Barsebäck

Entering the abandoned warehouse full of haze and blinded by the strobe lights, you feel the rush when the bass kicks in. You have no idea if the year is 1996 or 2026, but it doesn't matter as long as you are alive. Indeed, another batch of forgotten and previously unreleased radioactive acid techno has surfaced on the anonymous, vinyl-only Kilotoni imprint — possibly their strongest release so far. A1 The peak of acid techno is perhaps found in its most stripped-down form. As the bass line throbs your breath out, you try to chase the kick drum in a game of hide-and-seek until complete exhaustion. It's something you play after the copies of Betty Ford and Sync In start to melt during a nuclear reactor accident. A2 A ravey or hard-techno-oriented approach is applied to the acid techno formula here. The squelching, pulse-width-modulated synth makes for an eerie yet irresistible call to the dance fl oor. The snare rolls might just be your guilty pleasure. B1 The fl ip side opens with funkier techno that the Voyager probes could bump to in outer space a million years from now. A wild acid line is accompanied by playful chords and beats. Detroit in fl uences meet Nordic melancholy. B2 The kick drum keeps pounding its way through while a lonely TB-303 is traveling in its own space and time. In fl uenced perhaps by the Midwest acid techno style, this could be a mid-90s DAT-tape lost inside the transatlantic postal system on its way to the Analog Records USA headquarters.