Chapter

01

Electro takes centre stage

In 2017, electro was more visible than it had been in years. Although it's existed since the collision of hip-hop and Kraftwerk back in the '80s, its cyborg funk felt like a shot of fresh air this year, and especially for younger ravers. Older heads might argue that it "returned" in, say, 1985, 1992, 1997 and 2001, but many more people are excited by electro today than a decade ago. It might come from the same petri dish that spawned techno and house, but electro hasn't enjoyed the ubiquity of its four-to-the-floor brethren. While a few standouts—Drexciya most of all—are adored outside the confines of purist dance music, electro has generally been on the periphery, and doubly so on the dance floor itself, where its syncopated patterns and higher tempos can make it hard to integrate with standard club music. Not long ago, it was rare to hear a set dominated by the sound. That's changing.

Electro's history is long and multifaceted, offering new fans a maze of sounds to travel through. In reducing its resurgence to a few key figures, you risk misremembering artists and labels that have dedicated themselves to the form for many years. Yet the relentless touring schedules of two highly visible DJs has clearly sent a ripple of electro fever out into the greater dance music scene.

DJ Stingray and Helena Hauff carpet-bombed the circuit this year, doing more than anyone in recent times to spread the electro gospel. Despite shouldering the Drexciyan legacy for over a decade, Stingray's schedule tripled in size in the past three years. He's been in the game since the '80s and finally seems to be making hay now that the sun is shining. If his insatiable touring doesn't show his drive, playing three times in one night at his own mix launch party certainly did.

Hauff, meanwhile, was playing bigger stages and better slots than at any time in her career, wedging wild techno and EBM between seriously nasty electro. She clocks as many miles as mainstream DJs, all without playing the social media game or sanitising her gnashing style. Her roots in Hamburg and the Golden Pudel seem to have bolstered her immunity to the charms of success. This artistically fertile and unpretentious backdrop—mixed with the raw thrust of her music—is a big part of her appeal.

The increased visibility of these two DJs activated potential elsewhere that had been lying dormant. While electro ostensibly came roaring back these past couple years, the truth is, it was hiding in plain sight all along. The changing fortunes of Scottish producer Galaxian help paint the picture: the electro fighter pilot had been releasing CDrs and mp3s for almost a decade and enjoyed respect in a network of electro diehards. Wider attention, however, seemingly wasn't on the cards. Yet following a brush with both Stingray and Hauff (her label is due to release his music), he's been launched into another echelon. His blinding productions hurtle forth at warp-speed and hit with the precision of a tactical sting operation. In other words, his music totally warrants attention. The hope is that the success of figures like Hauff and Stingray will trickle down to artists like Galaxian who operate on the fringe. Against a backdrop dominated by house and techno, a new influence can only be healthy for the wider scene.

Stingray and Hauff are just the tip of a very large iceberg. After being brought to new audiences by Objekt, Tresor reissued the Scopex catalogue, a holy grail of electro that typifies the best of what producers in the UK brought to the genre around the turn of the millennium (the first run sold out surprisingly quickly, especially considering the volumes Tresor are pressing). Elsewhere, Nicolas Lutz and co.'s penchant for twisted, obscure electro has pushed scores of minimal-minded producers to change tack in recent years, often with dazzling results. The overall increase in interest cast fresh light on old hands, too. Carl Finlow and Radioactive Man both released albums this year. The Cultivated Electronics label, a favourite of both Stingray and Hauff, is hitting its stride a decade after its inception. Even the painfully obscure Dark Matrix project was lured out of dormancy for a new double pack.

While its otherness stands it in good stead, electro can fall into pastiche as easily as any genre, generating its fair share of generic productions. The hope is that its outsider attitude pushes producers and DJs to resist the confines of style and expectations and push forward toward the new. As Stingray told us this year: "Stop sticking with the paradigms of the past. Sound like the 21st century. Blow our minds."

Gallery credits /

01. DJ Stingray at Hyte ADE, Amsterdam
Photo: Pablo Bustos

02. Helena Hauff at Printworks, London
Photo: Jake Davis

03. Galaxian at Mugako Festival, Vitoria-Gasteiz
Photo: Ibaiobo

Chapter

02

The power of

(new) old music

There's never been a better time to be interested in old music. From nightclubs and festivals to record stores, radio shows and online mixes, music from the past is now deeply woven into our daily listening habits. With several decades' worth of tunes at their disposal, DJs are able to be more adventurous than ever—skilfully navigating not just decades but also genres, continents and tempos. And in 2017, some artists proved there's still vast quantities of wonderful old music out there, waiting to be (re)discovered.

