Donnacha Costello - Colorseries

With a predilection for vintage analogue machinery and an ear for ingratiating melodies, Johnny Marr's favourite DJ finally delivers some of his finest tunes on CD. The ten Colorseries records were originally released in quick succession on vinyl back in 2004, with each coloured disc suggesting a different mood, emotional timbre and sphere of influences. Despite the nods to everything from Plastikman to The Orb, from Basic Channel to Tangerine Dream, Colorseries never sounds disjointed, and manages to unite compelling beats and grinding bass with splashes of colour and swathes of ambience. This ten track CD collects the finest cuts from eight of the series, doubling up on Grape and offering an unreleased cut from the Cocoa sessions. Sadly there's nothing from Green and no chance to hear Olive's wonky pitch-bend reverberations, but Pistachio's churning bass and Blue's off-kilter take on euphoric balearic sounds are heady trips into minimalism that any techno fan should hear. Deceptively simple in their construction, the likes of Cocoa and Orange borrow their structures from Kompakt and subtly fuck with sounds to create dense, dreamlike textures guaranteed to send shivers down the spine. From the tectonic density of Rubine Red to the sun-kissed psychadelica of Pistachio A, Colorseries pushes the boundaries of minimalism and proves that there's still far more to be done with analogue. Despite being a three-year-old collection of tracks, Colorseries sounds fresh and vital; the kind of emotive and intoxicating techno that Supermayer should have been. [Liam Arnold]