When Marcel Dettmann talks about going to the office, he usually means Berghain. But sometimes he literally means The Office, a party in Stockholm, Sweden that has hosted the Berghain resident and other artists associated with the sort of dark techno that has worked so well in the Berlin club over the past few years. It's no surprise, then, that the first release from Färden—a label loosely affiliated with The Office—sounds tailormade for such sets.
Maskin Ljud, though, looks even further back: "Metro X01" burns with the sort of intensity that made Tresor such a famed destination in the '90s, while "Kombinerad Syra" recalls Jeff Mills at his bleepiest. Den Första Färden is a throwback, pure and simple, evoking the days when pings were sharpened into weapons by Neil Landstrumm, and Cristian Vogel still cared about making people dance. You've heard it all before, of course. But it's wonderfully brutal stuff anyway.
The revelation here is "Filterad Symfoni," which uncovers a tiny beating heart beneath a watery tomb of—what else?—filters. You have to dive into it to get to the techno, not the other way around. There's a certain fetish among producers for anything analogue at the moment. They all seem to ignore the fact, however, that the producers who made these machines famous used them because they sounded like nothing else. Maskin Ljud understands this; "Filterad Symfoni" proves it.
Buy Maskin Ljud - Den Första Färden at
Tracklist: Maskin Ljud - Den Första Färden
 A1 Metro X01
B1 Kombinerad Syra
B2 Filtrerad Symfoni
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