For clued-in listeners, this music discovery often begins in the world of online radio and mixes, where podcasts like Lullabies For Insomniacs, Sanpo Disco, Blowing Up The Workshop and Red Light Radio's Liner Notes series shed light on the record store clerks, resident DJs and label owners who sniff out unexpected, mind-rattling gems. Many of the characters who cut their teeth in radio, record shops and small clubs, such as Lena Willikens, Antal and Palms Trax, are now festival regulars.

We're living in the age of reissues and archival compilations, and 2017 saw all kinds of unusual music dusted off and reappraised, from John Gómez's bar-raising compilation of Brazilian music to Hyperdub's deep-dive into Japanese video game soundtracks and Jan Schulte's exploration of Tropical Drums Of Deutschland. Interest in Japanese ambient went into overdrive, with artists like Midori Takada and Yasuaki Shimizu—previously revered only in record-nerd circles—receiving major career boosts after well-received reissues, earning bookings for live shows across the globe.

In nightclubs and at festivals, the current generation of adventurous, open-minded DJs—diggers, selectors, whatever you want to call them—continued to push things in interesting new directions, and in 2017 they were more in demand than ever. A notable side-effect of this culture is the immediate impact a DJ has on a record's monetary value—watch the price of a record skyrocket as soon as Motor City Drum Ensemble or Hunee plays it. Our favourite DJs this year played sets crammed with unexpected and refreshing selections. Vladimir Ivkovic took things in his own, distinctly weird direction, playing pitched-down trance records alongside old Coil tunes and Rephlex numbers. No other DJ sounded like him in 2017.

Jayda G, meanwhile, reminded us that there's plenty of inexpensive gems to be found. Her sets brought us feel-good selections and the dance moves to go with them, blowing away the scene's occasionally stuffy cobwebs. While many fuss about playing obscure privately pressed records, she plays disco cuts from major labels or '90s pop. It's easy to forget, amid the clamour for rare music, that major label disco songs are often performed by better musicians and recorded in studios with higher production standards. Sometimes the best tunes are hiding in plain sight.

Gallery credits /

01. Hunee at Parklife, Manchester
Photo: Jenna Foxton

02. Jayda G at Inner Varnika, Victoria
Photo: Inner Varnika

03. Vladimir Ivkovic at Exit Festival, Novi Sad
Photo: No Sleep

Chapter

03

Latin America's club

music vanguard

Something special has been happening in recent years outside the confines of club music's established genres. We're referring to the rapidly shifting soundscape of styles known as "experimental club," a term that, in its ambiguity, leaves room for the full range of music grouped within. It's resistant to labels and disdainful towards history, with an anything-goes attitude that renders terms like "highbrow" and "lowbrow" meaningless. It thrives in a digital milieu where artists are nodes in a decentralized web. But it doesn't only exist in the ether—this post-regional ethic still has anchors in lived social scenes, each of which tailors the sound to its context. This year, Latin American labels, collectives and sounds proved to be some of the most exciting nodes in that network.

Few artists embody this phenomenon more than the Argentinian DJ and producer Tayhana. Originally from Buenos Aires, she relocated to Mexico City last year, where she linked up with the NAAFI collective and quickly became one of their secret weapons. Her recent i-D mix exemplifies this scene's approach, incorporating street sounds like baile funk and reggaeton alongside experimental club mutations, with tight mixes that highlight the similarities rather than the differences.

Tayhana founded the Buenos Aires club night Hiedrah Club De Baile alongside MORO, who has a knack for uniting unlikely influences—check out his reggaeton remix of Oneohtrix Point Never from this year's Club Chai Vol. 1 compilation. Other close collaborators include Lechuga Zafiro and Pobvio over in Uruguay. Their label, Salviatek, is responsible for one of the key releases to come from this camp, the Hélices EP by Brazilian producer Superficie.

The Buenos Aires collective TRRUENO pulls more from bass music and the hardcore continuum. Their recent compilation, MECHA02, carved out a space between percussive club music and something more abstract—a sculptural method that takes texture as its raw material. If only to illustrate the connections between these emergent Spanish-speaking scenes, it's worth pointing out that the collection was mastered by Cristo Gavras, AKA Imaabs, a Chilean producer who's another of NAAFI's star artists. TRRUENO founder Bungalovv also released an excellent EP called Luz Mala on the Mexico City label Infinite Machine this year, which juxtaposed rich organic samples with a sci-fi sound palette.

