Hyperspecific: Electronic Music for June Reviewed by Jaša Bužinel

You’ve heard of bardcore, now get ready for bard tech. A Colourful Storm, the meticulously curated label run by Beijing-born, Melbourne-based selector Moopie, is home to what he calls a “network of freaks” ranging from indie pop to Balkan folk. Their new series Delicate Bloom is envisioned as a platform where “delicate dancefloor sprouts” can thrive. The first installment comes from label mainstay, the elusive underground figure Klon Dump, AKA Mark. Since debuting in 2017, he has put out some of the strangest, most gripping minimal tech out there, notorious for its razor-sharp and quirky production with an experimental bent and ominous undertones. Then there’s his more avant-garde output, such as his debut album, an epic example of radical drum & bass gymnastics in the Christoph de Babalon and Jlin vein. Dame, vo regars could be pitched as a synthesised version of Jozef van Wissem’s lute-based gothic minimalism, or as Hildegard Von Bingen having a stab at German tech house. The “digital lute”, mystical female vocals and metallic drums make for an unlikely ethereal combo. I can imagine it banging through a soundsystem of buisines to ecstatic peasants in Aachen in 1374 during the first historically recorded dance mania. The dub version omits the palpably medieval elements for deeper afterhours ambience.

CUTEBOYZ heralds a watermark moment in the career of the charismatic São Paulo dance ambassador Badsista, whom I’ve grown to love for his buoyant blend of baile funk, dembow, bass, ghetto tech and hip hop. His music has always had strong sexual appeal, not necessarily explicit in nature but rather felt in your veins. The vibe is sauna-like – I can see a tiny dark room packed with half-naked bodies, sweat oozing from the ceiling and vapour emitting from the walls. ‘SPDRIP’ is a serene ballroom-inspired tune bolstered with big room trance arpeggios. Admittedly, it does not take long before it gives in to booty-shaking baile syncopations. In ‘DOS HERMANOS’, featuring longtime collaborator EVEHIVE, a dembow riddim and a looped phoneme ‘a’ is mixed with Middle Eastern-sounding synths and Afro-Cuban jazz chords à la Rubén González to great effect. And while ‘BBCITA, LET’S TAKE A RIDE’ wins the certificate for summer banger, it is ‘PSYCODELIA’, his mind-boggling tribute to psytrance, that makes my knees weak. It takes time to build up, but when it drops, oh, boy. Before you know it, you’re melting like these guys. The biggest buildup and drop of 2025 so far.

Facta’s sophomore album includes some of the most intricately produced music in the Wisdom Teeth catalogue. That in itself says a lot. Comprising only seven tracks, diverse in atmosphere, tone and energy, it grows on you instantly. Its eclectic tracklist provides a surprisingly cohesive listening experience with a clear sense of direction. The patina of his productions is reminiscent of an orchid – fragile, graceful and complex, as illustrated in the dawn song ‘Terminal’, bristling with shimmering pads and cicadas’ rhythmical ticks. ‘Laguna’, a dubby micro tech nod to his companion’s Cape Cira era, and Balearic ballad ‘settle’ similarly pull at your heartstrings. Everything in-between is pure class, a bonanza of crystalline hi-hats and snares, hefty kicks, beautiful modulated synths, fragmented voices and pads as gentle as an evening breeze. Groovy and gently psychedelic like a sun-dappled face in the afternoon,  ‘Jets’ and ‘Skyline 4’ (a follow up to ‘Innsbruck’) will be played under breezy skies at dawn as euphoria begins to wane. ‘BDB’, a masterfully produced garage tech stomper with hip hop-y vocal chops, is more rowdy, as is the hallucinatory breakbeat track ‘SLoPE’, which could pass as a Hooverian Blur tune were it not for the signature jazzy keys. An essential tesserae in the ever-growing, colourful mosaic of 21st century tech house.

