Pär Grindvik and Peder Mannerfelt’s Taken Name project doubles up on the prior single “Half Life” with “L’INCOGNITA” off of Grindvik’s own Stockholm Limited label featuring hard and heavy hypnotic groovers sure to light up the dancefloor.
The lasting legacy of Swedish techno is still an undeniable force in the scene. Where once you couldn’t throw a record without hitting a Swedish techno producer in the late ‘90s, it seems that the worldwide techno stage is more diverse and decentralized. That doesn’t mean that Swedish Techno isn’t holding its own, it just means that it’s adding its voice and reminding people of its rich history and how it continues to influence the world techno stage to this day. A lot of producers are taking the rich legacy of the Swedish techno movement, updating the sound, and progressing the ideas in new ways.
Here, on “L’INCOGNITA” as well, we have Grindvik and Mannerfelt in their Taken Name guise, leaning heavily on their Swedish techno birthright with the rolling shaker lines and the syncopated beat-chopped phrases that were so prominent around the turn of the millennium. But also, we have the tension of the sustained pads in the title track and the satisfying chords meeting the bouncing groove of the kick and bassline in “Half Life” makes it something new without entirely abandoning the roots of the Swedish techno genre.
To many people, this type of music is quintessentially techno, since it served as a backbone to the genre for so long before being summarily jettisoned for so-called progress. Techno is supposed to be about moving forward, but it’s also about moving forward while acknowledging the history of what came before and not throwing out the baby with the bathwater. We are seeing a resurgence of this when a lot of the DJs who grew up on this sound are making tracks. There are scores to be had within the 1 euro bins at used record stores where there are definitely a lot of ideas that have been forgotten. There’s even new people getting into techno who have no idea that type of music ever existed, and they’re just ecstatic about the possibility of doing deep dives on heads like Nils Danielson, Johan Bacto, or Patrick Skoog… to name a few.
Some real continuity has to be established. The wealth of the Swedish techno sound is highly influential, and it’s great to see it represented here in context with the current techno climate. It is great to see Taken Name representing the sound to its fullest to a new audience as well as heads that appreciate the sound and really can’t get enough.
-Sean Ocean
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