To differing extents, these crews owe a debt to the New York club night GHE20GOTH1K and its founder Venus X. She laid the foundation for these irreverent mash-ups and provided a platform for abstract, in-your-face club experiments. This year she and Asmara, of Nguzunguzu, released a mixtape called Putaria Maxima, where they used edits and blends to highlights the links between Brazilian baile funk and US rap. Baile funk, which reached international audiences again this year through acts like MC Bin Laden, has also been one of the main sonic touchstones in this globalized club sound. It's one of the rhythmic building blocks, along with the syncopated thump of Jersey club's kick pattern and the dark atmosphere of instrumental grime.

Dembow and reggaeton have also made a huge dent in the underground this year, even in circles that don't really overlap with this network. One of 2017's most memorable club records was the ʃælt EP from British producer SHALT, which brought tough cybernetic textures to the dembow template. From Manchester there's the promising Florentino, who makes melodic UK bass anthems with reggaeton as his starting point. (This year, his track "Bloodline" played at parties in New York and Mexico City nonstop.) And let's not forget DJ Python, the son of Ecuadorian immigrants, who produced an album of ethereal house music using dembow drums.

What distinguishes these sounds and scenes from long-standing genres like techno or drum & bass is they no longer hold to the notion of center and periphery. They're not shaped from the top down by a handful of wealthy, influential cities who transmit the culture while everybody else is relegated to receiving it. If anything, similar club scenes in places like London and Berlin are looking to their Latin American counterparts for inspiration. From this new ecosystem, an independent network of artists has begun to take shape, and while London and Berlin are welcome to join the dialogue, they're certainly not dominating the conversation.

Gallery credits /

01. Lechuga Zafiro at Lotus Club, Montevideo
Photo: Club Subtropical

02. Tayhana at NRMAL BAJA, Rosarito
Photo: Nrmal

03. MORO at Paradiso Noord - Tolhuistuin, Amsterdam
Photo: Pieter Kers

04. Venus X at Public Arts, New York

Chapter

04

Hardcore spreads its wings

2017 was a jubilee year full of comebacks for hardcore. In Holland, Thunderdome, the most renowned hardcore brand in the world, threw its first party in five years to mark its 25th anniversary. It was the largest indoor hardcore rave in recorded history. 40,000 fans descended upon the Jaarbeurs convention centre in Utrecht, soundtracked by hardcore past and present from over 80 artists and MCs. Marc Acardipane and DJ Paul Elstak were among the "heroes of hardcore" who played, and they've both had significant years. Acardipane, who made the track that started it all, officially brought his alias The Mover out of retirement to perform at techno festivals all over Europe. He also launched a new label to reissue a collection of his early bangers, which left staff writer Angus Finlayson feeling deeply unsettled. Meanwhile, Paul Elstak, Rotterdam's "Godfather of hardcore," was riding high in the Dutch singles charts again. "Engeltje" ("Little Angel"), which featured the rapper Jebroer, peaked at number three in June—the last time Elstak was this high in the charts was in '96 with "The Promised Land." To date the video for "Engeltje" has almost 15 million views.

But hardcore has always been huge in Holland—even when it went underground. 2017 was important for the pockets of activity in other parts of Europe, such as France, Poland and Sweden. Parisian crew Casual Gabberz have been throwing hardcore parties "for the internet generation" for years. In 2014, they organised Gabber Expo, the first festival dedicated to gabber culture in Paris, and appeared on Boiler Room's Gabber Special. They've been expanding ever since, and launched Casual Gabberz Records earlier this year. Their first release was the sprawling Inutile De Fuir compilation, 51 tracks of the "hard and hybrid sounds" heard in Casual Gabberz sets, with contributions from friends and affiliates like Panteros666 and KUNQ member Kilbourne. In the East, WIXAPOL and their roving WIXAPOL S.A. parties have reached cult status in Poland, as Electronic Beats recently reported. WIXAPOL is another collective of DJs who have been throwing gabber-inspired raves since 2012. Like Casual Gabberz, WIXAPOL view hardcore through the prism of internet subcultures. And across the Baltic sea in Stockholm there's Drömfakulteten, a studio collective formed of HAJ300, Lois Nygren, Sissel Wincent and about ten other artists, including Kablam. Drömfakulteten aren't exclusively gabber, but when its three chiefs get together, the BPMs usually escalate.

More crucially, hardcore was hip in 2017. Gabber was on the catwalk, in fashion magazine spreads and on the high street. Alberto Guerrini has been documenting gabber and rave aesthetics on his Gabber Eleganza blog since 2011, and in 2017 he finally took the project "offline." Throughout the year, Guerrini has been DJing at clubs, art galleries and raves all over Europe, and as far as Hong Kong, bringing The Hakke Show—an old-school hardcore DJ set with gabber dancers—to festivals like Club To Club in Turin and Resonate in Belgrade. Few brought hardcore to as many people outside of the scene. And this is a crucial point: thanks to devotees like Guerrini, Casual Gabberz and WIXAPOL, a dialogue has opened up between hardcore and contemporary dance music communities. It's helped hardcore transcend some of its negative stigmas, producing a wave of reevaluation and critique about hardcore from outside the scene.

