice modern numbers
Carter Tutti Void bring their collaboration to a close with third album Triumvirate, an exploratory set of enveloping post-techno compositions
Optimo Music Digital Danceforce presents Frank Rodas’s persuasive debut EP of industrial, proto-techno, dystopian electro and spectral acid house
Peter Van Hoesen’s Kelly Criterion EP delivers a set of propulsive techno excursions that represents acid house past, present and future
Penelope Trappes’s 2018 LP has been laid out on the operating table, broken down and made anew by the likes of Cosey Fanni Tutti, Mogwai and Nik Void
Heat Death, Dalham’s third LP and first for Castles In Space, is a thrillingly original electronic work that draws comparisons with early Boards of Canada
Near the start of his most prolific year to date, Martin Jensen gives some behind-the-scenes insight into The Home Current
Jon Brooks’s latest project for his Café Kaput digital label takes a left turn into techno and acid house, and is just as thrilling as anything he’s done
Production Unit’s planet conscious soundscapes are La Jetée as sonic collage: warnings from the future embedded in the now
Pye Corner Audio’s third LP for Ghost Box is a future classic of dark potentiality and evocative sonic world building with a core of Space Age optimism
TUTTI is an abstract autobiographical study rendered in dark, sensuous electronics that conveys a hallucinatory experiencing of the past in the present
Stewart Gardiner says goodbye to 2018 with a roundup of albums and EPs, ranging from the ambience of anxiety to haunted house music and pagan flutes
Rapt is where early nineties R&S Records style techno is stripped and slowed into ambient drone works for sleepless nights