Hugo Əspirito Santo is a Portuguese composer based in France who manages to tie together a cold, ominous synth sound with lo-fi techno beats. Disturbing, but quite a good listen.
-
-
I’ve been in search of good minimal techno since the subject came up with a colleague’s student (he has access to several brilliant students, present and former, whom I hope to feature here in the future). Doing a bit of digging, this release by Priori and Al Wootton perked up my ears the most this evening. Dark, beaty, and incredibly good for headphone listening.
-
Azu Tiwaline and Al Wootton could not come from more different places on Earth. Azu’s roots are from Tunisia, while Al’s roots are from London’s urban sprawl, yet they manage to collaborate on a kind of dub informed by pulsating trance and Berber-influenced rhythms. Dark, sparse and pleasant.
-
Shaytoon Records has released a compilation introducing some of the finest minimal techno coming out of Iran these days. The label is based in New York, but the bands come, more or less, from the motherland, though America’s Persian diaspora is well-represented. The beats are rather icy and cold, reminding me of acts like Front Line Assembly and Delerium, though bearing a more mellow hue. These acts are definitely worth exploring.
-
Puscha is an Australian sound designer and film composer who hails from Australia and his music ranges from deep, cinematic ambient dub to cold, icy minimal techno. I’ve been out of the techno world far too long, as this release is astounding, and it’s making me wonder what else I’m missing these days. The beats remind me of something like Cinematic Orchestra and Monolake colliding. As both are legends of electronic music, Puscha is using some fine reference points to create his music.
-
FRKTL is the nom de plume of British-Egyptian composer Sarah Badr, and her work straddles so many genres that it’s quite hard to describe accurately (a wonderful thing, as it means her work is incredibly fresh-sounding). There are, of course, long, drone-y elements to the music, but once you go into tracks 3 and 4 (Hverfa af himni heiðar stjörnur and Hart er með hölðum, respectively, you start hearing elements of techno (!), bleak synthetic choruses sounding like the angels reciting the liturgy over the bowels of Hades (or, in this case, Hel, in order to maintain a proper cosmology). …
-
Thanks to our dear friends at Colombia’s fine techno label, Miniline, for introducing us to the work of David San. This is a one-track release of danceable tech-house from a composer, whom I believe, works out of Colombia. There seems to be an amazingly active electronic music scene popping up, to go along with the other, more traditional music which the country is noted for.
-
DidJaws is a French lo-fi IDM producer who works with his compositions in an absolutely stripped-down manner, without the overproduction and cute tricks that some IDM-related artists rely on. This feels raw, and the ideas coming out of these songs feel fresh. Not a bad release at all, and it makes me wonder what work he could do with full production capability. Let’s see how his work develops.
-
Philippe Gerber comes back to us with a new project called subduxtion which flows in a very different direction from other works on his label. subduxtion is the monicker of Christopher Gilmore, a composer I’m very new to. This tends to go more into tech-house and minimal dub, and the beats are pretty vicious. An impressive one-off.
-
It looks like Colombia has a rich techno scene, and the record label Psicodelica are spearheading it. Gruvi seem to be based in Romania, and produce a very rich, bass-heavy minimal techno sound. It is both dubby and danceable, and the B-track is even more stripped down with a remix by Serbian DJ CVTKVC.