Booka Shade – Cut The Strings

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.

Maceo Plex, Swayzak – The Tesseract EP

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).

Phase Fatale – Reverse Fall

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.