David W’s Top 20 Techno Traxxx of 2007 (Part Two: 01–10)

This is a much-delayed con­tin­u­a­tion of the pre­vious post here on Girl­pants. Sorry for the delay. I won’t waste any time get­ting to the tunes. –Ben

10. Carsten Jost — “Love” [Dial]
“Carsten Jost actu­ally co-runs the Dial label with Lawrence. To be honest, I wasn’t all that wise to this sound a few years ago but by all reports he was a pretty big deal back then and released a bunch of really great tracks. Up until now he’s been on semi-retirement and focusing on run­ning the label, but now he’s back! This is the other track on the Dial split EP (#15 was the A side and this is the B).

While the Efdemin track was a move­ment away from the Dial sound, Carsten has deliv­ered some­thing very Dia­lesque only with a few subtle dif­fer­ences. One of these dif­fer­ences is the use of per­cus­sion. I really love the per­cus­sion on this one. These blissed out melodic tracks don’t really need it but it really does lift it up to that extra level. The classic Dial sound comes from the bril­liant rising synth notes that grab a hold of you. It’s a simple track that just grad­u­ally builds as it goes. It’s the sort of trick that the prog pro­ducers used to do but they’d get to cheesy while this is exe­cuted per­fectly. But what more would you expect from Dial? If you like this track or any­thing else you hear from Dial (Pantha Du Prince, Lawrence, Efdemin) then try to grab every­thing you can on the label. It’s easily the most reli­able medium/large techno label going at the moment.”

09. Fran Matjor — “Aver Aver” [Thema]
“It’s great to see Argentina con­tin­uing to pro­vide an impres­sive amount of deep min­imal fare. Min­imal is get­ting to a point where enough sounds have been explored that it’s dif­fi­cult to be sur­prised by the types of sounds used. But this track really does sound very dif­ferent. I really have no idea how to describe what the fuck is going on with this hook. It’s a beau­tiful mess of com­pressed pings, squelches, scrapes and acid good­ness. But that’s not all! There’s a funky bassline and the beats stay busy enough to not sound too pedes­trian as the hook does fuck-knows-what.

It’s always great to see new labels bringing out fresh stuff that gets noticed. Dial, M_nus, Perlon and Kom­pakt are great and all but these small labels are what keeps the scene so healthy. This is only their 2^nd release and it’s one of the best of the year so far. It appears Argentina has much to offer in 2007.”

08. Martin But­trich — “Well Done (Ser­afin remix)” [Four:Twenty Record­ings]
“But­trich had a great 2006, so I was looking for­ward to this release. The orig­inal track was a little dis­ap­pointing, but this Ser­afin remix more than makes up for that! Ser­afin is another guy who I really admire because his pro­duc­tions are just so well done tech­ni­cally. Listen closely to the sounds used on this track: how com­plex the hi hat is, or how the first hook and synth very loosely wrap them­self around the bassline in a way that’s almost out of sync. The track sounds like it’s going to col­lapse on itself but it stays together. And this is only the first 4 min­utes of a 12 minute tune!

He doesn’t even intro­duce the main hook until 6 min­utes in and it’s a ripper of a hook con­taining some beau­tiful multi-layered melodies that if tweaked a little wouldn’t sound out of place on an Aphex Twin track. We then get some more rising synths and all the top notch per­cus­sion and beats are brought back in. It’s a per­fect track and high­lights how great this guy really is.”

07. “Seph — Ann Tullah” [Kali­mari Musique]
“I think it’s safe to say that Seph is still on fire. While he’s still deliv­ering the deep dark Argen­tinean techno, on this track we can find a little more funk than his pre­vious work. There’s a few rea­sons for this, firstly the struc­ture isn’t as rigid and this results in a looser, more elastic feel. Also, the effects/samples used are more stretched out and tex­tured and the deep bass appears to be along to party rather than just creep everyone out.

So overall it’s much funkier than the old Seph sound, which sug­gests some devel­op­ment in his sound and is good to see. While artists like Seph and the others in the Argen­tinean brigade were bril­liant in 2006, some­times these localised sounds can get stag­nant rather quickly–tracks like this one sug­gest oth­er­wise for their scene.”

