Bleep

Quinze, the title of the new release from Lapsus Records, translates as ‘fifteen’. The name has been chosen because this compilation celebrates the fifteenth birthday of the acclaimed Barcelona-based imprint. The record also contains fifteen tracks - some from returning label favourites like Pye Corner Audio and Gacha Bakradze, others from Lapsus debutants.

The Lapsus net has always cast wide in terms of electronic music - take one of their releases off the shelf and you could be dealing with IDM, kosmische, concrete, industrial fare or something else entirely. Those styles are all touched upon here by some really rather beautiful productions. Entries from Steve Hauschildt, Johanna Knutsson, Ylia and more all spin out impressionistic pastures from their synths, with the dystopian wasteland of Hauschildt’s ‘Ecce Reverie’ particularly impressive. Pye Corner Audio revisits the slow-build techno style that he’s made his own down the years, and Telefon Tel Aviv’s trance-indebted industrial joint ‘The Means Whereby Lovers Are Waylaid’ has some Caterina Barbieri in its DNA.

Quinze also contains some of the most future-forward rhythm tracks Lapsus has ever released. Machine Woman’s ‘Technoo’, for instance, is a track that very much does what it says on the tin, its alien atmospherics orbiting booming kick drums. Karen Gwyer’s ‘Mahler’s Heartbeat’, a typically idiosyncratic breakbeat-techno journey from the artist, is not to be missed. Meanwhile RRUCCUULLA’s ‘Hielo Helio’ and Gabor Lazar’s ‘Wubs And Wahs’ channel Gabber Eleganza’s deconstructed hard dance style to create unusual and witty highlights towards the end of Quinze.

With a host of big hitters old and new, Lapsus Records’ fifteenth-anniversary compilation Quinze acts both as a summation of what the label has achieved to date and also points the way forward to an exciting future.