delta funktionen: traces

Niels Luinenburg aka Delta Funktionen presents his debut full-length, Traces. Though still very much couched in techno, the album sees Dutchman Delta explore plenty of new sonic territory, as he often does in his long-ranging DJ sets. It's adventurous, basically, and is an album that doesn't lose itself in intricate sound design, but instead pairs a raw, machine-made aesthetic with plenty of real human soul and palpable, earthly emotion. Says the man himself: "Traces is about my long-time research into electronic music. It covers tracks that make reference to my favorite subgenres within electronic music: techno, house, electro and (Italo)-disco. There was no specific idea behind it, because the album contains tracks made over a long time. Some are three years old, others were made this year, but in the end I think it sounds like a coherent piece of work." It certainly does that, but so, too, does the album cover lots of ground, with not all of it completely focused on the dancefloor. Made using a mixture of drum machines, FM and digital synthesizers, various bits of hardware and digital FX units, the whole thing was sequenced in Ableton with plenty of sample use to finish it off. From the atmospheric openings of blissful electro joint "Frozen Land" through the sultry and searching acid of "Enter" and on to more forceful cuts like "Redemption," this is an album for listening to as much as it is for dancing. Mood-driven landscapes like "Onkalo" prove that, but you'll have to check it out for yourself to get a real appreciation of the story Delta Funktionen is telling.