Orlando Voorn - Moments In Magic (2020)

Orlando Voorn should need no introduction to anyone into techno, even to them who are new addicts to the genre. After all, he is still the man who's been making one of the tracks that has and will always have it's room in techno pantheon of all-time-greatest tracks. Game One is the track we're talking about; A brilliant collaboration with techno originator Juan Atkins where both Juan and Orlando united their very own iconoclastic and futuristic vision of electronic music. This track surely played a key role in electronic music history. It could be used (and it probably was) as a model by anyone starting music production. But it's not as if this track nor Orlando's 90's anthem Fix - Flash or Solid Session were an end in themselves. It's actually the opposite and more of a starting point or let's say a few starting points, a few avenues explored among many others he did as the man's discography that extends over more than three decades is one of the widest, most consistent and multi-faceted you can find. Nonetheless, it would be foolish to cut him down to his classics, Orlando is a techno jack-of-all-trades who has worked with all kinds of sounds, ideas and structures yet always signing with his own special touch discretely or not. Like a few other producers, who are not so plentiful, he seems to be even more active and frenetically creative these days than he was back in the 90's.
We've met Orlando back in 2016 and even at that time, we both knew a release had to happen sooner or later. However, there was no urgence to it and thinking of it now, we were probably both waiting on a project that could be the very special one for Goldmin and not just an « appearance » on the label. Hopefully, Orlando sent us few tracks sometimes and the idea of an album out of them came quickly.
Eponymous track « Moments In Magic » is a lesson in magic that clearly sets the tone: An 8 minutes musical odyssey starting clean, soft, with a basic kick & tom line holding back gently before they get swallowed and devoured by harassing and vibrant cohorts of sounds that sound just like they are hanging out of the speakers and invading your living room or wherever you listen. Try it on the highway at night you'll see! And be careful if you do so cause this track has something in itself, something hard to explain that brings a feeling of lightness! So does the whole album, each track having it's certain amount of magic and moments. There is typical OV stuff inside as well as visual, touchable, jazzy and acid things.
There are incredibly good things being released these days all over the world but there's also that second-hand disposable garbage starting to surround the so-called underground techno scene. In the end, Orlando has to keep on bringing electronic music to unmatched limits by working on the very essence and deepest part of his art. As a matter of fact, he has to keep on challenging, surprising himself so that's why and how he's still surprising you.