Words by the ever erudite Adam Turner.

New York label, Throne Of Blood, are celebrating their 16th birthday with a run of anniversary E.P.s. The first two were uniformly excellent, containing standout tracks for the dance-floor from Hardway Bros, Justin Cudmore, Joakim and Max Pask and Curses, among quite a few others. There’s no messing around with these releases, the eight tracks released so far and the four new ones here, are all aimed at making bodies move under strobe lights and amid dry ice.

TOB Anniversary E.P.3 opens with Pleasure Planet, a trio from Brooklyn – a self-styled ‘extra-terrestrial doomsday cult’ – whose track, Sisters, bounds in with snare and kick drum, bouncy bass and space-age bleeps. The second half takes things down a notch, with atmospheric, gliding synth melodies floating around, manufacturing memories of `90s nights out.

Danse Alice (from Marseilles) slow things down further, cutting the tempo to a crawl – with a nagging, insistent wobbly synthline wriggling its way over the top for eleven minutes, as the bass-line bumps up and down. Shivers is a slow burning affair, a lovely grind, that stops at around five minutes and then picks up again, growing in intensity as the machines play on. The second breakdown and re- entry calms it slightly for a while before the serrated sounds – what could be a really distorted guitar – re- appear and take over again.

Newcastle’s Man Power offers We’re Not Computers, Sebastian*, a relatively brief five minutes of full-on, in-yer-face, acid techno, bass drum and bubbling bottom-end, rave-Hoover distortion, and then eventually massive breakbeat drums. The upper register top-line and cymbal crashes smashing their way in. Whooshes whoosh. Kick drums kick. Filters filter. Hugely effective and enormous amounts of fun.

Teleseen’s Sacambu finishes the E.P. with a gentler start – birdsong and chirruping – but only briefly. The reassuring thud of a 4 / 4, and a noisy loop soon join in, and we’re off on another trip to inner / outer space, with some repetitive and entrancing 21st century dance music. The rhythms morph into something more tropical, piano / synth stabs and percussion piling up, and there’s a hint of a voice, an echo of a person dropped in amongst the hardware.

There are no clips as yet, but you can stay posted, and preorder, over at Bandcamp. 

You can find more pukka prose from Adam Turner over at his own brilliant blog, The Bagging Area.

*Anyone spot the quote? Rob