K7 At Juno Download

Review: Taken from recent album Back To Life, this hook up with electro crooner and Environ mainstay Kelley Polar absolutely leaps out and takes control of your ears from the start. Perfectly balanced between bubbling acid-styled synths and Polar's laidback and strung out vocals, the original's epic enough but the Let's Do Science mix adds sweeping strings that fit the vocals like a glove. Pernau's mix gives it a deep house polish while the Jimi Python mix uses slowly-enveloping bass to give it some club-friendly dynamics while still keeping the melancholy tone of the original.

Review: Tim Simenon's Bomb The Bass returns with new album Back To Light very soon, but ahead of that comes this release with singer Paul Conboy in tow. Always working with the tide rather than against it, Simenon's sound and production has constantly changed to suit the times - as seen in landmark singles like 1988's "Beat Dis" or 1995's "Bug Powder Dust" - and it's great to have the master back sounding as fresh as a daisy in 2010.

Boy Girl is a great choice of single, with long-standing BTB collaborator Paul Conboy lending some nicely strung out vocals to the slowly rising bed of synths. It has enough club action and pop sheen to prove a hit, but the remixes put a little bit more fire into the song's belly. Canadian duo FM Radio Gods do a great job of cherry-picking the vocals and adding some seriously funky and deep grooves.

Brazilian DJ and producer Anderson Noise also keeps the vocal but adds some dynamics, doubling the length of the original to create a dark slice of Techno genius. Leo Zero goes even longer (which won't surprise anyone who's heard his edit of America's Horse With No Name) and takes 12 minutes to unfurl his beautiful Balearic-flavoured mix. Always able to confound expectations, it's great to hear Bomb The Bass still sounding so relevant. Roll on the album!

Review: Nothing really beats the first few seconds of this startlingly original debut from Germany's BBF. The rest of it is great too of course, but it's during those very first 30 seconds that you immediately get where this album is coming from. As opener "Corky Prelude" is slowly faded up, the rumbling percussion part and distant bass sounds (which could easily be just another ordinary techno tune) reveal themselves to be a piano and blocks being hit, both clearly being played live. BBF clearly approach techno (or indeed all dance music) with more than an awareness of jazz and classical modes. And so, over You Make Me Real, they set about making techno but with live drums, treated pianos, trombones, harp, marimba and a host of other treated live sounds. The results go beyond the obvious Steve Reich/'70s minimalist precedents and genuinely create a deeper, more nuanced and, ultimately, more fun sound. "Mi Corazon" for example is as playful as it is intense, while the slight Latin lilt to "Bop" makes sure this isn't just a po-faced, overly-earnest project - the songs here live and breathe. After the dominance of the drum machine and the 303, perhaps this kind of project will start making fellow producers explore live techno like never before.