MAELSTROM – HEAT WAVE EP

Published on 2020-02-16 00:00:00 by Harry Wootten

There’s no two ways about it, the Mechatronica imprint has been steadily blowing up these last few years. Many electro fanatics religiously buy the Berlin labels’ records, and I would hazard a guess that around 99% of those who’ve got into electro recently will have been drunkenly or over-enthusiastically told about the wonders that await them in terms of Mechatronica’s machine-driven offerings. With a couple of sublabel offshoots and a roster boasting legendary names like Dez Williams, Zeta Reticula, Luke Eargoggle and Umwelt, it’s fair to say that they’ve already achieved a status that many label heads can only dream of. Consistency is fundamentally key in this game, and it’s plain to see that label boss Mejle has mastered the ever-important art. Unsurprisingly MTRON016 comes from an electro scene stalwart, and features collabs with an indomitable Irish powerhouse who is finally starting to get the reps he truly deserves.The ‘Heat Wave EP’ comes from Maelstrom, a French producer with a lucid history involving numerous aliases and forays constructed during his years intertwined with the categorically vast French free-party scene. There, the artist crafted his skills into a vortex of sonic power, but also gained the maturity and the ability to omit the chaos of his own Maelstrom. A string of excellent releases on labels like Zone, Bromance and Cititrax culminated in the founding of the RAAR imprint 2015, which he runs with his French electro pal Louisahhh!!! Since then he’s released a debut album entitled ‘Her Empty Eyes’ and featured on ever-growing electro labels like CPU, Private Persons and Cultivated Electronics.His latest contribution is clinically ruthless as ever and sits perfectly in reciprocity with Mechatronica’s fixation on the connection between man, machine and electronics. The title track is metallic and aggressive, feeding the bassline with an intensity that intrusively perforates the hypnotically celestial ambience. ‘Three Channels’ is a beast more typical of Maelstrom’s older French electro facets, categorised by a fidgety faux-trance synth and an untethered doom-tinged kick. ‘Naoned’ is the first of two collabs with DeFeKT, a typically brash and industrially textured piledriver designed for peak time displacement and unhinged reactions. Finally we have ‘Dublin’, this may be the slowest track by a considerable distance but it’s the pick of the litter for me. Evilly syncopated and erratic, its further proof that BPM isn’t the be all and end all of destruction on the dancefloor.Make sure you go see Maelstrom play live if he’s booked anywhere near you, same goes for DeFeKT for that matter…