Hump Day Techno Triple with: Curtis Maranda, Pretty Pink, and Gregor Klamra #Techno

Techno is such a versatile genre. All too often misunderstood as 4/4 thumpity thumpity. Here’s Curtis Maranda, Pretty Pink, and Gregor Klamra to show its versatility.

Returnee Curtis Maranda is up first. The Canadian offers A Warm Blanket For Outer Space. This is a quite delightful tune that has that warm organic melodic techno in which Germany seems to specialise.

It has fragments of the analogue 90s all the way through the track like a stick of rock. But it’s none the worse for that. In fact, it’s a deliciously funky space techno track that burbles around in weightlessness and leaves you feeling that bit better in your life for the listening experience. Bets and synths throb away with that Roland sound and leave the stars brighter in their afterglow.

Pretty Pink on the other hand only has eyes for the dance floor. Wizard is mesmerising techno at its flaunting club best.

Pretty Pink is from the woods of the Harz in Germany. And the track is the final one on her three track Dark Woods EP. But there’s nothing organic here. This is techno that’s still facing the glittering futuristic world to come. It’s all machine-made and defiantly digital.

Wizard opens with a driving kick drum and echoing synths. It builds and builds until a bass line comes to smash you into smithereens. This is a track of punishment as much as pleasure. Synths offer a pained epiphany. There are times when this edges into tech house tropes but the bass line always menacing keep this track on the true techno path.

High octane. High energy. High on life.

Staying Germany got Gregor Klamra. This is the alter ego of Hamburg and Berlin based musician Felix Weigt. He’s an indie musician with a conservatory background by day but does electronic music by night.

His new release is Pockets. This is a track that has that quintessentially German melodic techno sound. Not too organic but neither is it too machine music. It’s a cool version of neither. It’s the kind of sound that’s most associated with Traum Schallplatten and so it’s no surprise that this track appears on the Tour De Traum XXII compilation.

Pockets is a lovely cool five minute journey through the metal forest. It opens with a throbbing bass and banks of keyboards. But it’s also filled with space to allow the track to breathe and bobble around. There’s an understanding of classical composition in the way this track is constructed into little movements bjut all held together by a golden thread from the main melody. Clever mesmerising stuff.

~ by acidted on December 15, 2021.