Album Review: Marc Romboy & Ken Ishii - Taiyo

You can hear the years of experience in the precision of the sounds on Taiyo. Everything is measured for maximum effect, not a single moment, or a single sound, is wasted; everything has its place and purpose. Though surely that's what you'd expect when two veterans of the techno scene get together. German DJ/producer and label owner (Systematic Recordings) Marc Romboy is known for his distinctive brand of tech house, for his leanings towards an old-school Chicago/Detroit sound, and his search for soul in his electronic music productions. Japanese techno legend Ken Ishii meanwhile has always had a desire to produce creative alternative techno, offering up some really experimental groundbreaking structures, yet still retaining that banging techno groove. He's done everything from producing an entire remix album for Boredoms, to film and computer game soundtracks.

So aside from a shared love of Detroit techno from the glory days, what we've got is banging techno with both experimental and melodic flourishes. There's a certain retro feel to the beats, however there's also some complexity to the rhythms, something that Ishii has always been keen to develop. In fact there's a real desire to move beyond tried and true approaches, to not head straight for the dancefloor at every conceivable moment. The eight-minutes-plus title track is a case in point. There's all kinds of strange sounds flying under what is a relatively conventional techno beat, but midway these really curious hypnotic ethereal Zen-like tones are introduced and take the music into a whole new realm. With weird skittering beats, and bits of field recordings interacting with synth lines, this is really interesting, forward-thinking techno music that still manages to pack a punch.