Compilation Review: ‘Aux:Tech:02’ (Aux Technology)

★★★☆☆

Aux Technology’s second fleet is brought to you in an armour-plated  18 wheeler of new breakbeats and bass, refusing to stop for anyone. Tech twitches bounce around like a bobblehead on a dashboard, spearing around corners despite carrying serious weight. While some fit a comfortable template of ‘future’ dance and widescreen voyaging through cold worlds and meteor showers, they also bear breaks’ same old problems of reaching for the same tools and working to the same spec, no matter how many extra cylinders it can fire on.

It’s far from processional though. Fer BR is one leaving others eating dust through their crash helmets with the can’t stop won’t stop kick drums of “Good Afternoon,” and Charlie Kane’s mix of Seth Orin, also later responsible for funky tech frogger “Sleazy”, is like some sort of tank-sponsored Mardi Gras, showing off hydraulic bounce of something that usually can’t get off the floor. Hironimus Bosch jams the gears with what sounds like samples of P!nk and Sunshine Anderson (?!), and firing straight down the line, Dax J’s “11am” is minimal techno that seethes through the night, and Flukes’ tech-house hammer “This Will Destroy You” is much more open about its prospects of doing damage. Brawn rules brain for the majority, and it’s safe to say that those caught in the dance floor gridlock this causes are gonna be okay with that.
File under: Monk3ylogic, Paul Lyman, Stylus Rex