The opening track of Gaia sets you up for what is to follow; six tracks of blistering dancefloor bound techno.

Darkfloor: Laica, Future Music’s Numbers Broadcast host and producer gets to grips with Spanish techno netlabel Cicuta’s eighth offering.

The Gaia EP comes with three original tracks from Spain’s techno collective Drugstore, each track accompanied by a remix from a different producer; Oliver Kucera, David Meiser and CBTO respectively.

Opener, Gaia is full of funk and pace, and a bass heavy riff that soon gets under your skin. Remix duties on Gaia come from Oliver Kucera, who really puts the pressure on with some heavy drum work, nice/nasty bass edits and the return of the originals echo chamber-like screams. This mix was very well received this week when I played it on my show Numbers Broadcast, and I can see it getting an airing at Darkfloor live on 1st June.

Kundalini (the original mix) is a bass heavy straight up 4/4 with a pulsing synth line and is a solid peak time track, the words “You think that was cool” echoing throughout to great effect; this track builds and builds layering on the synth lines in its second half. The accompanying remix by David Meiser strips things back a little, again with some nice edits to the voice, chopping and stretching it, adding some great sounding bells to the mix.

Both the pressure and the tempo are eased for Circon, sounding not unlike an early track by Orbital it shows signs of Drugstore being in possession of a wider pallet of sounds. It’s not so much a change of style, but just a way of coming at things from a different angle.

Rounding off the EP is the CBTO remix, which picks up the tempo and has some great filtered bass lines and hats to give you a simple yet effective track that would work really well as a DJ tool, not taking anything away from the track at all. For a deeper section to your mix this track gives you plenty; nice echoing bleeps and filtering on the drums all working to keep things moving.

All of the people involved in this EP are new to me, but they are also names I will be coming back to, in answer to your question, yes, I do think that was cool. All in all this is a great EP; three great original tracks and a great set of remixes, which move in all directions. Get on board now.

GRAB

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Drugstore – Gaia
Drugstore – Gaia (Oliver Kucera remix)
Drugstore – Kundalini
Drugstore – Kundalini (David Meiser remix)
Drugstore – Circon
Drugstore – Circon (CBTØ remix)
CICUTA008