UK-based label Touchin’ Bass was originally founded back in 2002 by Andrea Parker with the stated aim of focusing on leftfield / experimental ghetto tech and booty electro, and following a brief period of inactivity this latest unmixed compilation ‘Geometry’ sees the label presenting nine tracks from a range of different artists on their roster. In this instance, rather than ghetto-tech styles, the focus falls firmly upon post-Warp Records influenced ‘intelligent’s techno, with Bogger’s opening ‘Mineral’ building itself up out of a dense web of ricocheting, elastic synthetic tones before razor-sharp IDM breakbeats rise up and take over the entire mix, sending things down into menacing, surgically-edited darkness.
By contrast, Ben Milstein’s ‘Osity’ favours a more shuffling approach that tickles the senses as much as it confuses them, as twinkling near-acid squelches and proggy drones roll over over a treacherous backbone of fluttering rhythms that constantly change their time signature, before Bitstream opt for comparatively more conventional electro waters on ‘Nest’, the swirling, moody nightdrive synths and rippling rhythmic pulse calling to mind Cybotron as much as it does Anthony Rother. Elsewhere Alpha 606 & Sync24 pick up the momentum and roll with it on the tumbling, timestretch-happy breakers’ electro of ‘Warped Juice’ as clicking 808 snares tread their way beneath blippy analogue synth-bass tones and howling, distorted drones, before Wee Djs’ ‘No Resolution’ offers up what’s perhaps this collection’s most straight out dancefloor-based offering as tribal techno rhythms pound beneath eerie sampled radio signals and evil-sounding synth sweeps. Fans of The Black Dog’s broken ‘intelligent’s techno and electro could do far worse than investigate ‘Geometry’, which sees the artists here traversing a distinctly post-Warp Records based aesthetic with consistently interesting results.
Chris Downton
