What’s In Your Toolbox: Dense & Pika’s 6 House & Techno Gems

Dense & Pika
Author : Skylar Schossberger
April 18, 2022

What’s In Your Toolbox: Dense & Pika’s 6 House & Techno Gems

Artists will never come unprepared to a party. They always bring a toolbox packed with tracks that are truly dance floor destroyers. What’s in Your Toolbox features artists’ secret weapons, aka, the tracks they don’t leave out of their USB.

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Dense & Pika are a British electronic duo compromising Hypercolour label co-founder Alex Jones and Chris Spero, aka Glimpse. Heading up the Kneaded Pains imprint, which has played host to Eats EverythingJames Welsh, and Will Clarke alongside their own productions, the duo have been at the forefront of hard-hitting House and Techno since the project’s inception in 2011.

Arriving on Patrick Topping’s Trick for the first time, the pair bring their big, booming techno to the label with two chunky tracks. Title track “U, My” sees airy vocal chops floating over big kicks, knocking percussion and a hypnotic, looping low-end, combining to form a heavy club cut, while “Sun Sesh” sees the duo reach for a combination of shuffling drums, tweaked-out FX, and rolling chords for a dynamic, chugging track.

Dense & Pika U, My EP drops on 15th April via Trick

Dubfire “Sound Bath” (Luciid remix) – Kneaded Pains

What can we say about Luke, a staple of our Kneaded Pains label. Unbelievable producer, his productions have so much dark energy in them, level any dance floor. Always feature in every set of ours. This remixes an ABSOLUTE STONKER.

Tambien “Drogato” – ESP Institute

Incredible sludgy, slo-mo modular techno on ESP Institute from 2013. Amazing groove under shimmering modular textures. Almost no hats at all.  

Makaton “Rise and Kill” – Voitax

Have always been a huge fan of Makaton. Really like his vision of techno. From abstract polyrhythm to distorted crunchy grooves, this is one of his more playable offerings.

Casa “VHS” – Hayes

This guy’s incredible. Really pace-y deep techno. Perfect for breaking up a techno set.

Cari Lekebusch “Mad Poet” – H-Productions

Not many records have been in the ‘box’ longer than this. For some weird reason people still always ask what it is. Cari has been churning out incredible quality techno for nearly 30 years. This is our fave from his vast back catalogue, absolute wonkathon from 1997.

Dense & Pika “U, MY” – Trick

Would be daft not to put our new record on trick here, this genuinely flattens gaffs. Try it if you don’t believe us ;-)

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