Transport is the second studio album by Borderland, a duo consisting of Juan Atkins and Moritz von Oswald – the ambassadors of Detroit and Berlin techno respectively. It was released via Tresor as part of Tresor’s 25th anniversary celebrations and a follow-up to the duo’s 2013 debut studio album, Borderland. Transportdoes not represent a paradigm shift nor an experimental frenzy, but what it does offer is a studied and disarmingly beautiful crystallisation of more than two decades of techno, produced by two people who have been at its cutting edge since the very beginning.

Withits more pervasive cosmic imagery, spreads the net even wider, creating a thoroughly modern prototype for the music of the spheres. An impeccable sense of proportion dominates throughout, and this is where Atkins and von Oswalds years of experience in some of the worlds best clubs pays off. They are fully aware of the fact that time moves in a particular, omnidirectional way on the dance floor, and they give every element the time and space it needs to register on the listeners pre-consciousness. The drum patterning is equally flawless, and adds to the albums curious type of chemically-induced clarity, which is thrown into sharper relief by the disorienting but unmistakably benign synth smears which appear in all seven tracks. Transportfollows a quasi-narrative structure, with the somewhat foreboding title track serving as a kind of launch pad for the albums subsequent travels. The prognosis becomes sunnier from the second track onwards, culminating in Riod an exquisite piece of music, fully deserving of itsseparate release as an EP, whose melodic riff sounds so organic, so right, that it seems as though it has always been there, reverberating in a quiet harmony with our entire being.

Dance music yields many blissful moments, yet few are as powerful as the realisation that a soundtrack totally independent from the music you have been listening to in the club is being performed in your head concurrently. This “other”, unwritten music, is whatTransportseems to have finally given form to, and this feat alone should qualify its status as a great album. (via The Quietus)

Label: Tresor
Format: 2 x Vinyl, LP, Album, 180g
Country: Germany
Released: 2016
Genre: Electronic
Style: Dub Techno, Experimental, Techno

File under: House / Electro / Techno