The psychedelic techno produced and championed by the likes of Donatto Dozzy and Cio D’or is fast becoming one of the most influential sounds in (underground) dance music. Informed by the heavier strains of post-Basic Channel dub techno and the linearity of trance, this ‘headfuck techno’, as the blogs put it, delights in long, slowly evolving tracks slotted into long, tightly controlled DJ sets. This 12″ by Argentinian mountain dwelling recluse Leonel Castillo adheres to this structure, at least in part, whilst injecting a subtle touch of Cadenza-esque swing.
It’s the dark yet kooky title track that most captivates, ten-minutes of warped clanging and dank reverberation, wrapped around a warped passage of German speech by Der Himmer über Berlin. This functions like vocals in Thomas Brinkmann, looped into a rhythmic device (particularly effective to those not understanding German), chunks ricocheting off into delayed abstractions, with the sung nursery-rhyme section particularly disorienting. ‘Luvia de Estrellas’ is more straightforward, tinny arpeggios morphing into bounding synth stabs, with a twinkling break like Matthew Johnson. Lucas Mari remixes both, available digital-only, turning the former into droning ambience, and the latter into staggered breakbeat, but neither match the hypnotic power of the originals.
Joshua Meggitt
*
