Pavel Milyakov, AKA Buttechno, coming through with the kind of impeccably-produced, trance-inducing deftness we've come to expect.

A kindred spirit of the Oyster Cult, this is a union long overdue. While he’s often found working in horizontal zones, inhabiting the intersection between ambient and downtempo, these are dancefloor dynamics for pure contemplation. Gone is the amorphous abstraction of releases like ‘PSY X’ and the kind output reserved for release under his birth name, instead opting for a lean, hypnotic kind of minimalism.

‘OYSTER57’ picks up where the ‘Inorganic Demons’ LP and aptly-titled ‘Minimal Cuts’ series left off. Saying that, the first three tracks navigate territory gloomier than the aforementioned; uneasy at times but deeply engrossing, smudged and frayed into heads-down interzones of tunnelling throb and icy melodic flourish. Girder-strength pressure primed for metaphysical experience.

Then, like a vestige of the finest turn-of-the-century progressive trance, ’bleeps’ ends proceedings on a slight departure. A showcase of restraint from the Berlin-based maestro and a fitting way to close. More

Repress!
Buttechno presents badtrip, a 2xEP double dropping 4 November on trip. Pavel Milyakov is an artist from Moscow whose sonic explorations have, alongside his peers, helped form a new frontier in the vast realm of Russian electronica. Under his most familiar alias of Buttechno, his eccentric productions form a continual study into the extremes of rhythm-based music and spatial manipulation. badtrip is a complex meeting of the comic and the deranged. Against a droll backdrop of desolate cities and imposing high rises, his productions sit (un)comfortably at the intersection of overarching paranoia and delirious joy. Moulding grotesque distortions into lively rhythmic frameworks, he invites us to a world that is often disturbed, always fun. Drawing heavily on improvisation, as well as his multimedia background, each track is an unpredictable spiral of altered senses. After a highly acclaimed appearance on the latest trip concept album, as well as an ever-growing catalogue of his own releases, badtrip is an essential package from one of the scene's most peculiar talents. More

Working with sonic archetypes rather than genres, in recent years Moscow's Pavel Milyakov has transcended the average practices of what one might call "the electronic music scene" and built his personal artistic universe where the visual and time-based arts are blended into one another. His new conceptual album PSY X, a collaboration between Gost Zvuk and Buttechno's own imprint Rassvet, can be understood as a collection of audio, video and graphic documents fused together in a homogeneous form. Profoundly rethinking the interactions between various media, Pavel utilizes a vast variety of creative tools and technologies - from generative music algorithms to laser equipment - to create (in)determinate "environments", rather than simply "tracks" or "pictures". The result is simply stunning: a meticulously crafted visual container that encases kinetic, alluring and deeply immersive music from one of Russian burgeoning scene's most vivid voices. More

Berlin-based artist Pavel Milyakov collaborates with Yana Pavlova, Martyna Basta, Richie Culver and Torus on Enthropic Vision, an album-length collection of tracks spanning diverse genres. The A-side starts with the melancholic ambience of 'Moon Chant', featuring the ethereal vocals of Krakow experimental music scene veteran Martyna Basta, before 'Tesco' brings bleak trancey loops blended with British contemporary artist Richie Culver's spoken word poetry. 'Eternal Break', with Netherlands-based artist Torus, is all low subs, ecstatic pads and abrasive breaks, then the B-side kicks in with a punchy 170bpm gabba anthem and continues with another tune featuring Richie Culver's spoken word fused with breaks. The album closes with the grim beauty of 'The Thrill', recorded in collaboration with Ukrainian singer Yana Pavlova and transports more wised up listeners back to the hypnagogic universe of the duo's 2021 Blue LP. More

For "Spectres", a 6-track split release, Buttechno teams up with DJ SPEEDSICK, a Chicago-based artist, famous for his raw and uncompromising approach to sound. Together they explore sonic and textural possibilities of the extreme forms of dancefloor music employing distinct ways of sound manipulation. Buttechno's side features highly saturated textures being torn out, dissected and sewed back together with a wicked use of spectral processing. On the other side, Dj Speedsick, known for reamping his material with guitar amplifiers and cabinets, puts out tracks that bear unique sonic qualities and transform the usual sense of space and distance. The underwordly sounds and high-speed beats presented on this split go beyond the common bounds of dancefloor music, exposing the spectres that dwell between the genres. More