Freaks R Us

It’s easy to forget that long before the current minimal explosion, Germany was a hotbed for techno innovation and that producers like Richard Bart and Johannes Heil mapped out new possibilities in the mid ’90s.
On Freaks, Heil’s comeback album, he uses the jacking Chicago sound as an influence, but focuses on its rough, visceral underbelly. ‘Warrior Of Light’ starts off with tight claps and sparse beats before imploding in a cacophony of squelches and ‘The Magician’ features bleak acid and reconstituted house beats. Meanwhile, ‘Artology’ and ’Tree Of Life’ make Vitalic sound like a wussy, sheer walls of electronic noise that signal the return of one of techno’s real freaks.