The Third Adam

For most of the 21st century Marc Mac has been known for very purist hip hop beats under his own name, and hip hop inspired deep soul funk with his Visioneers project. But he has never left more obviously electronic music behind, as he showed dazzlingly in 2013 when he resurrected the Nu Era guise from almost 20 years earlier — formerly a joint project with his 4Hero partner Dego, with which they’d explored the possibilites of Detroit techno. The techno fundamentals are still at the heart of these more recent Nu Era releases, using retro technology to try and create new imaginative futures. But this time, decades more experience of joining the dots between genres has come into play. So while the feel and sonic signatures are 100% techno, with Kraftwerk, Eddie Fowlkes and Juan Atkins running through them, new rhythmic complexities have come into play. Electro merges into broken beat, soul-boogie into abstract patterns, but always the sense of these tracks being futurist vehicles is vivid.