Fragile Time

More music from Mighty Force, a label reborn in 2019 after a period of inaction and whose current mission statement reads 'We just release music we think is good'.

The latest album in the roll call of music which is good comes from Paddy Thorne, a twelve track opus called Fragile World. The techno of the first and second wave of Detroit artists rings down the line in Paddy's work, the futuristic and science fiction sound of drum machines, synths and keys, that emotive machine music. Back in 1988 Derrick May described techno as 'George Clinton and Kraftwerk stuck in an elevator' and that collision of Black American dance music crossed with European synthpop going upwards is very much at the heart of Fragile World. 

Highlights? They're all highlights... the fourth track Space Between Breathing is gorgeous, breakbeat techno with synth chords that pull at the heartstrings. Nine tracks in First Signals sounds like a series of communications from outer space, digital transmissions underpinned by dancing melody lines. The final track is Fragile, Still, a synthesized meditation on existence with a chuggy rhythm that suggests perpetual motion, departure and (I think) the possibility of escape. It's optimistic music, despite the times. 

Fragile World is at Mighty Force's Bandcamp. 

While you're there you could do worse than check in on fellow act D3 who released an album in late July called Time. D3's music is also techno. On the opening three tracks, there are thundering breakbeats and big synth chords. Trust takes a breather rhythmically, with bleeps and long chords and a whispered voice, before the breakbeat kicks in at one minute forty. Chill! slows things down, some sinister distorted chords and more veiled voices. Electro influences sit alongside the techno ones and again, as with Paddy Thorne (and other Mighty Force artists) there's a sense of futurism. Final track Time is an epic piece of breakbeat acid techno.

Techno has been around for four decades now but the sounds and possibilities of it are endless and Mighty Force don't appear to be merely retreading old ground or reviving old sounds. The possibility of the new is written all the way through both Time and Fragile World. 

Time is also at Bandcamp.