Sixteen of the twenty-five cuts on 'Nothing But... Supreme Techno, Vol. 07' sit in a major key. For a series filed under peak time / driving — territory that usually lives in minor-key shadow — that ratio is striking: read through its tonalities, this is a far brighter landscape than the genre tag suggests. The backbone is a triangle of G, F and C major holding ten tracks, from the G major of the Double Agents remix of 'Digital Is Not Forever' to the C major of Emanuil Hristov's 'Open Up', which closes the journey at 128 BPM on a full resolution.
Within that map, I AM RAW — the only name with three credits — keeps a colour of his own: 'OLD DIMENSION' with Desiray Saija and 'COUTURE NOIRE' both share Gb major, a tonal signature that works like a watermark. There are fine ironies too: the two longest cuts, 'Subterrane' (7:14) and 'Dark Confession' (7:07), unfold in E major and B major; the darkest title on the tracklist turns out to be, harmonically, one of the brightest.
The shadow lives at the high tempos
Minor keys do appear, but they cluster where the tempo bites: Chané's 'My Mind' in C minor at 142 chains into the Ab minor pair of 'Satisfaction' and 'Reborn', and Tales Of Ares' 'Cocco Deo' caps it in G minor at 146, the fastest point on the record. The higher the needle climbs, the darker the palette gets. At the other extreme, two valleys break the map: the 78 BPM of 'Uranium Base' in Eb major and the 91 of 'Cows Can Fly', the only moments where the record breathes off the floor.
That a panorama this size holds such internal logic says something about its curator: Nothing But is Label Worx's own imprint, founded in 2014 in Kingston upon Hull, and new names share space with seasoned hands here. Chief among the latter is Stanny Abram, who signs 'Tribal Force' at 124 in B major: with over 1,100 released tracks across a hundred-plus labels and plays from Carl Cox and Marco Carola, he can afford the calmest tempo of the club stretch.
Sources: Labelsbase · RA
