Low-pressure discharge EP

Spanish duo Exium—Eduardo de la Iglesia and Nuno dos Santos—have been forging dark, rhythmic techno together since the ’90s, outlasting most of their contemporaries by refusing to chase a trend they couldn’t bend to their own ends. Low-pressure discharge EP, their latest four-tracker, is exactly the record their reputation is built on: unyielding, industrial-tinged and assembled almost entirely from the sound of machines doing precisely what they’re told.

The EP lands on PoleGroup, the imprint the pair run themselves, as its 61st release. Over the years the label has grown into a dependable outpost for techno with a harder edge—a home for the Spanish scene’s darker impulses—and Low-pressure discharge sits squarely in that tradition, offering no apologies and making no concessions to polite listening.

Opening track Ascendo sets the tone at once, its distorted kick thudding beneath layers of metallic percussion and a stabbing, almost acidic synth line that never quite resolves. Atheris is the EP’s most cavernous moment, all clanging reverb and sub-bass pressure as the machinery rattles away in a vast, dark space. Cyclotron tightens the grip, hats snapping harder and the rhythm growing more insistent, its rolling energy recalling the industrial techno of the early noughties. Closer Low-pressure discharge—the title a nod to the cold hum of gas-discharge tubes—is the most restrained of the four, stripping the formula back to a bare pulse and letting the tension accumulate across five and a half minutes of patient, machine-like repetition.

Nothing here reinvents techno, and the record doesn’t need to. It’s the work of two producers who have spent decades learning what makes a dancefloor move, and the confidence shows in every stripped-back arrangement and precisely placed drum hit. For anyone who likes their techno hard, rhythmic and devoid of filler, Low-pressure discharge EP is a release to file alongside the best of PoleGroup’s catalogue.