A Mighty Force Indeed

I don't know how Mighty Force manage to keep the quality of their output as high as the quantity of their release schedule but it's good for all for all lovers of electronic music that they do. Mighty Force was originally a label and record shop, based in Exeter from 1990 to 1995, then moving to London until 1999. In 2019, after a twenty year gap, label boss Mark Darby started up again and since then has put out umpteen digital and physical releases including albums by Long Range Desert Group, KAMS, Boxheater Jackson, Golden Donna, Fluffy Inside, David Harrow, Yorkshire Machines, M- Paths, SubDan and Myoptik to name but a few as well as a series of outstanding samplers and compilations. The entire post- 2019 back catalogue is at Bandcamp. Dive in and pick one- you really can't go wrong. 

This year Mark has seen the release of several albums already. In January D3's Acid Love came out, a nine track tribute to the life affirming and regenerative powers of acid techno, an album with huge bass, thumping machine rhythms, acidic toplines, a love letter to 303 and 808 madness. Follow Me opens the album, a  statement of intent. Acid Love is here. 

In March Virgo's Starta Waves saw the light of day. Virgo is Yakasuta Sato- the album is twelve tracks of superb electronic music, a heady combination of acid, techno, ambient and IDM, music created for home listening/ driving/ headphones, a journey into lush synth sounds, drum pads, throbbing bass and dancing acid melodies. Fictional History cuts the tempo and sets the controls for the heart of the somewhere far from here. Track titles Rift In Time, Days Of Exploration and Zoetrope all perfectly match the sounds they were named for. Strata Waves is here. 

The most recent release is brand new this week, an EP of three new tracks and three remixes of Horizontal Rain from Reverb Delay's album from last year, The Storm Has Passed. The trio of remixes all take the original into new dimensions, launched from the same starting point- Reverb Delay's Detroit and Birmingham inspired dub techno- and firing off into other areas. Paddy Thorne's remix raises the bpms and the intensity while colouring everything with beautifully rich synth washes and chords, atmospherics and rhythms together. 

Reverb Delay's Marcus Farley brings a pair of his own remixes, the Parallel Mix and the Ar Right Angles Mix, rapid fire drums and psyched out synths, the latter a ten minute version. The three new tracks are: Sisters & Brothers, Martin Luther King being deployed in a 2025 techno protest against the forces of Trumpism; Escape Pod which sets out tense and dramatic, then finds itself becoming more light and airy, all the while the drums rattling away; and Shadow Dance, a frantic dance into the dark. The Horizontal Rain EP is here.