Each track is a pleasant surprise and a stylistic change from the last to a new, unanticipated direction. Despite being electronic, The Spiral Ep has more in common with a pop album than traditional techno variations on a theme or style. In fact, one would listen to the Spiral Ep the way one would watch European cinema; with no expectations, an open mind and an assurance that you won’t know what happens next. Styles on Spiral range from deep ‘n darker techno, to Industrial, to ambient-drone, to synth-pop that would make Depeche Mode proud to 4AD-esque goth pop and more... Diahgonal is the alias of graphic designer and studio engineer, Ruben Alonso Tamayo who co-founded the Static Disco label and the Cyan Recs netlabel, perhaps better known under the techno moniker, Fax. Opening “Lost” has modulating electro-chirps, then pensive beats while gentle synth lines wash over before a dark and heavy 4/4 trot-beat kicks in with industrial strength. “The Empty Night” follows with twangy, guitar-like textures before a deep, aortic preliminary beat pulsates while Detroit-techno style keyboard hooks with a touch-of-funk interplays with grooving beats. “Horizons” and “Buildings” could be considered the ambient and drone interludes, respectively; the former pierces ambience with beacon signals while the latter is spacious and a more sweeping drone. “Movement A” (and “B”) are the more dramatic pieces, the first opens with hypnotic undulating tones as restrained beats fade-in, then a bass-heavy club beat accompanies to rousing synth notes. The latter, “Movement B” is the stand-out track on the Ep. Dramatic yet catchy layered keyboard melodies loop with counter-melodies, then drum machines with a pulse beat combine to make something seductive, moving and memorable; a synth pop hit if there ever was one. “Awakening” concludes, recalling Robin Guthrie (Cocteau Twins) style guitar strumming, while major, Vangelis styles synth tones caps the Ep to a gentler, more tranquil conclusion. Though this is only an EP, it has the depth, variance and complexity of a good, full album and Stasis is adept at providing talent who delivers so much from so little.

Retro electro meets beatz in the ‘hood, enter the world of David Harrow aka Oicho who dwells on the poorly lit streets of the electronic scene where police fear to drive. Halfling opens with “ripper 2 cv”, where one gets the impression of Instinct Ambient label electronics until the beats evoke early Tommy Boy records. Think scrawny, white producers in Compton LA, where chocolate is stuck in their peanut butter. The electronic textures suggest the likes of Taylor Deupree, but that unclean drum machine beat could come from The 2 Live Crew studio, two flavours grooving along and giving off a dreamy, almost futurist vibe. “Sleazy” follows with overtones of dimly lit backstreets with more robotic menace than bored thugs—but there is something retro enough to suggest 70’s-era menace which would be pretty fly for a sci-fi. The following “Sparx” is a ghetto beat tribute to Jean Michelle Jarre’s “Oxygene”, only deftly recut and realigned by Harrow into a more psychedelic experience. Halfling caps off with “Half Rising” which is more like being in a chemical production facility with electrodes gone wild as the listener gets a tour of one vat of mystery solution after another. While this half-pint EP is a mere half-serving, it is not half-baked, rather a nice blend of grime and elegance. An Oreo cookie or coconut ball with a dark chocolate center, either will work but if you take a bite betcha you won’t want just one.

