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Conforce first appeared in 2007 with his debut our concern ep on Rush Hour. A further ep on Rush Hour was followed by releases on Curle & Modelisme, before his debut album, Machine Conspiracy, appeared in February of this year on the UK label Meanwhile. I’m surprised that this is only Conforce’s first release on Delsin, Grace has an unmistakable Delsin sound and will no doubt draw comparison to label mates such as Redshape, Delta Funktionen and D5. The ep opens with Shade a track which promises something that never quite happens, with chords and sweeps building for three minutes before an abrupt end. The title track Grace is wonderfully detailed functional techno and is hard to fault. Much like Shade, Grace  builds slowly but again, frustratingly never seems to quite reach its promise. Insecure wanders into slightly dubbier territory with subtly layered percussion, echoing chords and melodic flourishes and is the most accomplished track on the ep. A solid release from an emerging producer.
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578 was originally released on mikrodisko toward the end of 2008 under Gunnar Wendel’s Kassem Mosse alias. The track received notable attention and acclaim for its hypnotic ethereal melody, helping cement Wendel’s place in techno’s creative centre. At the time, 578 was often compared to Omar S’ own productions. It seems apt that Omar S has now chosen to produce his own interpretations on his FXHE label. There are two mixes, the Berlin mix & Rude Boy Warm mix, both stay relatively true to the original with minimal alteration to the melody, instead Omar S slows the pace and focuses his attention on the groove with the slightest adjustments to the kick drum and Bassline. The results are subtle but faultless.
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Mike Dehnert’s second release on his MD side project relies on an uncomplicated yet effective formula for which he has become known. The MD sound is much rawer than anything Dehnert releases on his Fachwerk label, providing him with a platform for a more experimental take on his classic techno sound. The A side is a perfect example of this and is rough, raw techno at its most effective. The B side is a much calmer affair, with dubby stabs reverberating over a rolling bassline in a much less formulaic outing. Dehnert’s productions often seem like simple variations on a common theme, with little experimentation or variety. I don’t think this is a bad thing. Dehnert has developed a unique sound and he is exceptional at constructing his live performances, as some mind blowing live sets here & here demonstrate, and when it comes down to it, this is all that matters.
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Deepchord often talk about their music in terms of colour. In an interview with Textura in 2007 (here), Rod Modell spoke of composing his productions according to the hue and brightness he perceived in the sounds. Colour was something which was absent from Deepchord’s previous album The Coldest Season, which was bleak and abstract, inspired, no doubt, by the harsh Midwest winters of the pairs American homeland. Liumin presents a much more colourful experience, inspired this time by Deepchord’s travels over the past few years and the field recordings made along the way.

The album opens with In Echospace a hypnotic beatless soundscape. I found this track to be the most reminiscent of the previous album, bringing Ocean of Emptiness to mind in particular. Summer Haze follows and from this point on, the album begins to make its point felt. I was struck by just how different the feeling of this album is, which is testament to the skills of Modell and Hitchell as producers. As with Coldest Season, the tracks flow seamlessly, blending textures and emotions from one song to the next, but the hiss and vast spacial tone so prevalent on Coldest Season has been replaced with something more focused and insular. Sub Marine rolls along with a funky muffled beat below overheard voices and percussive flutters. Burnt Sage begins with the most purposeful beat on the album, its deep and pervasive and maintains it intensity throughout while spiralling textures, familiar to any Deepchord fan, float gently around it. Firefly is a personal highlight, and is the soundtrack to every lone walk through a city, late at night. Maglev like Burnt Sage is puposeful and driven by its beat, bringing vintage Basic Channel to mind. The album concludes with Warm, a gliding ambient track built with lush meandering pads and the now familiar snippets of the city provided by the field recordings.

I was unsure how Deepchord would follow up on the success of Coldest Season. Coldest Season, for me, is one of the best albums in recent years and it would have been disappointing if Liumin were to become a ’Coldest Seaon part II’, thankfully it isn’t. Undoubtedly, Liumin does contain some of the feeling and ambience which made up Coldest Season, however the overall outcome is contrasting. Luimin presents not necessarily a step forward from Coldest Season, but perhaps a step sideways into a deeper groove driven future for Deepchord.
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Splazsh is the second album from London based Darren Cunningham. The album builds and expands on ideas presented in his 2008 debut Hazyville occupying an awkward space between house, dubstep, grime, garage and techno.

Splazsh feels like an album, in the way that many dance albums do not. Whilst there are undoubtedly highlights, the album as a whole is something which befits being experienced in its entirety. You can sense something organic about the production. At times it resembles a live recording, with tracks often meandering aimlessly, rather than following a pre-determined formula. The rhythms and structures are often unpredictable. The album opens with the warm looping chords of Hubble. The 4/4 beat on this track never seems quite in time, with the clap often unable to keep up the pace. Lost is made of seemingly borrowed sounds and textures. The looped vocals and synth stabs are familiar, but having been pushed to the limits of abstraction, compressed and contorted, seem new and refreshing. For me, this is what makes Actress such an interesting artist. The inspiration and influence is often obvious, but by processing and re-presenting these influences in such a way as to not resort to an obvious copy, Actress manages to create a sound which is wholly his own.

Get Ohn follows and is the arguably the most formulaic techno-ish track, however it still manages to retain a certain amount of abstraction with ever mutating percussion and undulating rhythm. Always human presents the most obviously influenced track, borrowing heavily from NY garage and is a lighthearted interlude to an otherwise intense collection of tracks. Maze is driven by a haunting arpeggiated synth, and whilst being somewhat at odds with the rest of the album, manages to fit perfectly.

The album concludes with a succession of aggressive futuristic experiments. Wrong Potion is noisy, aggressive, heavy and dense. Its the most dubstep-y tune on the album, but again, the sounds and textures are so processed and complex that it would be unfair to place it within any genre.

I have no doubt that we will see Splazsh in every albums of the year list come December and rightly so. Splazsh is a unique album, and with it Actress, has moved electronic music forward, through a series of introverted yet exploratory musical experiments. Very highly recommended.
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