The artistic trajectory of the Colombian trailblazer and TraTraTrax co-curator has been like a fairytale, taking in releases on his own label, VOAM and Timedance. Not that it was an overnight success, mind. His uncompromising vision of Latin electronic music has been backed by a passionate community that has helped him rise to global recognition as one of modern techno’s most innovative protagonists. His debut for the seminal UK imprint XL Recordings is a momentous release that screams ‘contemporary dance music’. In the title track, a candidate for dembow techno banger of the year, you can hear some production tricks and samples from earlier releases, but the spiralling lead, repeated ad nauseam, takes the definition of earworm to new heights. It is over-the-top, all-out weird and disorienting, as if produced while on booze – not made for dancefloor rendezvous, but for lunatic raving. ‘Total’, a masterclass in hybrid dubstep maximalism, will metaphorically blow up people’s brains with its mechanical, earth-shattering low freqs. It is also refreshing to hear the iconic Ugandan MC Yallah on closer ‘sobe sobe’, where Verraco’s infamous contortionist sound design meets Afrogrime tropes, resulting in poignant transglobal dance music that transcends geography. Verraco summer 2.0 incoming.

We rarely cover contemporary house releases at tQ, as most are just dull commercial slop with no sauce. That said, the latest EP from Florence-born producer Dukwa, who grew up on a diet of crate-digging and illegal raves, has caught my ear with that familiar, unequivocally Chicago-indebted flavour – disarmingly soulful and too enticing to resist. On Aletheia, Dukwa explores familiar aesthetics that will resonate with fans of pioneering house generations both from the US and Europe. The sensual male vocals of ‘Mouth Zipped’, echoing Marshall Jefferson’s collaborator Curtis McClain, is veiled in a faux lo-fi typical of the early Trax catalogue. It is a gritty tribute to its forefathers, loyal to the original idea of house music, but presented with more punch. Stylistically referencing 00s vocal piano house, the emotive banger ‘Give Me A Reason’ will be appreciated by festival circuit house DJs in need of a ‘hands in the air’ moment. But the standout tune is ‘I Need You Babe’, which harks back to the 90s Italo deep house tradition, a dance music subgenre that I strongly associate with Fellini’s concept of la dolce vita. It just tempts me to start my day with a spritz.

What happens when a producer with the Midas touch decides to “retouch the French touch”, as one Bandcamp user put it? For one thing, Simo Cell is finally escaping the forced “branding” as a bass artist. There is one thing he cannot escape, though – his teenage self. Seeing him recently play tunes like Thomas Bangalter’s ‘Outrage’, I suspected he might be revisiting his formative years. Now, I would not call it a revival, more like a welcome revisit, or an expansion pack for epochal 00s sounds. While Daft Punk could soundtrack the kids’ film Robots in 2005, Simo’s aesthetic is more akin to a pissed-off RoboCop. The EP’s title, FL Louis, is also the name of his cute new mascot, whose voice is used on the record. On the absolute banger ‘Circuits’, Louis feels menacing through the vocoder, the sound design blown out of proportions, the filter sweeps giving you goosebumps (balanced with chest pain triggered by police sirens). ‘Rushin’’, an uptempo, bass-loaded jam with a jerky Jersey beat, shows even less mercy, while the intense hi-tech trap chugger ‘Oh No!’ recalls his ambitious video game-inspired saga. He really pushes the creative limit in ‘Paris Funk Express’, a robo-funk masterpiece that could be performed live by Squarepusher. That bassline is gargantuan! When someone decides to do an anime set on a mutated Seine, with people fighting alien blobs, at least the soundtrack is sorted.

Alper Durmush, a Turkish/Bulgarian native, did not land one of this year’s seminal EPs on Hessle Audio by chance. Following releases on Sofia Records and Pampa, his debut LP suggested a singular producer mind with a knack for intergalactic synths, so in-your-face that they scare the shit out of you. Fena comprises four distinctive tracks taking elements from 2-step, breakbeat, dembow techno and deep house, moulding them to his aesthetic framework and hitting a sweet spot between the brain-melting and the dance-friendly. The superb title tack ‘Fena’, an amalgamation of jittery 2-step kicks, sinister modular abstractions and full HD sawtooth waves, is the kind of tune that can make a passive raver become a head. I also find it lovely that ‘Saat’ was inspired by an anecdote from a veteran of his hometown scene, making it a proper raver’s phantasmagoria, informed by driving dembow syncopations, iridescent melodies, a dialogue in an unrecognisable language and distantly barking dogs. ‘Sickomode’ emerges from a long tradition of jing-jangy UK techno, pensive yet thrusting, while ‘Cawuso’, a decidedly more mellow and dubby house cut, recalls recent Peverelist releases. More Balkan artists on the international circuit! 

