Adam Beyer widens his sound on 'Explorer Vol. 1', out now on Drumcode

Breakbeats, Afro-tinged rhythms and touches of indie-electronica move in around the peak-time techno that’s built his reputation, widening the palette well beyond what listeners have come to expect from him.

The album’s title comes from a track that’s buried in its own sequence, not the one leading it off, and Adam Beyer put it out on Drumcode, the label he’s run since 1996, on 11 July.

It traces its lineage to a fuller record that Beyer shelved when pandemic lockdowns closed the rooms it was built for, years before he’d return to whatever he learned from it. He didn’t rush back to it: years of touring, label work and one-off EPs came first, giving him room to reconsider. ‘Explorer Vol. 1’ is what survived from that reconsidering: it’s cinematic in places, still built to move a room.

The featured cast reaches wider than usual too, with the likes of Coco Francavilla, Layton Giordani and Julian Jeweil across the tracklist. The pairing drawing the most attention puts him alongside Chris Avantgarde on ‘Desolate Lands,’ which splits the difference between the two producers’ signatures: a cerebral turn on an otherwise energetic record, and one that doesn’t sound like either artist working alone.

It follows Antistius / Higgs, his previous release. All sixteen tracks are streaming now, for anyone who’s ready to hear where that took him.