Having lulled us into a false sense of security with his dream house track ‘Voyager’, Milanese techno emissary MAIKE DEPAS (Michelangelo De Pasquale) is back with a vengeance on ‘State of Techno’, out 16 June via The Innovation Studio, hell-bent on moving and shaking the dance floors in 2023. Drawing on the hallucinatory Blue Room Released psytrance and the weapons-grade post-Wall techno of Tresor Club as much as an in-your-face attitude of Anthony Rother and Charlotte De Witte, Depas is effectively time travelling through the past 30 years of underground club sound. “I’m trying to propose something new but at the same time the audience is reminded of something that already happened in the past,” he explains.

 

“I’m trying to propose something new but at the same time the audience is reminded of something that already happened in the past.”

 

Basically, Depas’ vision of techno melds together the sounds from the 1980s and 1990s with more contemporary symphonic and cinematic elements to thicken the mix and heighten the atmosphere. “I would say this type of production with retro sounds and influences with the new techniques of synthesis are what is happening right now,” he states. The rumble bass opener ‘Culture’ comes down hard, giving a taste of what will follow; ‘Dark Room’, with its lacerating stab sequences and hypnotic commands delivered through an electro-style vocoder, and ‘Industrial’, a relentless percussive barrage of timpani and hand drums led by Depas’ very own guitar synth he has christened ‘the Edge’. And topping it all off, Mattia Trani peels the paint off the walls with his remix of ‘Industrial.’

 

A1 – Culture

A2 – Dark Room

B1 – Industrial 

B2 – Industrial (Mattia Trani Remix)

Ascension*

 

* Exclusive digital bonus track. QR code hidden in ‘Dark Room’ video.

The music video ‘Dark Room’ accompanying the release – another thrilling audiovisual journey into the metaverse following ‘Voyager’– sees Depas return to the apocalyptic world inspired by the godfather of cyberpunk William Gibson’s 1984 cult novel ‘Neuromancer’. Woken up by a mysterious voice and compelled to investigate its origin, the technologically enhanced protagonist makes a dramatic escape out of a clandestine laboratory that brings to mind Major Mira Killian’s iconic rooftop jump in the anime classic ‘Ghost in the Shell’. As the voice beckons him to approach the door at the end of a dodgy alleyway filled with sinister characters, upon entering the premises he is presented with an ultimate choice: to become liberated or remain a slave to the system.

 

“For me this is my first important step in the techno scene. 

I wanted to create a huge impact, really consolidate it.”

 

Working in tight collaboration with young Parisian CG artist Matthieu Martin also known as Impossible Realities ‘who loves to create dystopian and futuristic dark artworks from his dreams or perhaps from his nightmares’, it took Depas and Martin seven weeks of backbreaking work to bring the project to completion. “We worked strongly together every single moment of the day,” Depas describes. Creating an enormous environment and utilising the camera as the omniscient narrator in the Voyager video had already been ambitious enough. “It was really hard to create storytelling without someone who writes for you the choreography, the ambience and what happens in each section.”

The challenge faced by the protagonist in ‘Dark Room’, “a test to see if the character is ready to join a different society in which he can achieve something that was not reachable before,” has a familiar ring to it. “For me this is my first important step in the techno scene,” Depas says. “I wanted to create a huge impact, really consolidate it.”

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