CD: Lory D - Strange Days

Imagine that The Ramones were not only still playing into the mid 2000s, but were still writing new songs as good as “Sheena Is a Punk Rocker” and still sending young audiences completely delirious to boot. That might seem fanciful, but it's a pretty accurate analogy for where Lorenzo D’Angelo – Lory D – is now.

From 1991, Rome-born and bred Lory D has been making techno that boils all of the European and black American history of the genre down to its most perfectly minimalist but completely wild core elements, and delivering it to crowds who want nothing more than that. 

One of the most passionate techno crowds on the planet is that in Glasgow, where the man is met with chants of “Lory! Lory! Lory fuckin' D!” – so it's fitting that the city's Numbers label has helped keep his career going into its second quarter-century. This album brings together 19 tracks put out by Numbers on limited vinyl 12” singles over the past six years – and all of them pulse with exactly the same excitement that has been there since the Nineties.

The repeated synth patterns almost never have more than three notes – and very frequently one or two is enough – while the thumping four-to-the-floor kickdrum is of course paramount. But as in the greatest punk rock, each track is far more than the sum of its parts. Whether it's because of the simple elements creating interference patterns between themselves, or the rich timbre and tonality – sounds frequently evoke huge animals panting and roaring, or elemental violence, or sex – or just basic funk, it always becomes far more than just drum and synthesizer. OK, it helps to have had the experience of a few hundred raging Scots surging around a room to understand the fecund vivacity of this music, but even if you haven't, the skill in the tesselations of electric sound shines out second-by-second.

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