An intriguing osmosis between hardcore and techno has also been going on. Big room DJs like Nina Kraviz and Dax J have been dropping hardcore tracks into their peak-time sets, while some big techno promoters, like Reaktor in Amsterdam, have been getting increasingly aggressive with their bookings. Bleaching Agent's gabber set from Unpolished back in March set a precedent; Reaktor have released the lineup for Unpolished 2018, which features The Mover and French industrial hardcore veteran Manu Le Malin, plus special hardcore and breakcore sets from Shawn O'Sullivan and Ryan James Ford respectively. Techno is definitely getting harder—just go to a Mord or Perc Trax night, or peruse Lenny Dee's Hard Electronic label.

Was 2017 always destined to be hardcore's year? Marc Acardipane has been obsessed with the year for decades. Speaking to The Hard Data recently, he said that his original mission for Planet Core Productions, Acardipane's pioneering label and hardcore techno production team, better known as "PCP," was "to teach people the hard feeling, because it will come." It was about being shocking and prescient in order to give people "a bit of faith and hope." That's because, in his mind, The Mover songs are medicinal for the darkness of everyday reality: "You feel better after listening." For CTM cofounder Jan Rohlf, the hardcore scene "speaks to the confusions of our present moment." By mining its history and asking questions, he also sees its potential for healing. In response to 2018's festival theme, turmoil, there'll be a night at Berghain dedicated to hardcore and gabber. HAJ300, Kablam and Kilbourne are among those representing the scene's experimental new guard, with DJ Panic, The Darkraver and Acardipane representing the veterans. "Gabber and hardcore give room to many questions," said Rohlf. "One of these is whether such music, that reaches deep into both ends of our polarised social landscape, has the potential to bridge such rifts? Because ultimately, no matter how different we think we are, if we stop speaking to each other, nothing can be gained."

Gallery credits /

01. Marc Acardipane at Thunderdome, Amsterdam
Photo: Thunderdome

02. Paul Elstak
Photo: b2s

03. DJ Panic and The Darkraver at Ruig & Raw, Puttershoek
Photo: Arjan Barendregt

04. Kilbourne at Acting in concert, Witten
Photo: Unknown

05. Gabber Eleganza at Club To Club, Torino
Photo: Stefano Mattea

06. Casual Gabberz at La Gaîté Lyrique, Paris
Photo: Vovotte Recto Verso

07. WIXAPOL at WIXAPOL, Warsaw
Photo: Krzysiek Powierża

Chapter

05

Minimal moves

beyond Berlin

On a warm October afternoon, a bleary-eyed DJ Koolt strolled off a plane in Barcelona, dragging record bags full of vintage tech house, techno and minimal. Arriving from Uruguay for a month-long tour, he would play a string of dates across Europe, including stops in Berlin, London and Kiev. This was the biggest overseas trip of his career—a career in which he's helped develop an exceptional club and mentored dozens of talented DJs in his hometown of Montevideo. The European dates were a success, but that's no surprise. DJ Koolt, who's in his mid-40s, plays timeless music, and he does it extremely well. Reduced and steady, it's a style pushed by minimal-minded DJs across a scene that continued to transform in 2017.

Some of the year's most exciting developments happened outside the European capitals normally associated with this sound. Montevideo is now internationally recognised as a home to a fantastic club, Phonotheque, and dozens of exceptionally talented and dedicated DJs. Tucked away on the southeastern coast of South America, Uruguay has a small community of vinyl-obsessed DJs who spend insane amounts of time and money buying records from the US and Europe. "The money we spend on shipping is more than what we pay for records," Kino, a local DJ, said in March. "It's crazy to buy a record for $4 or $5 and pay $25 for shipping. But that's the sacrifice here. Because of the shipping, we try to buy cheap records that nobody knows."

While this kind of dedication is nothing new within a scene where most DJs spend hours each day hunting for records, Kino made an important point. DJs in cities like London, Berlin or Barcelona have an entire history of electronic music at their fingertips through record stores and relatively inexpensive shipping; DJs elsewhere in the world face a trickier situation, but this can have its advantages. Where DJs in Berlin race to Discogs to buy up the remaining copies of a record they heard at Club Der Visionaere the night before, DJs in cities like Montevideo and Kiev aren't bound to these trends, and their sets are often better off for it.

