A provocative techno album from one of the scene’s most consistently intriguing producers, Italian-in-Berlin producer Luca Mortellaro aka Lucy has just released his sophomore record via his own Stroboscopic Artefacts imprint titled ‘Churches Schools and Guns’. The follow-up to his well-received ‘Wordplay For Working Bees’ is an obliquely abstract yet emotive twelve song cycle exhibiting an ear for microscopic detail and an attuned feel for slinky, seductive rhythms. Boomkat’s review of this record was one of the best I’ve read in a long time, so instead of trying to beat it, I’ve chucked it in below because it sums it up absolutely perfectly and, realistically, can’t be topped:

It [‘Churches Schools and Guns’] is leagues ahead of his field of terms of sound design and atmosphere, drawing on and subtly incorporating a wider confluence of ideas than many of his contemporaries. The grey, gloomy spectre of machine driven post-punk experiments and early Italian industrial music haunt its darkest corners, from the slivers of coruscating, Pump-like shimmers perfusing ‘Laws And Habits’ or the dream-sequenced ‘Falling’ to the Lustmord-sounding incantations of ‘Follow The Leader’ and the atonal, MB-like grind of ‘All That Noise’. The space-shaping sound design owes more to classic, late ’90s/early ’00s Monolake or Raster Noton and the possibilities of new software, from the melting contours of ‘Leave Us Alone’ to the precise glitch pulses and sublime, arcing pads of ‘We Live As We Dream’.

‘Churches Schools and Guns’ is an LP full of tracks that sound – more than anything else – like the act of searching itself. It’s an absolutely brilliant album – listen to it below – highest recommendations for techno fans who want to explore the genre’s boundaries.