06. From Karaōke To Stardom — “Big Bad Swoosh” [Apnea]
“From Karaōke To Stardom have pretty much come from out of nowhere with 2 EPs in the space of 2 months, and every track is stellar. On this track they deliver a tasty slab of slow burning nasty techno. Every­thing about this track is stretched out, tense and sin­ister. Long drawn out static and eerie sounds fill the mix which are under­scored by a deep bassline and bub­bling echoed min­imal pings. I’ve men­tioned how there’s been many exam­ples of tracks being stripped of reverb and made “dryer” but nothing could be fur­ther from the truth here. Every­thing about this track is wet and drippy.

Once it has set­tled into its groove we learn why this track is called “Big Bad Swoosh,” as we get hit with a big swoosh of static which ushers in a tem­po­rary release of ten­sion. The bass gets punchier and the eerie sounds are removed and replaced by some more dance­floor friendly per­cus­sion. But parity is soon restored as the ten­sion returns and some new Minus-esque para­noid pings arrive. This is a really fresh tune and the sort of track that I’d expect to get played a lot for the next few months. I don’t see how anyone couldn’t lose their shit to this one, espe­cially when that swoosh hits!”

05. Trac­tile — “Dynam” [M_nus]
“Everyone is waiting for the M_nus bubble to burst. There’s been some people saying they are over­rated and per­haps a couple of their releases are. It’s like when Warp were on top of their game, any­thing they released would get more atten­tion because it was on Warp, while there were some better IDM releases on smaller labels that would go vir­tu­ally unno­ticed. Per­son­ally I’m not sure either way, but one thing I do know is that a majority of their releases are freaking amazing and the new Tractle EP is a good example of that. All of the 4 tracks are top notch and could have been placed in this top 20. As appears to be the early 2007 trend, this release is quite hard and not really that min­imal, which is sig­nif­i­cant because M_nus has been the major player in the min­imal sound for quite a while now.

Dynam is a super rocking slice of ana­logue techno by the M_nus new­comers. Dubby funky deep bass is paired with tasty beats and high hats, but it’s all about the snare on this one. This snare is the best thing to happen in 2007 so far–it’s sort of off kilter like it has been stut­tered or knocked out of its des­ig­nated knook. It’s a subtle change, but it throws the whole track that little bit out of sequence, which loosens it up–as we all know, loose­ness often leads to funk­i­ness. Given this tem­plate, Tractle uses it as licence to rock their drum machine and throw all sorts of glitched up mad­ness and robotic cicada fre­quenices into the mix. It really is great to be reminded of that spe­cial warm­ness ana­logue gear can bring. This reminder is par­tic­u­larly well timed as dig­ital tech­nology has been the dom­i­nant force in techno for the past few years.”

04. Half Hawaii — “Into You” [Perlon]
“Half Hawaii are my tip for best group of 2007. This EP is amazing and the short clips of their next EP sound even better. Plus, they have an album due later in the year. They are a new group, but the 2 mem­bers (Bruno Pon­sato and Pantytec’s Sammy Dee) have been around for a while now and have already built a good rep­u­ta­tion for them­selves. While expec­ta­tions amongst fans would have been high, I doubt anyone expected some­thing this fab­u­lous. This is the freshest sounding track on the list as it’s really stripped back and min­imal but also really warm which is very dif­ferent to the typ­ical cold/deep min­imal which is so pop­ular right now.

The bass on “Into You” is muf­fled slightly so each pulse mas­sages rather than hits you in the gut. This blends per­fectly with the sam­pled bongos and other live per­cus­sion as well as the field record­ings of run­ning water and slightly processed vocal snip­pets. A super deep sub bass and dis­tant sirens and bleeps are added later to fur­ther enhance the warm­ness. In hind­sight this sound is a log­ical next step for min­imal but I don’t think anyone saw it coming. Problem is that it’s prob­ably too fresh to play in a set because there’s lit­er­ally nothing else out there that sounds like this right now. It’s a pity because it deserves plenty of dance­floor love. Hope­fully we are wit­nessing the begin­ning of a new sound.”