Dreams are a constant fixture in art, but less so in dance music. On her Dekmantel debut, Munich-based artist Lindsey Wang, a leftfield techno auteur, explores how to conjure a dream sequence through synthesised sound. She diverts from the subby deep techno we associate her with into more freeform ambient techno-via-downtempo electronica. Polygonia’s production style, easily recognisable in the wild, takes inspiration from organic sounds, creating vast, highly detailed soundscapes that function as mental spaces, or if you wish, esoteric sonic mirages that provide for a hypnagogic and immersive experience you could call ‘dreambient’. Apart from her own voice (nicely incorporated in ‘Set Me Free’, a peculiar wink to Dixieland, but also an intruder style-wise), she employs saxophone, flute, strings and a wide array of percussion. With its aquatic rhythmic interplays, tracks like ‘Soul Reflections’ could easily pass as liquid techno. Her knack for percussion with an acoustic quality is particularly notable in ‘Secret Desire’, a marriage between dubstep pressure and kosmische synths. And ‘Gate To Amygdala’ further accentuates her talent as a purveyor of cerebral textures. Elsewhere she gets more stompy and mechanical, as in the speedy ‘Mindfuck’. Recently you might have noticed Jeff Mills’ Facebook posts with the caption ‘This Is Techno’ and some related photo(s). Well, I say that this is techno. 

I am late to Kiana Li, a 22-year-old Utrecht-based Hong Konger. They are producer creatively stimulated by nature, particularly the relationship between the natural and the artificial. Li is already a fully-rounded artist (with jungle-adjacent releases on “majors” such as Metalheadz, XL and FABRICLIVE), but this is their debut for Objekt’s imprint Kapsela, the first new addition to the label’s roster, and exists at the intersection of heady drum & bass, atmospheric techno and free jazz. Honestly, you could probably have convinced me that ‘Vegetation Grows Thick’, with its revolving double bass riff, is in fact a club remix of a The Necks composition, adorned with 90s-inspired fairylike vocals and hovering pads. ‘Bolete’ goes hard on “plinky plonky” percussion and marching band snare rolls, but instead of sounding cartoonish, it is rather intimidating, as if made for the cult anti-war scene from Dreams. The name Satan’s bolete would suit it better. The darkly psychedelic breakbeat roller ‘Rorschach’, featuring Flo State’s vaporous declamations, is the kind of tune that either saves you from a bad trip or dooms you for eternity. What the label actually meant with free jazz becomes apparent in the ‘Brinjal’, which echoes the haptic and hectic drum programming of Speaker Music, imbued with double bass pizzicatos and wailing saxophone shrieks.

Besides being one of the most consistent artists from the Bristolian scene of the past 15 years, Lurka is also responsible for the mastering of some of your favorite records. Ben Tregaskes has never been a darling of the press, had any covers or big features. While the “inner circle” has always given him credit, the average raver would hardly see him as one of the unsung heroes of UK bass/techno – which he actually is. His debut for Katiusha’s label, GRACE, sees him continue his exploration of stripped-down arrangements with a surgically-precise palette of metallic clangs, eardrum-piercing claps and rimshots, grossly saturated feedback and molten basslines. ‘Signal’ showcases his niche rude boy sensibility for slow tempos and thundering riddims, just like the spellbinding tekker ‘Spells’, which revolves around an innocent voice casting spells on the listener. While there has seemingly been less interest for half step D&B productions in recent years, ‘Hammer’ marks a welcome addition to this niche aesthetic, its sprightly darbuka-like patterns echoing ABADIR and 3Phaz’s drum science. That grisly lion roar is also on point! My favourite piece, though, is ‘DreamR’, a blasting speedtek gem for peaktime settings running at 155 BPM and pushing 90s acid techno templates into dangerous soundsystem territory.