[Pareto Park]
George Lanham’s Barcelona-based Pareto Park imprint has gained a burgeoning reputation over two releases for jacking warehouse techno. Helped by early championing from Dave Clarke, the label has thus far focused on muscular peak-time fist-pumpers, imbued with a clattering industrial physicality. This five-tracker consolidates the label’s ethos of swaggering heavyweight techno with a varied and unashamedly brash selection. Dead Sound & Videohead lead the attack with “Pay Your Due,” a booming, disjointed old-school-flavored piece complete with disgruntled spoken-word vocal about the perils of domestic conformity. Booming, acidic, and dark, if close your eyes you can imagine this on a Grooverider tape circa 1992. Ryogo Yamamori offers “Hammer,” a workmanlike stomp centred on an incessant squelchy acid bass line alongside cranky metal-on-metal snares. This track could have come out any time in the past 15 years really, but Yamamori renders the well-trodden classical elements with both grace and thunder.
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George Lanham’s brutal “Rationale For Revenge,” meanwhile, is a compelling exercise in tension and release — indeed, Lanham has a real knack for capturing the adrenal rush of the club techno experience on record. Here his reverberating stabs join muted siren noises, and some tough breaks underpin the 4/4. Birmingham’s Jake Conlon offers the most fearsome track on the EP with “Pull Your Neck In,” an acidic squat-party vibe with lashings of oppressive sub, while Spanish duo Morfogen close proceedings with “Morfokone.” Offering a trippier feeling than the balls-out intensity of the rest of this set, the track has a mildly trancey vibe, rolling along with heavily compressed snares and rising arpeggios. If you enjoy Len Faki — or Joey Beltram at his rawest — then chances are you’ll find much traction in this EP. Pareto Park is gaining a real knack for signing and building tracks that give you the feeling of having just opened the doors to the main room — you know, that feeling — and they have assembled a highly satisfactory package here. Unpretentious and inventive techno for those precious hours when nothing else matters.
