Before This

Ø [Phase] has spent more than two decades as one of British techno’s most dependable figures, a Token Records stalwart whose work has drawn remixes from Robert Hood, Scuba and Rødhåd since his 2000 Cosmic debut. With Before This, his third studio album, he goes fully independent: twelve tracks written, produced, mixed, mastered and art-directed entirely alone, launching his own Modwerks imprint as catalogue number MDWXLP001. It’s a statement of intent from a producer who has clearly decided the time is right to answer to nobody but himself.

The lineage is unmistakably British. In the stripped-back, warehouse-ready tradition of Surgeon and Luke Slater, this is minimal techno that trusts the drums to do the talking—no gratuitous melody, no studio trickery dressing up a hollow groove. Fugue State sets the tone, its tense, detuned pad hanging over a relentless four-to-the-floor and percussion that snaps and clatters like machinery in a dark room. Human Error is leaner still, all dry kicks and skeletal rhythm, its sparse arrangement gaining tension purely through what is withheld.

The record’s most compelling moments arrive when the textures get curious. Intensity Fluctuations layers shifting, metallic clangs over a driving bassline, whilst Planck Scale feels like the album’s centre of gravity—a patiently unfolding exercise in sub-bass pressure and delayed clicks that rewards volume and attention in equal measure. Title nods to film noir surface in FilmNoir and its bookend TechNoir, the latter closing the record on a suitably shadowy note of reverb-drenched drones and measured percussion.

At its centre sits Modwerka, a name that will surely become a Modwerks calling card. Eight minutes and change of rolling, hypnotic groove, it builds through subtle additions of percussion and filtered texture until the whole thing breathes with the confidence of a producer in complete control of his own room. Underwater Acoustics follows it into deeper, more submerged territory, whilst Zedd and Morphic-R keep the momentum alive without ever overstaying their welcome.

Before This won’t convert anyone who isn’t already sold on the functional end of techno, but that’s not its job. It’s a record of quiet mastery—twelve tracks of patient, physical dance music from a veteran finally free to release exactly what he wants, when he wants. For the first release on a new label, it’s a remarkably confident one.

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