Randomer’s Running Dry is a brand new EP from a label I’ve come to love over the past couple months, Dekmantel. Not only have they released a pair of the best progressive techno 12″s from Danish producer Central; they’re sending out some of the most innovative short-form music I’ve heard all year in the form of their new UFO series. This little release is the best so far.

Randomer is the stage name of Londoner Rohan Walder, who has been crafting uncompromising bass music for a while now. This set truly takes off with Afrobeat inspired playfulness and a single minded vision of dance bliss.

Thanks to a certain friend, I’m always on the front line of the best new techno releases around. I get a heads up on the latest albums and emerging artists and I run with it. There’s so much amazing new music out there, it’d be a shame to miss the stuff that really gets me going. It’d also be a shame to keep it to myself, so here we are.

As the second entry in Dekmantel’s UFO series, Running Dry is a concise explosion of rough edged but structurally complex techno. This is a set of gritty dance tunes evolved into intellectually exploratory headphone excursions. From the moment it begins to the end of its super short runtime, there’s no second wasted to drift, no stylistic stone uncovered. This is the kind of brief release meant for deep, repeated listens, just begging for the listener to savor every detail.

Instantly clicking beats snowball into carved distortion sculptures, picking up details and saturation along the way toward understated climaxes, unfolding into discrete elements that slip away into darkness one by one. Each of the four songs here paints its own journey, with each miniature arc adding onto the last. The result is highly cohesive, propulsive techno with an unmistakeable narrative heft.

I feel deep cyberpunk vibes and a sense of industrial gravity throughout the set, fed with tactile instrumentation and palpable percussion. Running Dry strikes an internal apex with the final track, Music for Two Kalimbas, a riot of tribal-esque percussion and thundering four on the floor bass, echoed into oblivion as the final seconds tick by.

The raw power and relentless momentum of this music reminds me of nothing less than Japanese krautrock gods Boredoms. As someone who considers their Vision Creation Newsun to be a top 20 album of all time, this is incredible praise.

Here’s the entire twenty minute release, starting off with the entrancing title song:

The album is streaming on Spotify and available to purchase on 12″ vinyl from Dekmantel.