Making your debut on Axis (Misson 6277), and effectively being given the Jeff Mills seal of approval, is no mean feat. Keeping up the Detroit connection, with a remix of ‘Analog Dreams’ for Patrice Scott on Sistrum added another feather to Johannes Volk’s cap.
It’s with his own Exploration that he’s made the greatest impact though, the label’s colourful artwork resembling the dust jackets of many a classic science-fiction novel, while the music looks forward just as hypothetically.
‘The Awakened Guardians’ is, like much of Volk’s output, designed to keep the feet happy while putting the head in a spin. There’s a simplicity to the groove on this release however, which could undercut the notion that this is anything but primal dance floor fodder.
Both ‘The Awakened Guardians’ and ‘Arcane’ are linear, Basic Channel style workouts, the central kick being draped in synth swathes, the depths to which each descends being similar, the electronic washes rising and falling to accompany according to their respective needs which, in the case of ‘Arcane’, are slightly more urgent about a third of the way in.
‘Indestructible', meanwhile, is an analogue tribal bubbler which gains in power the moment some gruff murmuring is introduced shortly after a breakdown, which should feel out of place, but doesn’t.
It’s a relatively no-frills release, although full of body and suppressed hypnotic menace, which healthily nods to techno’s founding fathers while resisiting the temptation to sound too derivative.
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