Three friends, and incidentally Techno champions in their own right, Drumcell, Truncate, and Chris Liebing got together one bright sunny morning in Los Angeles at Drumcell’s studio to casually throw down an EP full of bangin’ Techno that shares their individual tastes, styles, and expert knowledge of the craft on “The Heights”.
If you know techno, then you should have no problem identifying the Techno heads on “The Heights” EP. Chris Liebing, head of CLR label “Create Learn Realize”, is incidentally known as “Mr. Bass” with a winking smile from his friends. Moe Espinosa, aka Drumcell, is well known for the hard industrial flavors on his own techno and as Hypoxia, his dark Ambient and Industrial side project. Finally, we have David Flores, aka Truncate, who is well known worldwide for his tools-based Techno tracks under the label by the same name.
When you put them all together, you end up with a “Voltron” style Techno collab of complimenting elements that bring together heavyweight Techno, yet let each person’s artistic voice pound throughout the whole of the track. It’s entertaining to note that some studio play can be heard while exploring Drumcell’s machines—a sort of “What does this button do? That’s so cool!” can be heard, and it’s great to listen along to the discovery to hear the knowledge of the particular musical author in each part.
Across both of these tracks, you can hear Liebing’s stripped down, distressed, and compressed style matching the spirit of Truncate’s functional, 909-heavy aesthetic, and also Drumcell’s industrial grooves. “DTL” invokes the classic, banging flavors of Chicago influence yet is still Los Angeles Techno strong. It’s short and sweet where it could easily be a layered element in a set as a longer track. It makes one definitely want to hear more from each of these DJ/Producers as they take elements and deconstruct them live in software. With “SGV” you can really pick apart whose job belonged to whom and where they all got together to poke at the lead synth line. Flowing along with the wildness of that synth, it is as entertaining as it is trippy; more or less encouraging you to leave along with it and dive deeper into the dissociated state you may or may not be in at the time.
Once again, it bears repeating that one of the brilliant things about Techno is that it’s more or less about style and who can retain their personal characteristics while conforming to rigid standards set forth by the constraints of the machines, a demanding audience, and the need to make compelling dance music. Rest assured, this “The Heights” EP has all of that. Yes, it’s a collaboration, but it definitely highlights the strengths of all three great Techno producers as they meld into one across the release.
-Sean Ocean
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