Phonotheque, a long, narrow basement space with a clear soundsystem and a heady atmosphere, hosted world-class DJ sets from locals every Saturday between March and December, while Closer, a sprawling venue in Kiev that includes a furniture store and a visual arts space, is the favourite club of a growing list of respected DJs. And with more of their residents visiting Western Europe than ever—Phontheque's Nico Etorena and Closer's Noizar & Borys will play in Berlin this February—2017 saw more of these dedicated local DJs receive wider recognition.

The same goes for many of the scene's producers. A web of talented artists from the Frankfurt area, once a powerhouse but more recently in the shadow of Berlin, released some of this year's best tracks, most defined by an anything-goes approach that takes in influences—UK tech house, bleep, 2-step, electro—from outside their immediate surroundings. We heard the scene's first great album, Cédric Dekowski & Felix Reifenberg's L'Albüm. Markus Sommer and Phil Evans made some of the year's classiest tunes, including their "Son Goku" track as MSPE. Building on a strong 2016, the team around Traffic Records—Martyné, Jacob and Bodin—put out great records across a number of labels, while releasing an exceptional EP from Uruguay's Z@p. All of this music was distinct and full of character, traits that are increasingly rare as the sound has become more popular. Looking further afield, Tokyo's So Inagawa returned to Cabaret Recordings with an EP of timeless deep house.

The term minimal is more open-ended than ever, encompassing DJs like Sonja Moonear, who blend long and loopy tracks at parties that stretch into the afternoon, through to selectors like DJ Koolt and Berlin's Vera, who chop between vintage tech house and modern electro. It's never meant more—or less. Rather than a sound, it defines an approach that values subtlety. Whether they're unreleased tunes produced in the Romanian countryside or obscure B-sides from Nottingham, these DJs play tracks that no one else has. There's no better example than catching DJ Koolt behind the decks, artfully mixing tunes new and old. The same goes for Tokyo's DJ Masda. These are DJs who threw parties, hunted for records and mixed at home for years before they caught international attention. This year reinforced the idea that the next wave of great minimal artists will also come from places outside of the usual centres.

Gallery credits /

01. DJ Masda at REIBU, Milan
Photo: Davide Manea

02. DJ Koolt at The Spot, Montevideo
Photo: The Spot

03. Sonja Moonear at Halfbaked, London
Photo: Here & Now

Chapter

06

Live as performance

The smell of incense drifted across the dark, cavernous space. Through a forest of bodies, it was possible to catch glimpses of a dancer onstage, contorting her body to the dense, rhythmic music thundering from the speakers. The combination was potent. Experiencing electronic music this strange being interpreted as dance gave the performance an uncommon vitality. The artists on stage that October evening were the US electronic producer Jlin and the Indian dancer Avril Stormy Unger, who took a prime slot on the Saturday night at this year's Unsound festival. Their set was emblematic of many of 2017's best live artists, whose emphasis on performance mesmerised audiences.

It's not an exaggeration to say that people are still talking about Arca and Jesse Kanda's show at The Roundhouse back in April. On reflection, it was a triumph not just for the artists themselves, but for the possibilities of electronic music performance in general. There are naturally few artists who are able (or willing) to push things as far as Arca and Kanda did this year—the show was a deeply personal exploration of Arca's newly created stage persona and a raw celebration of his sexuality. But it emphatically showed that ambition and imagination can—and maybe should—always be aspired to in the live arena. Kelela's shows in support of her debut album, Take Me Apart, were similar in their overflow of vulnerability and charisma. On an upcoming year-end edition of The Hour, Martha Pazienti Caidan, the podcast's producer, says that every Kelela gig she's been to has left her in tears. The depth of Kelela's connection with her audience through her records, her words and her concerts was one of this year's enduring takeaways.

Back in January, another live performance left an RA staff member reeling. "Yves Tumor wants you to fight, to dance, to writhe and thrash about the beer-slicked floor with him," said Holly Dicker, after catching his show at De School in Amsterdam. "He's happy if you come out of it a little bloodied, too." Tumor's show—a blend of grinding electronics and on- and off-stage antics—is as confrontational as Holly's description makes it sound, but it belies the nuance found elsewhere in his work. Earlier this year, he followed up his excellent 2016 album, Serpent Music, with a free mixtape, Experiencing The Deposit Of Faith, which, like its predecessor, was simply gorgeous in places, reflective and soulful, and the inverse of his hostile expressions on stage.

