Welsh DJ and avid techno enthusiast Lisa Oakes surfaces on A. Paul’s Naked Lunch imprint with “Sound the Alarm” for a release full of energy and slamming grooves.
A proper techno producer like Oakes generally keeps a low profile, with her techno productions and DJ sets to the forefront. There’s not much hype surrounding this release, but it doesn’t need any. The EP stands on its own.
Quality techno such as this is just another day at the Naked Lunch camp. Like most of their output, the theme here on this “Sound The Alarm” EP is based on functional techno that has lots of energy and groove and does it all in a very natural, off-the-cuff way.
The title track illustrates this pretty well. There’s a lot of focus on the small timing interactions and modulations between the elements that tell the story of the track. Someone who isn’t a techno fan would immediately hear, but they’d more or less feel as if they were rocking their body to the beat.
It seems some attention is given to the lower atmospheres with the track that lends the ear toward deeper listening and apophenia. Both the tracks “Rush” and “Swarm” focus on putting straight beats over this bubbling fog of atmospheric noise that contrasts the beat and builds up the energy of the track. In A. Paul’s remix of the track “Rush”, he goes all-in on modulating this layer, so it sounds like thousands of voices carrying in a stadium. Yet he does this in a suspenseful, almost horror movie sort of way, so that it’s nearly scary but portrays the main beat when it’s dropped as the savior and hero, as it always is within techno.
This release is definitely one for the library. If you need an EP that sets the mood for proper techno that’s modern, functional, easy to dance to, and that is also subtle, unassuming, and maybe you need something to layer within a set. A great deal of Naked Lunch’s output is like this.. and that’s the beauty of the label. It serves as a strong backbone for setting up the other tracks. With an EP like this, it’s the straight man to comedy relief. Dean Martin to Jerry Lewis, Carl Reiner to Mel Brooks, Abbot to Costello, you really can’t have one without the other. As such, this EP isn’t one to miss.
The EP is currently Exclusive to Beatport at the moment, but should hit streaming in a matter of weeks.
-Sean Ocean
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