Ulli Hammann cut his teeth as a young raver at Hanover’s legendary Weltspiele club in the early 1990s, but it took two decades until he debuted as a techno producer. Having first dedicated himself to hip-hop, he started releasing his first records under the moniker Vril (since then slightly altered to .Vril, granting him pole position on every alphabetical festival line-up) in 2010 and has since put out a number of EPs and six solo LPs as well as two albums with Rødhåd. He has been consistent in regard to both quality and sound: His deep and dubbed-out techno sound has won him many fans. With KRUX, he might challenge a few of them.
Five of these 13 tracks do not sound like classic .Vril material simply because they were written in collaboration with other artists: Rene Wise, Ateq, Azari, Aurora Halal, and Verraco all left their mark on these tunes. But even in his solo pieces, Hammann eschews his usual introspective approach and emphasis on textures for a more melodic and, well, catchy sound. Instead of working primarily at the intersection of the rich traditions of ambient and dub techno, he mainly draws on 1990s euphoria, house and electro grooves, 2000s minimal tropes, and even a wee bit of trance energy.
While KRUX still pays occasional homage to the Basic Channel blueprint, most of the tracks look towards the »Zukunft von Gestern« (»Yesterday’s Future«), to quote the title of the brilliant Aurora Halal collaboration: That exciting early-1990s feeling of stumbling through the dry ice fog while being bombarded with a previously unknown variety of sounds. This makes KRUX a sort of homecoming.
Krux
