The Predatory Wasp
OK EG and Priori team up for a four-tracker that keeps things fast and focused without ever going full throttle, recorded from sessions at Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio. Stand out Serpentine 1 plays like a set of finely tuned sketches and there’s a definite Dozzy-like touch to the rhythms: slightly disorientating, never dull.
The second LP from revered techno collective Sandwell District, End Beginnings, serves as a poignant tribute to the late Juan Mendez, known as Silent Servant, who died halfway through the album’s production. The closing track The Silent Servant is as a heartfelt requiem, weaving distant mechanical murmurs with orchestral synths, while white noise sweeps through like wind rustling barren branches.
Taken from the debut EP from Lotame. Three understated cuts drift through breaks, acid and slow techno — worn, emotional, quietly unresolved. Somewhere between DJ Healer and Tren: soft-edged, half-lit, and heavy with feeling.
Swedish producer Martinou is the latest addition to my very short list of electronic artists making properly emotional stuff; melancholy, reflective, heartbreaking. Basically the kind of stuff I want to be able to make myself. This is taken from his excellent new EP The Glow That Lingers for Fauxpax Musik, and if you like what you hear I’d recommend going back to his 2021 album Rift for more of the same.
https://fauxpasmusik.bandcamp.com/album/the-glow-that-lingers
In 2018 Sam Barker released his Debiasing EP and pretty much changed the techno game. He wasn’t the first to do away with kick drums, but with Look How Hard I’ve Tried especially he demonstrated just how powerful restraint could be. His recently announced second album Stochastic Drift now sees Barker creating tracks with a fresh deftness and by “letting go of expectations”, and the first single Reframing is fucking magnificent, although if I was being super critical I reckon it could be at least twice as long. Roll on April.
Skee Mask just released the latest album in a series that pulls together batches of previously unreleased tracks, these made between 2016 and 2022. As with its predecessors, D is more coherent and accomplished than 99% of electronic albums released this year; an impressive feat given that this is essentially a sweep of the cutting room floor.
Midland’s debut album Fragments Of Us examines the queer experience, from the early days of the 80’s AIDs crisis up to the present day, and features the voices of some Midland’s artistic heroes including Arthur Russell, Marlon Riggs, David Wojnarowicz alongside the contemporary voices of Stereogamus’ Jonny Seymour and Horse Meat Disco’s Luke Howard. The subject matter is often dark, and includes news snippets following the introduction of Section 28 in the UK – which prohibited the “promotion of homosexuality” in public life – to an excerpt from an audio diary of Wojnarowicz that concludes simply with “basically I don’t want to die”. But there’s hope and possibly catharsis in Midland’s production, which is warm and accessible without ever becoming bland or homogenised.
Mariachiara Troianiello aka Katatonic Silentio continues her exploration of spatial, experimental sound design on her new EP Axis Of Light, slicing and splicing various forms of dub, techno and breaks while following her instincts towards storytelling in each track. Bridging The Gap is skeletal, paranoid, sketchy and extremely good.
Triumphant, emotionally resonant techno from JakoJako’s eagerly awaited Segmente EP which is out today on NovaMute.
Berlin based modular synthesist and DJ JakoJako’s, aka Sibel Koçer, recently announced a new four-track Segmente EP which will be coming out 18 July on NovaMute, and Introspection is the second single to be released from it. Pretentiously, nauseatingly described by Resident Advisor as ““fragile techno written in the key of wonder”, I feel slightly sick quoting this level of dewy-eyed fawning, but here we are.
The Predatory Wasp 