Making a welcome return nine years on from his last outing on Dekmantel, Makam offers up a generous helping of wayward grooves that take his curious spirit even further into unmarked territory. With a strong dub sensibility grounding his rich tapestry of percussion and instrumentation, Guy Blanken follows his own path to arrive at an album that embodies house music as a launchpad for experimentation. Blanken says himself he was determined to approach his first Makam productions in years from a place of total freedom Its not a single direction, but rather a landscape of sounds, moments, and textures. TARP feels like a new beginning, a free project that just had to happen naturally. The steady pulse of the club remains a guiding principle boldly manifested on heads down roller Static Shade, but even in the lilting organic loops and tumbling percussion of Forgive there is a funkiness thats beholden to continuous movement. At times the direct thump of 4/4 disco juts out as a call to dance, not least on Flying Birds and La Tuna, but elsewhere the rhythms are more slippery. Dub In Loen plots a delicate path through dub techno and Lummel Spirit casts off into pattering Balearic bliss. The pervasive dub mood of the record comes to the fore on expertly crafted stepper Diagonal Rain and crooked album opener Clear Skies. Jackie B lands as a love letter to quintessential deep house, and yet still theres a left-of-centre charm that gives the track a personality that is pure Makam. Exuding warmth and imagination at every turn, TARP is the perfect example of how to make a groove-oriented album a rich home listening experience. There are ample moments primed for the spectacle of the dancefloor, but the mellow hue and broad sweep of approaches make Makams welcome return utterly compelling from end to end.

Tapping into the otherworldly frequencies of the UFO series, UK-born, Lisbon-based prodigy Rene Wise arrives on Dekmantel with an assured demonstration of his position at the cutting edge of real techno. Andrew Shobeiri appeared in the cut and thrust of the scene fully-formed around 2017, instantly bringing his Rene Wise alias to top-tier labels with a razor-sharp combination of functional minimalism and mind-warping flair. There's no grey area fluctuation in his hypnotic, intentional sound this is deep, captivating techno for the long haul, music to submit yourself to. True to his sound, Rene Wise makes his presence felt on Dekmantel UFO with a varied spread of sounds, leading with the melancholic charm of the melodic sequences weaving through 'Johnson's Theme' before sinking into the engrossing folds and low-end rumble of 'Granite Skin'. There's a lighter atmosphere at play in the vaporous impulses that mark out 'Flow' before rolling into the rhythmic urgency and strafing bleeps of 'Kanga'. This is the Dekmantel UFO experience as expressed by one of the leading lights in modern techno an artist who understands the psychoactive power contained within the subtleties of production and pursuit of the ultimate loop.