After a few months of releasing collaborative EPs alongside Sascha Rydell and Roman Lindau, Mike Dehnert marks a quarter century of releases on his own label with Fachwerk 25, a full-length album comprised of 13 tracks. This new album sees Mike experimenting somewhat. Away from the dubbed out, functional and raw techno funk of his usual output, Fachwerk 25 shows some concession to the album format, with more mysterious tracks of ambient buried amongst bits of acid, rave and plenty of unhinged sound design. After the dystopian and scene-setting intro, there’s the chugging house and nagging synths of ‘Fraction’ that are both dark and beautiful at the same time. From there, there’s slowed, melancholic dub in the form of ‘Modulat” and the beat-less, underwater sounding ‘Courant’ with its icy pads and wide lateral spread. The title track is more what you’d expect of Dehnert, with well-swung kicks and grainy synt h chords rolling along like basement techno should, before the squelchy industrial madness of ‘Grundform’ breaks the stride of the album once again, taking you off to a different place entirely. The second half is just as varied and unpredictable, ranging from raucous peak time stuff to more nuanced and cerebral fair that always manages to bares the hallmarks of Fachwerk: quality, invention and unpredictability. Having established his Berlin label as a go-to and no nonsense outlet for fans of a certain type of stripped down but inviting techno, Fachwerk 25 will likely bring a whole new sort of attention on Dehnert and his ever on-point imprint.

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So after the “Elusive Triumph” of our first release finally came firmly into our grasp, we at Sequencias here in New York thought it was time to take things in a parallel direction without retracing our steps. Drafting three top names in underground deep house for a label debut is no mean feat, but how do you follow up on a surprise coup like that? We thought it was time to go even deeper, and we couldn’t think of a better way of doing that than getting an experienced player to unveil a new alias for our second offering. Things being as they are, we’re trying to keep it a bit low here, but what we can let you know is that his discography stretches back to 2005 and that he’s appeared on the illustrious Bunker Records. This should give you a good idea of what to expect: deeper-than-deep, dirty, and gritty house that jacks with the best the movement has to offer. We have to say that Orpheus firmly delivers here, and we hope you&rsquo ;ll be as pleased as we are with the three dark and introspective offerings he unveils for his new project here at Sequencias.

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