The mnml explosion wasn’t particularly kind to hard techno. As the cleaner, reduced ethos of the music proved more popular the harder geared sound fell out of favor for a while, prompting certain labels to go into hibernation or dissolve completely. The pendulum has certainly swung back the other way of late and one of the stalwart labels of hard techno, James Ruskin’s Blueprint re-emerged this year after a good five years of dormancy. Paul Mac, a vanguard of techno for nearly fifteen years, didn’t suffer the same fate as some of the record labels, but for the past couple of years his releases have almost exclusively been limited to digital format. His latest excursion under the new moniker of Valmay on Blueprint strikes another win for the label this year and finds Paul Mac in top form.