When you want some of techno’s rawest forms mixed with the genre’s fun illegitimate third cousins, look no further than Germany’s Toktok. Tweng was an impossible-to-categorize Weird Dance Music gem from earlier this year, and now its remixed companion is out, with some contributions of a few of us fortunate to get to bend it into still new territories.
I’ve long been a fan and a friend of Toktok and their sometimes-collaborator Soffy O (seen below in a spy picture from, like, 12 years ago but everyone looks the same now). It’s music that’s as hard and stripped down as it is hard to pin down. But Tweng was special. It hits the reset button on techno to get back to “let’s do odd space alien s*** with our machines,” but without any nostalgia or, uh, rules. It’s back to that UFO sighting newness that these machines used to have. It’s irreverent and has a sense of humor and discovery again.
Did they inspire the name of TikTok? They were definitely first. You be the jud–okay, definitely not, but we can pretend.a
As the creators put it:
Toktok are back with their first album since “Yes No Yes” with Soffy O: Raw, dusty, stripped-down techno, slamjack with a pinch of acid and polyrhythms, all that is Tweng. After last years “Slope EP”, Toktok start the year with an album half of which was released in a two-tracker series to experiment with new formats. Tweng is about the spur of the moment, taking simple monotonous structures to great lengths and spreading them out to create deep techno tracks.
Now, we get some equally irreverent remixes. I think there are more inbound – you know producers and deadlines and the wooshing sound they make as they go by. But we right away get this ultra-groovy, leftfield first package, which I was glad to join. I’m in love from the opening bars of that hyper-wonky ass wiggler from Spangleman.
“Tweng Remixes 1” incorporates a diverse selection of reworks that cover the range from classic House (Spangleman), Dub Techno (Marc Schneider & Aaron Hedges, Beware of Phumans), abstract minimalism (Berk Offset), Electro (DJ Glow), intricate polyrhythmic breakbeats (Peter Kirn), bass music (Syntax Error) and ambient (Goner).
My instant favorite on the March release was “Detem,” and I wondered what would happen with that gritty polyrhythmic bit if it were put in a broken context. So we wound up with this cut:
Recipe: a bunch of Thump One, the free synth from Toybox, and a bunch of AAS Chromaphone, the physical modeling synth and I still think one of the great plug-ins ever, plus D16 Drumazon 2 and Phosycon (909 and 303).
I remixed Toktok and Soffy O once before, in a track that is just a completely different direction, though I just love Soffy’s hook. That little acid thing is actually Alchemy in Apple Logic; I can’t remember the rest.
I need to actually DJ at a BPM where I can drop this in.
But yeah, stay glued to Toktok (and Soffy O). Sounds like they have a nice year ahead in Germany, and there’s no end to surprises from the studio and their friends.
https://linktr.ee/toktokofficial