Surprising as it is, there aren't many American industrial techno labels out there. Couldn't count a dozen if we tried. You'd think there would be a ton of those, but at the moment this niche is dominated by Europe - France and Italy in particular, whose digital labels and newly sprung out artists have been appearing out of nowhere and opening Bandcamp pages one after the other. Which makes the opening of California-based Omen Recordings all the more exciting, even though two thirds of artists featured on the first release are, again, hailing from France and Italy - we're talking about Variance regular, Octave's alter ego Vlaysin, and a ruthless techno machine by the name of Ayarcana, who's been making appearances on every other high-quality industrial techno release lately - at least that's how it feels. Last but not the least - LA-based artist Axkan, who's been steadily earning himself a name, appearing on numerous dark techno labels in the past couple of years. With line-up being this promising, let's see what came of this trio's efforts.

    Titular 8-minute track, paced at 131 BPM, makes use of syncopated, low-bass supported kick drums, arpeggiated acidic bassline, dry, somewhat generic 16/16 hats that run aside another layer of panning 16/16s and a third set of semi-metallic, syncopated hat loop that nicely plays its role of condensing the high range; other recurring elements include sizzling, noisy pads and 2 eyebrow-rising male vocal samples and chilly synths which you probably wouldn't normally expect to hear in this sort of production - well, surprise! While paced at 130 BPM, the following Rising Anger isn't really a techno piece as much as it is a demonstration of what will happen if you take out the heavy-hitting percussion elements out of equation and marry a grim downtempo piece that has 3 ethereal kicks in 8 bars with abrasive droning, panning bleeping sequences, digital horns, uncannily screeching pads and sandy bands, all of which slowly sink in a bottomless sea of glitchy microsamples. In his What He Says Remix, Axkan takes 3 BPM steps down from original's tempo, sharpening and rearranging the kicks, doubling the last hit every 8 bars and making them more lively, bringing on his own atonal bassline, condensing the spectrum with craftily filtered and scattered digital whispers, soft noise-shaped 16/16 bands, whipping 4/4 hats, and fields of sizzling noise that spread across, providing a dense backdrop. Opting to express his Rising Anger at a pace of 134 BPM, Ayarcana brought a new life to the second track, throwing syncopated kicks against filtered gun salvos, clonking metal bars, reverberated, panning bleeping sequences, rumbling drones and thickets of impenetrable, ever-morphing noise; it's not the track to play in a peak hour's moment, but if used as intro, it will right away send a very clear message that whoever is behind the decks has no intent to mess around.

Release Type: EP

Release Date: 23 January 2017

Release Format: Digital • Vinyl

Record Label • Catalog: Omen Recordings • OMEN001

Purchase Links: Bandcamp • Juno • Deejay • Decks