Toronto, Canada has an answer to Detroit techno, Jakob Thiesen via his new full-length excursion, Equinox. Sometimes dogmatic and robotic, sometimes skirting the nocturnal or electro funk-driven side, but always muscular and heavy-duty yet dance-floor friendly. Vestiges of ethno-styles haunt this work such as reggae-calypso and Afro-tech, other parts have a filtered, near-submerged-in-water quality that recalls Homework-era Daft Punk or the sublime music of Berlin’s Porter Ricks. Equinox is not so much to be listened as submitted to. “Projector” is a nocturnal-tech excursion that starts off with a series of filter effects that shifts into kaleidoscopes of layered melodies and textures and more varied beat intensities—more like a boat tour of people on a shoreline launching fireworks than a focused thesis on a conventional song—morphing between melodic techno and dogmatic house. “Ratchet” (perhaps named after the Transformers medic?) is the more funk-driven track here, more at home at a robo-cantina out of the animated series, Droids. “Observatore” opens dreamily with swirling tones that builds into deep, elegant futurist techno with interplaying melodies—close listens yield complex details but the details work in a kind of harmony that seems deceptively simple. Title track, “Equinox” evokes Kelly Hand’s work, but there are some textures that bridge the piece closer to melodic techno with melodies and tones at home in a Juan Atkins track. Opening with “Linear”, which has a lovely momentum to it that coasts along with filters and textures that slings the listener to the immersive world of “Equinox”, overtones of mystery. “Quadelay” and the title track, “Equinox” are perhaps the most Detroit pieces on this repertoire with its muscular, industrial-strength beats and whirrings and metallic textures at home in a mecha factory, this bleeds well into “Eclipse Submerge” which has nice ricochet and laser gun-like sounds that evoke a conflict at a space docking station. “Market Force” is the sole ambient piece that sounds like an analog recordings of field sounds, run through filters, heavily psychedelic with an aortic pulse that courses through. Detroit Techno is alive and well and living in Toronto, or so Jakob Thiesen’s tech-excursion, Equinox, will have you believe; 3AM adrenaline-rush inducing-imagination sparking, mind-rushing, soul catapulting techno.

Enter LTBL’s dynamic duo of Marco Porsia and Piero Franguelli in collaboration with Senior Beat Box aka Savino Mazzuocco and their cryptically titled, Bent Parallels release, a surpassingly-produced feverish excursion into nostalgia-laced electronic, ambient, and minimal techno. Bent Parallels is one of those ornately-crafted works of art that holds up to close listens that reveal rich, intricate details. Tracks here are named “I” through “VII”, as in the Roman numerals and sets the tone with hybrid stylings of Oxygene-era Jean Michelle Jarre and more contemporary Boards of Canada, brought together in some kind of unholy union to form a musical hallucination, replete with echo effects, drone tones, field recordings of children playing on shore lines and calling (or is it singing?) voices artfully garbled. The following, “Bent Parallels II” is a shimmering drone piece while “III” features clear dialog on illicit drug use atop modulating synth tones. Track “IV” is a swirling drone while “V” evokes the collaborations of techno giants, Savvas Ysatis and Taylor Deupree with its dreamy ambient that breaks into lush melodic techno with a hint of acid . “VII” is an excursion into sublime, understated techno and lush, pillow-soft ambient layers one could blissfully get lost in. If you like brilliantly crafted ambient, electronic, post rock and cinematic soundscapes, Bent Parallels has it all, and then some. An overwhelming listen, in a good way on both modest and high-end audio systems and a natural high. LTBL and SBB is probably one of the best kept secrets out there, but with tracks this great, this should not be the case for long.

Ambient soundscapist, Tim Dwyer alias Off Land offers another chapter of lush cinematic scores with On Earth where the din of children playing and echoing voices utter indecipherable phrases, fleeting fragments of field recordings are set to marmalade-paced rhythms and dreamy melodies amidst billowing layers of synth notes. One does not listen to an Off Land album so much as immerse, and this release is no different. Opening, “Euclase” washes over with layer cakes of synth lines and vestiges of melody with wistful overtones of longing followed by “Nepheline” which has more assertive rhythms and melodies and moody yet powerful, low-end tones that will tingle your spine. The following, “Amethyst” is more subdued, deep-ambient that does not wash-in so much as floats while, metronome-like rhythms manifest and dissolve in the aether while “Osmium” pulses with the more mechanical rhythms that propel an otherwise lush down-tempo ambient-dream track. “Spinel” resumes field recordings, birds chirp while melodies and counter melodies interplay to evenly paced beats that dissolve to lush ambient. “Aegirine” follows with gentle bass melodies and a kick-drum pulse with whispers and droning melodies and fragments of notes and is among the more upbeat. “Nighter” concludes the chapter on a somewhat tense, brooding note, perhaps setting the listener up for a sequel. Dwyer consistently delivers the goods with ranges of moods from pensive to tense to yearning to sublime; delivered in lush arboretums of cinematic-ambient soundscapes. File under ‘cinema of the mind’.