100 YEARS is a new label and venue set up by esteemed Sheffield promoter, producer and studio engineer Liam O’Shea. The fist release features two tracks by him as LoShea and comes as a celebration of Sheffield’s enduring association with both techno and stainless steel. It was 100 years ago this year that stainless steel was invented by engineer Harry Brearley of the Brown-Firth research laboratory in Sheffield while seeking a corrosion-resistant alloy for gun barrels. As for the first release, it couldn’t be more Sheffield or more techno, frankly. Lo Shea took himself into the heart of Forgemasters Sheffield – a huge steelworks – and made field recordings that he then took away and turned into two powerful tracks that evoke the feeling of their environment - sweaty men in overalls lugging lumps of steel into blast furnaces, rumbling cranes, tumbling 100 tonne pipes and a generally oil stained air of coal fuelled industry. ‘Steel City’ starts of with the hum and throng of huge machines and blasts of hot air bursting through. Then come the pummelling, over sized kicks and ticking, jostling percussive sprinkles to form a wiggling but heavyweight groove straight from the heart of a smoggy factory. More