Black Swan

Over 25 plus albums plus untold EPs and collaborations with everyone from Neil Landstrumm to Radiohead, Cristian Vogel has become known as a “producer’s producer” in techno, constantly pushing the form forward and using it as a vehicle for complex imaginative processes (as it was always meant to be done!). But he also has a huge body of work made and directed well away from club environs, including a series of ballet scores for the Swiss dancer-choreographer Gilles Jobin. Black Swan, made in 2009, is the only one of these to be released in album form to date, but it is a masterpiece of abstract sound. It hints at Karlheinz Stockhausen and David Tudor, but its precision of sound manipulation is entirely 21st century — perhaps only Autechre rival Vogel for high resolution abstraction, in fact — and the physicality and sublimated rhythm of these three long pieces are beautiful in their own right.