January: 19 techno releases you need to hear this month

Romans 'Valere Aude' (The Bunker New York)

Romans is the name of the two-man project helmed by Tin Man and Gunnar Haslam. For the last few years, they’ve been crafting the kind of acid-tinged techno that fills your spine with tingles, and now ‘Valere Aude’ consolidates their respective backgrounds into one wonderful album. From the first tentative analogue chirps of opener ‘Cirta’ you get a strong feeling of the inspiration behind the LP, which Tin Man says is based on “a fantastic fictional history in which we are imagining attitudes lost to the waters of time”. Certainly, the notion of going on a journey is present throughout: there are moments of tension, travelling and sombre ambient interludes. ‘Via Agrippa’ is a great example of the beatless intermissions binding the record together, while experimental cuts such as ‘Cyrene’ stretch its core ideas out even further before ‘Markouna’ heads back to the dancefloor. It’s what one might call a ‘proper’ LP, with its theme providing the foundation for some fantastic techno.

9/10