On a mild evening in September, Pan Daijing stalked the low stage at St. Elisabeth Kirche in Berlin, as Valerio Tricoli and Werner Dafeldecker hunched on the floor over a tape machine and other assorted gear. The show was described as a "form of aural theatre or performative piece of musique concrète," and it saw Daijing delivering insouciant monologues while moving gingerly around the space. The Chinese artist's solo shows mixed performance art, noise and choral vocals, and became a recurring feature at experimentally-minded festivals in 2017. She premiered a performance called Fist Piece at this year's Atonal festival on the same night that Varg invited six collaborators, including AnnaMelina and Swan Meat, to help bring his excellent Nordic Flora series to life.

Like Varg and Daijing, Laurel Halo released a standout album in 2017 that was backed by a bold live show. Dust's colourful, hi-def electronics became soupy improvised jams, with Eli Keszler, a collaborator on the album, playing drums and percussion as Halo sang and played keys. The Scottish artist Lanark Artefax didn't release an album this year, but his track "Touch Absence" was comfortably among this year's highlights. It was the centrepiece of a live A/V set that debuted late in the year but quickly gained a word-of-mouth reputation as a must-see show. His rich, IDM-influenced music was an obvious draw, but the talking point was the immediacy of what was on screen, which we described in a review as an "obelisk transmitting alien visuals."

All of the artists mentioned here went beyond a recreation of their studio music to extend our understanding and appreciation of their records. Some tried new things. Some expressed themselves on a deeper level. But their success was based on a simple truth about live performances in any art form: when an audience looks towards a stage they want to be moved and entertained.

Gallery credits /

01. Yves Tumor at RBMA, Los Angeles
Photo: Paul Carter

02. Arca at Sonar, Barcelona
Photo: Fernando Schlaepfer

03. Laurel Halo at Unsound, Kraków
Photo: Michal Ramus

04. Lanark Artefax at The Glue Factory, Glasgow
Photo: Loris Brunello

05. Jlin at The Rest Is Noise, Amsterdam
Photo: Françoise Bolechowski

06. Kelela at Trix, Antwerp
Photo: Koen Keppens

Chapter

07

EBM and industrial

rewire techno

Aggressive, noisy techno was as popular as it ever has been in 2017, though in some cases its genetic makeup was starting to change. Some of the biggest techno events—like Katharsis in Amsterdam or, of course, Sundays at Berghain—embraced a sound that's more broken, experimental and adventurous. Though they've been pushed for years by veteran artists like Terence Fixmer, Adam X and Perc, and more recently Helena Hauff, industrial and EBM sounds seemed to reach more people than ever in 2017. New artists like Tzusing and Phase Fatale brought EBM's aggression and danger to the table, and also its sense of flamboyance and agility. Techno in 2017 was arguably funkier and weirder than it's been in a long time.

Malaysian-Chinese producer Tzusing, who splits his time between Shanghai and Taipei, was a force in 2017. He released two lauded records: an album that combined techno with industrial and EBM textures and In A Moment A Thousand Hits, an EP that wove in frenetic aspects of experimental club music. You could mix these tracks into techno, sure, but the restless martial drumming and twangy melodies of, say, "日出東方唯我不敗," maybe have more in common with Nine Inch Nails and Skinny Puppy. And on top of those drums, Tzusing added the spoken-word vocals, ominous wails and hectic drums that defined late '80s industrial music. Tzusing's DJing was equally impressive, and he toured more than he ever has, bringing his sound to new frontiers. At big events like ADE and small techno parties like Private Selection in Los Angeles, he broke up techno's steady flow not only with his own tracks, but with hip-hop and pop.

Tzusing's In A Moment A Thousand Hits EP came out on Bedouin Records, a Dubai-based label that has released brutal, dynamic dance music from the likes of J. Tijn, Pan Daijing, Eomac and Ekman. Across the globe, Ascetic House, which hails from the conservative and inhospitably hot state of Arizona, is one of America’s most important stations for this kind of music. The earliest Ascetic House cassettes were noisy experiments, but over time and a shift towards vinyl, the label has emerged as an influential cheerleader for hard-edged and EBM-influenced dance music. Releases from Jock Club, Somali Extract and Boy Harsher have brought the sounds of the '80s DIY underground and industrial scenes into the purview of contemporary techno. It goes further than Ascetic House, who are just one example in a network of underground producers pilfering from industrial, EBM and noise, from Vancouver to Texas to Copenhagen. Labels and crews like Halcyon Veil, Sacred Sound Club, Childhood Industries and Posh Isolation, and even experimental club outlets like NON Worldwide and Infinite Machine, engage in this violent subversion of techno.

