Album review: The Rogue Element - 'Lumina'

That noise? It’s the beasts stirring. After five years of minimal, moves are afoot to rehabilitate maximal techno. Ben ‘Rogue Element’ Medcalf may have remixed Franz but, apart from ‘Mistakes’ (the one vocal track, and a contrived stab at a Chems-style crossover anthem), there is little here for indie kids. Instead, like Nathan Fake’s ‘Hard Islands’, ‘Lumina’ is an attempt to fuse titanic mid-’90s, tops-off techno with quicksilver electronica and dark electro. Annie Mac is a fan, and it would go down a storm at Ghent’s well-hard 10 Days Off fest. But it’s the odder, subtler tracks – the atmospheric, dubstepped ‘Binary Suite’, or ‘Reality Is Overrated’ – essentially Metronomy trying to make a trance epic – that truly sparkle.

Tony Naylor

5 out of 10