Stephen Brown At Juno Download

Review: Enjoying something of a renaissance recently, Stephen Brown steps up to Theory to deliver two tracks and surrender them to Ben Sims for surgery. In their original forms, "Fuego" and "Polar" are stunning slices of stripped-back techno. The first pumps on a prominent shuffle carved out of tough, funky drums, but keeps the synths subtle and spacious, while "Polar" gets dubbier and freakier with a soft beat and an ace hiccupping vocal slice. Sims' remixes unsurprisingly jack things up noticeably, retaining both tracks' inherent qualities but giving them a good old UK techno injection to cut it in rougher situations.

Review: The first of Skudge's expertly handpicked series of artist releases comes from veteran Scottish techno producer Stephen Brown, a man with releases on Transmat and Subject Detroit to his name. This two-tracker displays much the same classic melodicism as those early releases, with "Mini Mood" filtering its chords to perfection, floating above a solid backbone of angular 909 kicks and "Horizontal" smoothing things out with its cloud of warm analogue pads propelled along by scratchy percussion.

Review: As anyone with even a casual interest in techno will know, Scottish producer Stephen Brown has been pushing the boundaries of electronic music for nearly two decades. On this release on fledgling Dutch label Indigo Area, Brown shows flashes of his old magic: "Like That" and "Spaces" are wonderfully melodic and mournful jerky groove-led Detroit tracks, while "Nedds Fixed" sounds like a more considered version of his output for Djax Up Beats and even features a soulful vocal sample. Indeed, it sounds like Brown has progressed and matured, and ample evidence of this can be found on "Bodywork", where a dubby groove is fused with a catchy 'work your body to the beat' vocal sample.

Review: The second installment of the Universal Consciousness series on These Days sees Stephen Brown and Club Lonely go back to back for a double techno treat. Brown's Speak features some heavy kicks and delicate hollow keyboard stabs that pepper the track wonderfully and keep things nicely buzzy in a Detroit style. Club Lonely (a name given to the collaborative efforts of These Days' in-house production family) offer up Shelter on the flipside, which is a warm old-school slice of funky techno complete with a bassy organ sound that carries the whole beat along perfectly. Check out the dub version too for an ideal extended DJ tool.