Revisited: Here, There, And Beyond

Octave One: Revisited: Here, There, And Beyond

Octave One are Lenny & Lawrence Burden from Detroit - and they are part of the family of legendary African-American DJ/producers in the Detroit Techno scene (Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, Derrick May, Jeff Mills, etc). Unlike the DJs, Octave One performs all its techno completely live and improvised. Each live set features multiple pieces of machinery, millions of buttons, and miles of cables. They're able to take musical ideas and innovate with them on the fly.

This album specifically is a remix album where their techno pieces are remixed by prominent DJs/producers (Aril Brikha, Luke Slater, Ken Ishii, Sandwell District). Incredible stuff. Try: 1,2,3,4,9,11

1. A signature track - driving techno with a twisted little pitched-up melody.
2. Bumpy groove in a tech-house vein - insistent & questioning bounce
3. Typical Sandwell District sound - atmospheric synths & washes & swirls, space-y vocal sample
4. A slightly more electro-acid/minimal sound blended with smooth synths - typical Aril Brikha style
5. Hypnotic and mesmerizing techno, buzzy loops with orchestral synths & strings
6. Slightly trance-y/progressive with fem vocals & lush synths
7. Neat little synth warble playing over smooth synth melodies
8. Not as punishing as other Luke Slater's work - mesmerizing and hypnotic instead
9. Punchy and brain-grinding. Raw & rough electro over pounding beats. Can't believe this and #7 are related.
10. Techno-fied remix of one of Octave One's most well-known vocal-house tracks. I'm not sure it works for me - the techno tempo is a little too fast & dense.
11. Great way to close out the album with a cheery & bright uptempo disco-dance track