Memory keeper. Mostly music and movies, plus some series and video games. Obscure darkness meets pop culture glow.
Just like recently going through everything Booka Shade in 2018, I did now the same with Modeselektor. They were not that productive, but the 4th Modeselektion is still not bad, and my favorite of the year was Wealth. Reminds me of the heavy-hitting flow that took me by surprise when The Dark Side of the Sun appeared.
I listened to all Booka Shade releases of 2018 just recently in the year after and there was quite a bit of output to dig through. Cut The Strings was the long player of the year, and a brilliant and beatiful album at that. But there was a long list of EPs, too, with mixed feelings but definitely more pros than cons. I can totally vouch for all the remix EPs from the LP, and the Quantum Leap and Rosebud EPs.
The fourth quarter of last year was massively dominated by techno for me. Going to a good techno party resurfaced in my life as a force that I am drawn to, and I got to listening to a big chunk of good, dance-oriented techno and house.
This record was one of the highlights of the year’s end. It encompasses pretty much everything that I always loved about good techno music: dark atmosphere, industrial sound (that’s mostly the A side here), and a rolling uptempo beat that drags you along and moves your body even at 5am on the dance floor (which is coming along on the flip side).
Listen to this the day after a good techno party. Gives some great flashbacks, gets body moving.
Dark industrial techno meets power noise.
It is like techno with a triphop sound: not so dark as rather introvert, slow to mid tempo, bass-dominated, some vocals but often just words.
RA writes “Hayden Payne’s records package the lunging ferocity of EBM and industrial into a sound you could loosely describe as techno.” Ex-act-ly what I had in mind, all these three cornerstones just like that. I also like the idea that this came through Ostgut Ton.
Some kind of melancholic electronic music with dark moods and a steady pulse. Like the dark days of Apparat or the electronic version of a post-rock record. Extremely atmospheric, swallows me, chews me, spits me back into the void, a pitch black to love.
Experimental, electronic, slow techno, some industrial flavor, and probably the best new stuff I came across along these lines this year (although it is from last year).
Deep thumping techno.