Mathilde Steinbruch - Festival recording (vinyl)

In March 2023, Tresor Records will release "Crash Recoil", a new album by Surgeon. It marks Anthony Child's first techno LP in five years, following a period in which he felt uncertainty in his role as a techno producer and found it tough to locate inspiration. This new album encounters him drawing on spontaneous techniques to arrive at unchartered topographies.

"Crash Recoil" originates from Surgeon's recent live sets, where he experimented with constraints in performing and embracing the twists, turns and paradoxes that arrive from this. Each fresh iteration on consistent MIDI sequences and hardware reconfigured tracks into different constellations, creating an inspiring vortex of unpredicted events where ideas could flourish. This new approach allowed him to capture the spontaneous energy of his live shows in a way he had never done before. "This is not a live album, since it has not been recorded in one go during a live performance. In the same way that bands tour songs before going into the studio to record an album, I was able to explore these songs and hone their effectiveness during my live performances before creating a studio version."

The result is eight tracks that emphasise a new techno sound for Surgeon, drawing in references from across the musical spectrum. "I can hear Coil, King Tubby, Detroit Techno and The Cure all wrapped up with 30 years of DJing," Surgeon says of the album. Melancholic hum-like ambiences smudge around unadorned, near-droning basslines, crunching rhythm and percolating arpeggiations. The tracks carry unique and potent locomotion, with a low-slung grind through toughened terrains, breathing with a free spirit, untethered by a studio-based perspective. We hear manifestations of the same raw material across the album, like a textural motif, carving new variants and creating a cohesive work full of recollection.

#surgeon #crashrecoil #tresorrecords

BANDCAMP

Surgeon - We laugh and clap at the circus

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1. RMLW - Odessa
2. Sven Weisemann - ●○
3. Daniel Bortz, Sascha Sibler - What a Time to Be Alive (Original Mix) 
4. Till Kruger - Motor City (909 Rave Mix)  
5. Markus Suckut - Sun's Out 
6. DJ Metatron - Oh Ah 
7. Regal - From Other Sounds (Radio Slave Remix) 
8. Sterac - Teknitron 
9. WAX - WAX70007A
10. Markus Suckut  - Turn On  
11. Norman Nodge - ManMade
12. Strck - Type Type (Original Mix)
13. Roman Lindau - Now (Original Mix)
14. Skudge - Convolution
15. Moby, Luigi Tozzi - Go (Luigi's Edit)
16. Na Nich - Inlamint 
17. Rave Child - Good Vibrations 
18. EQD - #005B
19. Lanark Artefax - Touch Absence  

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231015_1765

Writing about techno is quite difficult without falling into clichés: there are only so many ways that you can say something about a music whose core elements are forged on deliberate repetition; where real talent is attributed to those who can find the perfect groove where nothing needs added or subtracted to hold the listener's attention for upwards of five minutes. 

Such tracks are the hallmark of Tresor's catalogue, and this joy in repetition can be found in works from Detroit, Berlin, Birmingham, Edinburgh, and more. And it is through this lens that Parisian artist, UFO95, focuses his output, resulting in Backward Improvement, an EP that sits perfectly in the spectrum of techno found in the Tresor chronology. 

The title itself makes an abstract reference to the influence of the classics of the genre, inspiring him to take a distinct less-is-more approach to production for this collection of stripped-down yet unrelenting techno chiselled from the live set which has fixed UFO95 as one of the next holdfasts for the future of the scene. 

Perhaps it is the fact the UFO95 only performs live that had led to such crisp and focussed studio productions.; each of the tracks showcase the artist's burgeoning talent for creating the essential foundations of techno; perfect, looping, instinctual grooves that are counterbalanced by an apprehensive tension from off-key tones. 

Backward Improvement marks the addition of a new name in the list of techno's best producers and proves that while the genre may now be in its 40th year there are yet sonic explorations to be made and variations that are worth unearthing.

UFO95 - Sexual Tension

Out now: https://orcd.co/REKIDS250

Mathias Kaden is back on Rekids after 2022’s ‘Blackbird’ EP, this time with the four-track ‘Circulate’ EP featuring a remix from the hotly tipped William Kiss. Kaden’s ‘Freedom’ kicks things off with stripped-back machine rhythm, tasteful stab melodies and a deeply satisfying low-end groove before an iconic gospel vocal joins in. Title track ‘Circulate’ is another infectious low-slung crawler with crunchy synth hits and a hypnotic and classy vibe that will get the dancefloor moving.

On the flip, William Kiss remixes Mathias Kaden’s ‘Freedom’ following his recent EP on Rekids' sibling label RSPX and the release of his collaborative project, Not Without Friends, with Luke Alessi and Jordan Brando on RÜFÜS DU SOL’s Rose Avenue. Kiss turns the track into a pumping peak-time cut with additional percussion and plenty of his signature Jackin’ flavour. Closing out the record, Kaden’s ‘Twisting Shadows’ introduces an acidic bassline and warped, dubbed-out vocals before dropping into an energetic trip.

