Album Review: Ben Klock - Fabric 66

Berlin-based DJ Ben Klock is known for his marathon sets, up to eight hours of pedal to the metal techno. He should sell t-shirts: 'I survived a Ben Klock set and all I got were sore feet, repeated doses of euphoria and this lousy t-shirt'.

Instead he's compiled a mix for the famous Fabric sessions. Of course how you condense an eight-hour approach into 73 minutes is an art itself, something that Klock achieves with apparent ease, this mix feeling like a taster, or low attention span excursion into one of his sets. What's great about this mix is that Klock doesn't pull out all the hits; rather, he allows the listener to discover some more obscure, less obvious tunes, everything from bleak austere tech to rave breaks and squelches of acid.

It's pretty eclectic, straight up banging techno slapped up against oddities like a strange edit of dubstep guru Burial's Raver, or even sonic experimentalist Alvo Noto's beatless Monophaser 2, which closes the set. The crescendo tends to come midway, building from Floorplan's Chord Principal into Burial, Marcell Dettman's hypnotic swinging beats over swirling amorphous atmospheres on Allies and then Klock's own remix of Josh Wink's spooky Are You There? That question keeps repeating and by this time the listener barely is. It's always good when the DJ asks the important questions. It doesn't so much drag you back down to earth as remind you what an amazing effect this music is causing.

Which is kind of the key to the mix: not huge names but the combination of great tunes and percussive repetition create this incredible hypnotic and at times out-of-body experience.