- John Heckle's side project delivers some of the best raw techno around.
- Liverpool's John Heckle had already established a career making ramshackle, live-jam techno by the time he launched the Head Front Panel project in 2014. His music under his own name could vary from rough to gorgeous, but Head Front Panel allowed him to let his hair down and get straight to business: Millsian techno made with the roughest, most curdled textures he could manage. The series is remarkably consistent, and you could pick any one of them at random and find something worthwhile. The same goes for number fourteen, which features four tracks (and two interludes) that showcase the best side of Heckle's rough-and-tumble techno.
This EP has crunchy tracks that could have come from the early '90s—like the alarm-system blare of "Siren" or the galloping, steam-powered techno of "Six"—but there are also more idiosyncratic sounds. "Filter," the EP's highlight, is squashed and strangled as if every sound was being squeezed through a sieve. "Mod-SC6" offers some welcome syncopation and playful hat-snare work, the opposite of the rigid "Siren." Since the first 12-inch landed in 2014, Head Front Panel has become one of the most reliable sources for no-holds-barred techno. It's old-school, yet too fierce to be old-fashioned.
TracklistA1 C03
A2 Siren
A3 Filter
A4 C10
B1 Six
B2 Mod-SC6
B3 C08