Vinyl and Digital reviews: Traversable Wormhole

Artist: Traversable Wormhole 

Title: ‘Traversable Wormhole Vol 01-05’ 

Label: CLR

This review isn’t here to lay any fresh critique – everything that can be said about the Traversable Wormhole series, first released in 2009 and re-released in 2010, has already been stated, and in positive volumes across the techno community. What it does review is the full-length digital album of Volumes 1-5, collected together with two remixes and two DJ mixes - just in case you were worried that it wouldn’t fill three hours.

First; the new material. ‘The Originals’ is a 68 minute mix by Adam X aka TW which, funnily enough, is a seamless mix of the original five releases – it just needs some serious mood lighting and steely-faced dancers and the scene will be completely set! An industrial, clanking and dark mix, yet it sounds quite low-key – the kick drum punches to the stomach are subtle and there’s a sense of poignancy hearing it as one winding journey.

There’s not much room to pause as another 71 mins of TW make their announcements courtesy of Chris Liebing, this time sewing together ‘The Remixes’. Featuring re-takes by the likes of Peter Van Hoesen, Function and Sleeparchive, it keeps a relatively similar flavour with a tweaked batch of material. Disappointingly, there isn’t a chance on this release to hear all the remixes as individual pieces and truly explore them, instead the mix acts as a tantalising teaser for the upcoming Remixes collection, also starring Monoloc, Tommy Four Seven, Brian Sanhaji, Surgeon, Marcel Dettman, Terence Fixmer, and James Ruskin.*

What you do get at the end of this LP is a toe dip, with two remixes from Chris Liebing and Kevin Gorman. Liebing takes ‘Where 2D Meets 3D’; the original track instantly transported me back to a powerful Adam X gig after the G8 marches – it encapsulates the sound of riled protest vibes with deep influences and the sounds of metal doors being kicked and slammed. Therapeutic bowel-shaking techno with slick production! The remix seems to dull down the ferocity but builds it back up in a minimal style with clean-sounding bass kicks for those who like their edges a little rounded. The original ‘Relativistic Time Dilation’ goes heavy on the reverb and decay, and is delightful for inspiring visions of uprising robots - you can taste the metal twang. Part of me gets the feeling that Adam X sought to align his sound with the Berlin dominance of techno, and as part of that shed some of the rougher elements of his style and sometimes ‘lairier’ feeling - perhaps reflecting a very real passage of time and growth for Adam. But enough wistful ponderings and on to Kevin Gorman’s remix; he goes deeper and lashes on a minimal restraint, inducing a shuffly texture to the beats, and what I like to call ‘velcro techno’ – the sound of fabric tears, or perhaps that is the sound of time splitting in a ‘Relatavistic’ manner.

This digital album version will be great for digital DJs, but vinyl enthusiasts will need to work that little bit harder for the full collection! Nevertheless, if you didn’t get your hands on the underground phenomenon of last year, this is an excellent catch-up and taste of what’s to come.


*Something to note however is that it’s not clear whether ‘The Remixes’ mix involves the aforementioned artists or remixes by Chris Liebing and Adam X.


Release Date: December 6th 2010

Feature: Statement from Chris Liebing on the tragic deaths at Love Parade

Just in from Chris Liebing - his statement on the tragic events at Germany's infamous Love Parade.

"5 days after the tragic events at the Love Parade in Duisburg / Germany, I would like to share my thoughts in a more detailed statement. First of all I want to again express my sincere compassion for all the relatives and friends of the victims, as well as for the injured and traumatized who will have hard times to recover from what they experienced. I am still shocked about what I have seen and heard so far.

"The Love Parade has been developing throughout the 90s, parallel to what I would call the “Techno Movement”. More precisely speaking, the Love Parade has been an expression of this movement. It has been a movement beyond any profit or image seeking ideas, which developed completely self-sufficient out of the underground. It was all about celebrating, dancing and having fun together.

"Over the years, the numbers of attendants have been rising, and so have the financial needs. The costs were rising (city cleaning, etc.) and so has the profit (for the community and the others involved), and suddenly there was a certain “image” attached, which brands could use to increase their value.

"Looking back, it is actually a logical consequence and maybe also easy to recognize, that an event like this would eventually fall into the hands of people who see “celebrating, dancing and having fun together”  not as the main reason to host a Love Parade. This would actually still be tolerable, as long as human life would not be endangered, but what happened here is beyond anything one would have ever imagined.

"It is absolutely appalling and shocking that the responsible organizers of the Love Parade and the city council in Duisburg have misused the “Techno Movement” with those fatal results. In their striving for image and profit, they have disregarded all measures of control and security and put people who really just wanted to celebrate, dance and have fun together in a situation in which 21 innocent persons had to die and countless have been injured and traumatized.

"I hope that it will be possible to entirely clear up what has happened and that the guilty persons will be held responsible and punished as soon as possible. But even this will not lessen the caused pain.

"The least we owe to those who have died and those who got injured, is that we make sure that something like this won´t happen again in the future. New laws and rules won´t really help. We have seen that we can´t even trust those who should make sure that those rules are getting observed. 

"To really change something, we have to start with ourselves. We as DJs, we have to be even more sure about the “Who” we are playing for and the “Where” we are playing at – only like this, the fans can get a better orientation of where it is worth going and where it is save to celebrate. Basically everybody can change a lot with his or her behaviour in this world. The more alert we go through life, the more conscious we can make choices between good and bad products, services, events or other things. Like this we minimize the scope of action for cold-blooded profiteers.

In memory of the victims of the Love Parade in Duisburg 2010."

Chris Liebing