★★★★☆
Another month, another Fabric mix, another Berlin selector at the controls. The sound of underground alliances at work, forced down and sealed airtight, snipping away constantly, twitching between new skools and old – it’s techno wanting your full concentration and investment in celebrating the human metronome. It almost drifts into ambience with K-Hand’s “Starz,” the lightest indication that Klock’s dominantly steely streak constantly issues warnings if not full-on rebukes. Sagat’s “Few Mysteries…” is like a flex of the cane without the subsequent whiplash, as Klock dangles a sword of Damocles over the dance floor. Steve Rachmad’s “Rotary” is another peering its periscope above the surface before retracting to its dark domain, with James Ruskin providing an apt finale with the brooding flourishes of “Detached” — which the mix has never apologized for being up to this point. Floorplan’s “Chord Principal” is the designated headmaster of techno rules, looking at Burial’s “Raver” talking up its outsider credentials.
The king moment though is Klock’s remix of Josh Wink’s “Are You There?” – the vocal comes twofold, asking to give yourself up to a dance floor man hunt or whether you’ve reached your climax, combined with breakbeats snapping the locks off straitjackets. Floorplan’s “Never Grow Old” adds some humanity to what has been a mechanical uprising, pieced together without so much of a fingerprint on the fader and creating that often imitated, rarely bettered Berlin body heat.
File under: DJ Bone, Marcel Dettmann, Terence Fixmer