A friend asked me the other day “hasn’t all the techno been made yet?”.
In some sense there is some truth in the question. Raw, distorted 4/4 drum machine + synth tracks have been released with some regularity for a few decades now and the variations in style and execution can sometimes be subtle to spot between a hard techno example from say, 1996 and 2020. However, the beauty of this unglamorous sound is it exists purely to serve a distinct purpose, for a certain place and moment in time (dancing in dark, strobe-lit rooms come to mind).
‘Techno is The Devil’s Music’, is keeping this raw sound alive and in this outing Draugr provides four consistently dirgy and hard trax, with a loving attention to detail. ‘Fractured’ is the one for me, the Birken-esque distorted fills in the second half ticks all the boxes.