Cristian Vogel

Just like Detroit and Berlin, UK techno has its own set of stereotypes: anti-melodic, jack-hammer house beats with a touch of white noise that's determined to alienate all non-believers. But where its sister scenes boast a wealth of innovators to suggest otherwise, the purists among UK techno's vanguard (Dave Clarke, Neil Landstrumm and others) have arguably done little to dispel this impression, until Rescate 137. The latest from Cristian Vogel doesn't just take a departure from the genre; he destroys it and then breathes life back into it. At times, like on "Esquina del Sol" and "La Isla Piscola," it sounds like he's taking those styles through the digestive system of his studio, upsetting its rhythms and throwing up its arrangements into difficult fragments. The unlistenability of his deconstructions is comparable to Stockhausen, or even Sun Ra, as it not only reveals some of his pre-DJ training in 20th century electronic music, but it's the very element that makes this disc one of the most fun and funky records to come out of this genre in a while. "Me and My Shadow" is one of the few moments where we get some semblance of a techno track, except that too is "ruined" with its random hits of various sounds running in reverse. An album like Rescate 137 might warrant a category like "avant-techno‚" but that would probably defeat Vogel's purpose: techno should always be reinventing itself like this.