Furyon Anymus
Trance Exploder / Trance Atlantic Flow

Over the past year or so I have watched as the releases on Holding Hands got more and more intense. Don’t get me wrong, I love it. Intense and straight to the face was always the plan for the label. At the same time I do have slightly more varied taste and I had been getting sent a decent amount of incredible music that didn’t quite fit on the original outlet. My first love when it comes to electronic music is dark, eyes down, bass heavy and so it seemed like now was the perfect time to create a label with a slightly deeper angle to accommodate this sort of thing.

UCC Harlo and NY Graffiti team up for the second release on Peace Anthem Records. Alternating between bleary-eyed impressions and tightly articulated expression the artists forge a path laden with plangent sound, muted color, and circular forms. Ketamine-paced grooves, baroque miniatures, hazy-humid sonics, and dub inflections populate this domain. Each delivers one original and a remix of the other’s track.

A thirst for all things alien encompasses the philosophy behind Sex Tapes From Mars - a brand-new vinyl-only imprint demanding humans to take them to their leader. So, two questions: who’s helming the record stores, and what message are they trying to deliver? For their inaugural release, the label beams down a VA from three impeccable rising stars intent on supplying some much-needed freakishness to Earth.Nemo Vachez sets the bearings for outer space with ‘Overload (Interstellar Rave Mix)’ – a sulking electro and acid intro that rambles with all the madness of a spaceship determined to veer off-course. It’s imaginatively paced, with scorning breakdowns and a lethal sense of some threat sitting on the horizon.Muelsa loads up a biological weapon of warfare with ‘A Message’, aptly named largely for its ruthless electro lines and a drawling voice asking for the answer to an age-old dilemma: “Please tell me it’s aliens? Maybe they’ve got rhythm too”.The signal glitches to Hubz for the close. ‘Fly By The Comets’ reverberates with great waves of synths before lunging into the first of two menacing drops, riffing and warring against some unseen force before exterminating the target.Wherever this UFO’s destination is set, all eyes are clearly watching. Sex Tapes From Mars delivers emotionally ambiguous cinematics for the dancefloor, so space helmets on and buckle in for the ride – the thrill is what makes it fun.

Alfred Czital on Harmony Rec.!

Delsin welcomes Jayson Wynters into the fold for a four-track EP that embodies techno as a vibrant, expressive artform with the ability to uplift. On The Affect Heuristic, Wynters strides forth with an electrifying machine language, calling to mind the feverish, psychedelic tweaking and layering of visionaries like Dan Curtin and Lee Purkis (In Sync). Across four tracks, Wynters pivots between distinctly Motor City-indebted funk, springy electro-techno and vivid, immersive soundchasms. The artwork - a canny meld of bold geometry, bright colours and rough textures from Erosie and Erris Huigens (Graphic Surgery) - responds to the music in a wholly appropriate way.