Peace and welcome to the first instalment of The City of Bass Crates, a bi-weekly column drop exclusively for Darkfloor.

Shouts to DVNT for having me come aboard. The focus of this column? A round up of the best of the best of the last two weeks worth of City of Bass electro recommendations.

I’ve been promoting and pushing the sounds of electro music since 1999. I run the Vocode Project and Vocode Records, and write daily about electro music, producers, artists, labels and more; as well as music production techniques and occasional memories from my active DJ years at the City of Bass blog.

With formalities out of the way, here’s the hottest electro on the scene from the past two weeks of drops, in no particular order.

Pip Williams – Man vs Machine [Shameless Toady]
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The man behind Shameless Toady comes correct with this incredible burner of a record – truly, next level electro and a call to producers world-wide to up their game. Killer remix on the flip by The Hidden Persuader.

Marcus Intalex – Dusk [Soul:R]
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Another class producer from the drum n bass scene pops over to electro territory with a deep Detroit lush groover of a track. For the set openers and 6 AM take-them-home vibe.

Scape One – Altered Carbon [Napalm]
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Scape One’s been so busy putting his back catalogue up on bandcamp, I almost missed this brand new gem of a 4-tracker released recently on Napalm. A brilliant EP of Detroit grooves, this one’s definitely worth your while.

Datentraeger – Audiotechnik [Militant Science]
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Militant Science has been one of the most consistent electro labels, and the fact that they’re still doing it operating as a net label is nothing short of amazing. I dropped a sneak preview of this a little bit before it came out, straight up deep bass from outer space.

Alavux ‘Deep Down’ and Paul Blackford ‘Mercury Switches’ [Elektropunkz]
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For a long time there, it felt like electro was stuck in the same sort of bad funk that plagued drum n’ bass back in the late 90’s. Almost feels like we’re spoiled, with so many different styles and vibes coming out of these studios. This one’s a straight banger for DJs who aren’t afraid to slap their crowds around a bit, from two stellar producers, nameley Serbia’s Alavux and Militant Science head honcho Paul Blackford.

Hardfloor – ‘You Know The Score’ and ‘4th Dimension of the 4th Ward’ remixes
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Hardfloor’s most recent album was a killer journey, proving that the old silver box is still as enticing as it was way back when young chi-town producers starting cranking on those knobs back in the mid 80s. The E.R.P collaborations were an added bonus, and the duo from Dusseldorf sorted the electro heads out with two remix EPs featuring wicked interpretations from the likes of Dynamik Bass System, Boris Divider, Morphology and E.R.P re-works. First class electro from some of the top producers in the game.

Datawelt – Human Technology [Superdisko Recordings]
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Deep electro grooves from Vienna. Words don’t do it justice. It’s not going to change your life, but it will find a significant chunk of time in your crate if you love electro.

The Exaltics – 1000 Lights In The Sky [Bunker]
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The Exaltics have been making first-class electronic music for some time now. This release, which spans across three different releases as parts one through three rides the electro and acid techno waves with brief ambient respites, making for full-length listening pleasure. It’s hard to find complete albums that work as a whole these days, let alone three. If you play the online space video game ‘Eve’ this works as a suitable replacement for the in-game music, and I almost suspect they were writing with this in mind. Not that I would know anything about online video games ;)

Peers Volume # 1 – Shameless Toady Compilation [Shameless Today]
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A compilation release from Pip William’s excellent Shameless Toady label, this release features the cream of the crop of electronic recording artists in the electro genre – rather than bangers, though expect a pleasant head.phon experience. Think IDM, with an electro tinged flavor.

DJ Mad Wax writes about the electro scene daily at City of Bass. Follow him via Twitter.