Active since the mid-90s, Mathias Kaden appeared on Radio Slave’s Rekids for the first time in 2019 for ‘Liberate Drums’. He now returns to the label with the ‘Circulate’ EP, adding to his versatile discography on labels like Dyinamic and Vakantwhile also remixing work by Matthias Tanzmann, Onur Özer, Anja Schneider, and Trentemöller.

Mathias Kaden - Freedom

Mathias Kaden - Circulate

Juan Atkins' Infiniti project combines raw tactility and puristic elegance with Skynet, where slinking grooves mask chaotic frequencies and roughly-hewn structure.

Alongside fellow Detroit legend Terrence Dixon who appears on several tracks, Atkins exposes the life and emotion in machines, outputting a biomorphic atmosphere of industrial soul.

The ongoing importance of this album is indisputable, essential both to techno and to Tresor.

Infiniti - Walking on Water

Infiniti - Coffeeshop Interlude

Infiniti - Subterrainea

Astral travel with Cybotron into the meta-narrative of the Parallel Shift, a new sonic fiction that raises many questions about military science of the near-future and the possibility of other worlds. 

Descending backward through the rhythms of time, the Skynet module retracts from the hyper-structural society of 2100, edging toward the mid-century modern age teetering on the brink of what was then the frontier of "the future". The system boots the Infiniti process, morphing into a cosmotechnic vessel coursing the superhighway of burgeoning general intelligence, seeking data from just before "the overshoot and collapse." 

R&amp;D methods, rhythmanalytically applied, dissect the aftermath of an industrial society that burst through the ecological capacity of Spaceship Earth. Fractal visions of war and innovation spike and recede from and into the surfaces of reality being bent and guiding the eyes, ears, touch towards a laboratory in the year 1961. A nuclear expert, Don Lewis, receives orders to decrypt the mysterious black dodecagonal disc known as Fortec and the extraterrestrial biology unearthed in Roswell. He joins a team disassembling Fortec and studying the recurrent dodecahedral patterns linked to the human nervous system. 

Through dismantling and probing, the team cycles through a saecular search devoid of finite conclusions, limited by Earth's intellectual and technological prowess. One 1960s night, Lewis, while meddling with Fortec's cyborganic innards, accidentally electrifies himself. His cyclotron and missile experience guides him to circuit-bend Fortec, stirring the entity from a mechanical slumber. Lewis and Fortec communicate in resonances, until it drifts back into a tranquil stasis. 

The US Defense and contractors, unbeknownst to them, observe this breakthrough. They later permit Lewis to exit military service as the Air Force forms the Foreign Technology Division. Concurrently, MJ12 evolves into CY12, delving into second-order cybernetics. Lewis clandestinely keeps working on Fortec fragments, transitioning from military engineer to musician, pioneering the LEO module, a fusion of Fortec's essence and audio engineering. 

He shares his insights with Roland founder Ikutaro Kakehashi, aiding the creation of the iconic TR-808. Meanwhile, Fortec branches out, coining "Cyberspace" &ndash; a collective illusion of liberty unshackled by physical, political, or spiritual bounds, anchored in the equitable distribution of The Golden Ratio across realities. Yet "Cyberspace" morphs into a chaotic truth reservoir, spilling over into deception. 

The Parallel Shift manifests in the perpetual "Now," a collapsed event horizon where past and future are ensnared in a relentless present, unfurling along a dissolving timeline, overseen by a monolithic simulation under ceaseless watch&hellip; 

&mdash; The Rhythmanalyst aka DeForrest Brown, Jr.

PREMIERE: Cybotron - Parallel Shift

Growing up on the north Atlantic island of Iceland bestows one with an unusual and often intense relationship with light and colour: Summers come with endless days, Winters with scant sunlight yet increased sightings of the Aurora Borealis; the mysterious and awe-inspiring glow across the sky. Channelling these energies, Exos comes to Tresor with his Green Light EP, a five-track collection of the sort of spectrally rich techno synonymous with the Northman's 27-year career.

Across the EP, the five tracks fizz and pulsate driving ever forward, making the release's title a three-way play on words referencing the continuous travelling of photons, the verdant warping of the Northern Lights, and the universal colour for Go, for forward propulsion. Smart wordplay can also be found in titles like Gr&aacute;tt Silfur, a term in &Iacute;slenska (literally "grey sliver") which signifies a tension between two parties, further extending the colour metaphor and dark/light dichotomy found elsewhere.


The digital release comes with three extra tracks that continue the dynamic energy, pushed along by the same shifting, mutating force where the music often feels like voices calling out from the darkness or the shimmer of light as the sun rises across the horizon.

Green Light EP continues this year's blazing return from an artist who, similar to his output, is never stagnant: ever changing form yet ever moving forward.

231015_1765

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