Phase Fatale, a New York-born, Berlin-based techno artist, proudly wears the influence of his city's industrial techno lineage. His productions pack the jittery punch of classic EBM, updated with the production sheen of modern techno. His DJ sets have a stylistic breadth that you might not have heard at a Klubnacht a few years ago. (See October's RA podcast.) Phase Fatale's tracks bring different rhythms and feelings into techno. The predatory lunge of "Operate Within" or the Ministry-like creep of "Human Shield," both taken from his Redeemer LP released this year on Hospital Productions, feature industrial-influenced arrangements that slot right in with techno.

Meanwhile, established techno artists and DJs are continuing to look to their own long-time love of industrial and EBM for inspiration. Marcel Dettmann compiled EBM rarities for Dekmantel's Selectors series. Perc released Bitter Music, his third album of acrid, pessimistic techno featuring screeching vocals and relentless drum programming. The French producer Terence Fixmer, who has been flying the EBM flag for decades (and also makes music with Nitzer Ebb vocalist Douglas McCarthy), linked up with Ostgut Ton and produced his best tracks in years. Fixmer's recent EPs, particularly this year's Force EP, seamlessly sews the textures of industrial into a straightforward techno framework.

A combination of youthful energy and elder statesman experience make this thread of techno one of the genre's most promising recent developments. Industrial techno might be almost as old as techno itself, but EBM and industrial influences haven't been incorporated this directly—or obviously—in a long time, nor have they reached the genre's biggest clubs and stages like they're doing now. It wasn't that long ago that Adam X was complaining that no one was paying attention to him or his Sonic Groove label because it was too heavy. Similarly, the long-serving industrial and noise act Orphx told us that their gigs at techno parties recently just wouldn't have been possible a few years ago. Now, industrial and EBM are helping to change the way we think about techno.

Gallery credits /

01. Tzusing at La Machine du Moulin Rouge, Paris
Photo: Victor Maitre

02. Phase Fatale at Festival Forte, Montemor-o-Velho
Photo: André Teixeira / A Cabine

03. Terence Fixmer at Zona Roveri Music Factory, Bologna
Photo: TimeShift

04. Orphx at RECYCLART, Brussels
Photo: Remy Rupp

Chapter

08

Lo-fi house goes offline

The term "lo-fi house" was coined in 2015 to describe the wave of young producers who'd had viral success with a type of house music that was heavy on distortion and unashamedly retro. (Some of the artist names were pretty silly, too.) By the end of 2016, the sound's biggest tracks—DJ Boring's "Winona," Mall Grab's "Can't (Get You Out Of My Mind)," Ross From Friends' "Talk To Me You'll Understand"—had clocked up hundreds of thousands of YouTube plays, mind-boggling numbers for new artists working in underground music. (Today, those figures are in the millions.) But as popular as it was in Reddit forums and Facebook groups, lo-fi house was still largely an online concern.

That changed, massively, in 2017. Promoters, keen to adopt the burgeoning sound, began booking the scene's key acts, transforming these bedroom producers into globetrotting DJs almost overnight. According to the event listings on RA, Ross From Friends went from playing ten gigs in 2016 to 49 in 2017. DJ Seinfeld: four to 67. DJ Boring, who despite the success of "Winona" played just one show last year according to RA, jumped to 69, the equivalent of playing every weekend (and then some). With 53 gigs last year, Mall Grab was already a touring DJ, but this year his bookings more than doubled, rising to 114. (He also recently became the first artist from the stable to record an Essential Mix.) There were US, Asia and Australia tours. Music, previously a hobby, was suddenly a full-time profession.

There was a sense of inevitability about this. Dance music rewards popular producers with club gigs, and these artists had proved their value with their online popularity. But were they ready for the next step? Based on the sets we caught—Mall Grab at fabric and Melt! Festival, DJ Seinfeld at Glitch Festival—it certainly seemed like it, although there wasn't too much that was particularly lo-fi about their selections. Rather, they played party-friendly, four-to-the-floor beats, with plenty of classics.

Perhaps the real story of lo-fi house in 2017 didn't take place in the DJ booth, but in the studio. Somehow, in between gigs around the world, Seinfeld, Mall Grab and others found time to write and release more music than ever before. While it's hard to describe any of it as groundbreaking—it is retro-leaning house, after all—there was still plenty of great music. Had Mall Grab's jazzy smash "Pool Party Music" not come out in January, it might have featured in more publications' best-of lists. "In An Emergency" by Ross From Friends, arguably the quintessential lo-fi house track, would probably bring around even the sound's fiercest detractors. And then there's DJ Seinfeld, who, as well as making killer deep house as Rimbaudian and neo-jungle as Birds Of Sweden, put out a slew of extremely playable bombs under his best-known alias, including "Ruff Hysteria," "Chat Shit Get Luved" and "Bring U Back." (That last track was one of several great tunes on the Swede's debut album, Time Spent Away From U, the scene's most high-profile record so far.) If these artists—in addition to other talents like Grant, Nthng and TRP—can keep up a similar hit rate, lo-fi house will remain a movement through 2018 and beyond.