03. Dub Kult — “Cluster Fuck” [Curle Record­ings]
“This is prob­ably the most uni­formly loved track so far in 07. I haven’t heard anyone say a bad thing about it yet and for good reason. The beats are com­prised of var­ious forms of live per­cus­sive sounds and glitched out dig­ital beats which are given just the right tex­ture to blend well with each other. This com­bi­na­tion delivers both tech­nical pre­ci­sion and raw funk­i­ness to the mix which is a lethal com­bi­na­tion if the right bal­ance is reached as it is here. Herein lies the secret to “Cluster Fuck“‘s appeal: by util­ising both organic and non-organic sounds in the same track it man­ages to bring both warm funk­i­ness and cold mechanic moods, which are 2 of the best routes to take a track. But rarely (if ever) do you hear both these paths taken in the same track.

Once the plat­form has been set by said organic and dig­ital beats, some dubby bass is added which is soon joined by cut up vocals for a while. Then things start to get dark and trippy as the vocals dis­ap­pear and the once funky and clean bass trans­forms into eerie deep acid and some spooky melodies creep into the mix. As this hap­pens the per­cus­sion becomes more urgent to com­plete the 180 degrees shift in mood. Then, as if to make sure you are kept per­ma­nently off guard, the vocals return in what sounds like some sort of school­girl chant and the funk is not only restored but brought to new heights. Once this phase is over the track once again plunges into new depths of dark­ness, never to return to it’s bright funky climax again. This one is an epic in length and journey as it brings you up, takes you down, then up then finally down again.”

02. Beck — “Cellphone’s Dead (Vil­lalobos Entle­buch Rmx)” [???]
“I really don’t know what else to say about Ricardo. He’s prob­ably the most impor­tant guy in elec­tronic music at the moment and he’s a genius. But enough about him and more about the track. This is Ricardo in loose funky mode. He’s taken the per­cus­sion and the vocals (i.e. the only good ele­ments) of the orig­inal and shaped them into the Ricardo format then just rides it out for 15 min­utes of funked out min­imal good­ness. In some ways it’s a sim­ilar approach to his “Sinner In Me” remix from last year with its decep­tively com­plex per­cus­sion, smoothed out bass then halfway through the intro­duc­tion of a second funky bassline to get you moving. The main dif­fer­ence is this track is bouncier, brighter and less min­imal which is pos­sibly a reac­tion to Beck’s brighter vocals. It’s inter­esting how on both the Depeche Mode and Beck remixes Ricardo has chosen to iso­late the vocals and make them more of a fea­ture of the track than the orig­inal did. This isn’t really some­thing that is done very often in a remix but in this case it works bril­liantly. Actu­ally, this remix has made me appre­ciate Beck’s vocal per­for­mance more.

I always felt that there was a good track buried some­where in the orig­inal. Beck has always been that little bit off the mark recently even when he has a good thing going. So in ret­ro­spect this track was ripe for the remix treat­ment. Out goes the ill advised sam­ples and crowded pro­duc­tion and in come what beck has been trying to redis­cover for the past 10 years, funk and energy!”

01. Ben Klock — “Czes­lawa” [Ostgut Ton­träger]
“Read the recent ‘This Month In Techno’ column at Pitch­fork and you’ll see another example of someone jumping on the Klock band­wagon. This sound right here is where techno is going. It’s min­imal yet it’s big and beefy too. But it’s also using minimal’s love of tech­nology to push it up that extra level. So you could say the phrase “the best of both worlds” applies here.

I’ve always enjoyed weird fre­quen­cies in my music and Klock uses fre­quen­cies in ways I’ve never heard before. It sounds like you’ve stuck your head inside a mechan­ical under­water bee­hive. These sounds are joined by a piercing high hat, deep thud­ding bass and a simple yet catchy hook. Once these sounds have been estab­lished Ben just vari­ates and brings each ele­ment in and out at dif­ferent point for the dura­tion of the track. It’s quite a subtle track and some­thing that really has to be heard to be fully appre­ci­ated but it really is clearly the song of the year so far. So deep, pen­e­trating and down­right hypnotic.”