Champion Breaks – Extasy Make You Lovely (The Remixes) (Kut Off Records)

An unbearably nostalgic three-track remix EP from our favourite acid-breaker Champion Breaks, this begins with a real Rave Digger-esque take from Dodders, complete with tingle-on-the-back of your neck piano sections, and quick-hug-a-friend samples from Human Traffic. The DJ Slim vs Menace mix gets all junglistic on your ass but at the risk of playing Rabbit favourites, it’s Benji303‘s rub that really rules the roost. Benjio retains the manic  breakbeats so beloved of Champion but teases them into Acid Techno shapes and the result is phat and fast and highly addictive.

Steve Mills, Benji303, Tik Tok & Tassid – Interstate One (IO 001)

Interstate One is a brand, head-spankingly new vinyl-only Acid Techno label from Russia. Though homegrown artists will be featured on the forthcoming Interstate Two, this debut release features all UK-based producers. Here, you’ll find the emphasis is very much on the 303 here: these tracks bang, but they don’t bludgeon.

Waveform from Steve Mills begins things with a rolling beat and an acid line that builds, with another, higher-pitched one skronking away behind it. It’s classic Mills, his ability to hit the sweet spot and stay there remaining undimmed.

Warped is the sound of a producer really finding his feet. In this case Benji303, who gets all lab technician, laying down a base solution of tough techno and tweaking acid over the top. A breakdown at around the 3.00 mark sees the various elements dissembling, but this isn’t about fireworks so much as elegance. Benji’s tracks are always marked by a total love of the 303 sound, and so he lets the acid build again to the outro.

Tik Tok’s been on a bit of a roll lately. I never got around to reviewing Rave On but thought it was an ace tune. Like that one, Angry Villagers lays off on gimmicks and concentrates on  heads-down bangerishness. Unafraid to explore new ideas, it shares a common quality with his best tracks, where although you feel as though they could spiral out of control at any second, they never quite do. Ace.

Lastly, Tassid, who couldn’t be dull if he tried. Asylum uses echo-treated vocals and found sound for that genuine scary sanitarium quality, and when the acid comes in at 3.03 (yes, really) it’s scuzzy and funky as hell. A superb way to end a flawless EP.

Get it from: Stay Up Forever

Benji303, Nesbit, Owen Acid & Dixie – AER 005.2 (Audio Eargasm)

Benji303’s tracks are usually marked by a healthy respect for Acid Techno’s beginnings, and though I’ve always liked the results I sometimes felt they lacked the kind of heaviness you’d want for a here-and-now 303 throwdown. Here, though, his old skool custodianship is employed to phatter-than-usual effect, producing what for me is his best tune yet, in Crunch. Likewise, Jared Blyth, aka Nesbit, is on a roll. Bitta Rough brims with confidence, featuring the kind of brooding riff that lurks in shadows in alleyways, building beautifully, speeding up, slowing down, and an acid line, like a psychotic dog, twisting at its feet.

Meanwhile Fuck Regretamine by Owen Acid & Dixie is a blast. The drums roll, and the acid has a great old-skool arcade feel. (Which reminds me, I never got round to reviewing Soitiz 004, which is unforgiveable because it’s a cracking release, with Owen Acid’s Swift Assault a total highlight.) Back to Audio Eargasm 005.2 and Step 3 rounds out the EP with two acid lines, once low and growling, one high and persistent, and a drop at around the 4.30 mark that’s an absolute beaut.

Get it from: Audio Eargasm at Bandcamp

Benji303 & Nesbit – Stella Act a Twat EP (AER003)

A great EP, this, from a label that gets better with every release. Four tracks, all of them different and all of them ace, are kicked off by Nesbit’s Stella Act a Twat – Nesbit & The Welder’s 2012 Mix and the beat bounces, acid pans and flicks from speaker to speaker. A riff powers things along in tandem with impish pulses that flit around the grid before things drop down into a break then accelerate into a showstopping end.

Elsewhere Nesbit changes up for my favourite of his two, Crushed, where rather than bedded in percussion, the beat is aloof and isolated, deliberately so, in order to work with an ominous vocal sample. The BPM remains high but the mood darkens, and it brings a welcome extra texture in to a set.

Acid Glitch from Benji303 is a gem, a playful puppy of a tune, with a beautifully developed Acid line climbing the register then suddenly dropping into grumbly burbles, all of it powered along by spry-sounding drums and the whole thing pleasingly raw and stripped-back.

AFT, meanwhile, from Benji303 feat Nesbit sounds like a darker, moodier cousin of Acid Glitch, less bright, the drums more grungy and dirty, the 303 scuffed up accordingly. Tremendous stuff.

Get it from: Bandcamp

Nitronoise, Jared Blyth, Benji303, Fil Devious, Adam Derry – Acid Techno 005 (Injector Records)

Cat no: Acid Techno 005

The reasons to love Adam Derry – that he’s mercurial, uncompromising and makes noisy, challenging electronic music that isn’t fêted by Boomkat or Wire Magazine – can also sometimes be his downfall, meaning he can veer into unlistenable territory and has a tendency to produce overlong tracks. I Can’t Name Tunes (150 BPM), for example, would benefit from being a good three minutes shorter, despite the presence of a marvellously unwashed 303. Miles better is Threshold Driven (160 BPM), a sweaty, fidgety seizure of a track that uses waves of distorted acid-driven noise to punishing but undeniably awesome effect. Whether you’d like a second dose in I Don’t Use Sample Packs (155 BPM) may well depend on how much you want a repeat viewing of the fire extinguisher scene in Irréversible.

Remixed by Benji303, Jared Blyth’s Fucking Cocaine has an accordingly hollowed-out and distanced feel to it, while a treated animal-noise adds the requisite note of self-disgust. Only the 303 feels a little underdeveloped, lacking the darkness and bite elsewhere. Fil Devious’s Phat Pants, meanwhile, is a tremendous tune that absolutely rewards close and repeated listens, especially to the trippy, kaleidoscopic 303 that courses through all seven-and-a-half minutes, bouncing off a metallic melody, dipping and soaring and turning inside itself like a Möbius strip. Phil’s tracks always deliver, but this is one of those you feel can stand on its own outside of the mix.

Which leaves Nitronoise. Nitronoise is Injector Records’ head honcho Gabriel Stirbu, and his tracks invariably have a ravey, old skool quality that makes them a real joy to hear. Get ’Em Up The Fuck (145 BPM), for example, is the party right there, and like That’s My Shit (145 BPM) uses bouncy, good-time vocal samples and chord changes for funky, eminently mixable techno. Acid Junxion (145 BPM), meanwhile, employs cavernous echo-soaked drums for a harder, booming sound destined to sound ace on big rigs or headphones, whichever is your poison.