Aside from the music itself, there's something else at play here that's worth mentioning. A decent chunk of lo-fi house's huge fan base is made up of teenagers and 20-somethings, many of whom are, with these tunes, falling in love with dance music for the first time. It's nice to picture newcomers listening to DJ Seinfeld or Mall Grab rather than, say, EDM. Attracting new blood is, after all, the only way to continue pushing dance music forwards.

Gallery credits /

01. DJ Boring at Garaj, Istanbul

02. Mall Grab at Melt!, Gräfenhainichen
Photo: Kasia Zacharko

03. DJ Seinfeld at Meine Nacht, Liverpool
Photo: James Newmarch

Chapter

09

Play anything

In 2017, more DJs took advantage of the single detail that makes their art form truly unique: they can play anything. Nina Kraviz, despite the absurd controversy it once caused her, continued colouring outside the lines, be it with 150 BPM techno or straight up drum & bass, on the main stage at EXIT Festival or in room one at Unsound's Hotel Forum. Avalon Emerson, armed with wildly eclectic music on impeccably organized USB sticks, drifted seamlessly from straight four-four into hip-hop and R&B. On the final morning of Sustain-Release, PLO Man seemed intent on encompassing as much as possible of the entire panorama of electronic music in one set, with separate chapters devoted to jungle, garage, deep house, dub techno and ambient.

The limits of so-called "good taste" were challenged as well, often to explosive effect. That amber-lit morning at Sustain-Release, PLO Man found time for Bizarre Inc's "I'm Gonna Get You," a mainstream crossover fellow aficionados like Ben UFO have also been known to reach for. At Germany's Nachtdigital festival, Job Jobse started a set with unreleased Hessle Audio, but patiently winded his way toward Mylo ("Drop The Pressure") and Madonna ("Music"). Perhaps no one let their hair down like Objekt and Call Super, two artists known for being on the bleeding edge of dance music. At the intimate Sameheads bar in Berlin, they peppered a set of ultra-modern sounds with the likes of Everything But The Girl, Wamdue Project and the Xmas edit of Jeff Mills' "The Bells." On big stages, they were not much more hemmed in. A high point of this year's Dekmantel Festival was, oddly enough, Tears For Fears' chart-topper "Everybody Wants To Rule The World," played on the Selectors stage by one of these two.

What might explain this sea change? It could be partly down to the rising prevalence of CDJs and Rekordbox. These tools make it infinitely easier to carry massive collections of music, which, combined with things like intelligent playlists and the all-important loop function, make unconventional track selections easier to pull off. It's also a reflection of where we're at in the evolution of club culture. DJs are less tribal than they once were, willing to float between genres in a way that might once have been seen as a betrayal. With YouTube, Discogs and other online communities, they can explore sounds and scenes well beyond their personal rave histories.

It also shows something more fundamental to the history of electronic music. In the last quarter century or so, dance music has followed an arc common in other forms of music and art. After however many years of innovation, they arrive at a point where all potential new elements seem to have been created. Reese basslines, amen breaks, acid—hard as it may be to imagine now, at one point these things were literally new, not existing one day and existing the next, and which, at some point, were played on a dance floor for the first time. Nothing is certain, but that fertile period may have ended, just as it ended, sooner or later, for most other art forms, from jazz to rock to theater and painting. There is unlikely to be another dubstep or minimal, just as there is unlikely to be another cubism.

This is an especially interesting crossroads for dance music, a future-facing art form that relies on novelty and the element of surprise—in short, the experience of having your mind blown. Until not so long ago, many DJs could achieve that feeling by playing unreleased music, which might contain sounds or ideas still beyond imagination for people in the audience. That still happens, but much less frequently than it once did.

So, in this day and age, how do DJs create those proverbial WTF moments? By casting a wider net, trawling more broadly their potential material, which, luckily for them, happens to be something quite vast: the entire history of recorded music. DJs can plumb the depths of YouTube, Discogs or the music collection of their teenage selves, find an interesting specimen and trim it into shape if needed—making an edit, say, or simply looping the intro. Then it's just a matter of waiting for the right moment, finding a way to mix it in, and hoping it works. More and more often, it does.

Gallery credits /

01. Nina Kraviz at Dekmantel, São Paulo
Photo: Gabriel Quintão

02. Avalon Emerson at Primavera Sound, Barcelona
Photo: Sergio Albert

03. Objekt & Call Super at Dekmantel, Amsterdam
Photo: Bart Heemskerk