Sixteen of the twenty-five cuts on this volume live in a minor key, and that majority sketches the record's climate before a single kick lands: sustained tension, very little light. DS3's 'Magical Bike Ride' opens in G minor at 150 BPM and the map darkens fast: KILD's 'Muralla' in G-flat minor, Lord XVI's 'Mugetsu' in C minor at 162, Optimuss and Bandee's 'TOCHKA NEVOZVRATA' in D-flat minor at the same tempo. That is the high ground of the terrain: 155-162 BPM, closed minor keys, four-to-five-minute cuts that ask nobody's permission.
Cracks of light
The nine major keys work as clearings in that forest. DJ Pilot's 'Echoes in the Abyss' (G major, 6:17) arrives just as the minor-key opening threatens to saturate, and David Core's 'La Percusión' stretches B major across 6:27 at 160 BPM: euphoria at punishing speed. The most interesting clearing is 'Soul Train' in E-flat major at 145, signed by Michael Wells a.k.a. G.T.O., the Liverpool producer who recorded as Tricky Disco for Warp and took Technohead's 'I Wanna Be a Hippy' to number one in several countries. His presence anchors the compilation to hard techno's nineties genealogy.
There are also four cuts logged between 77 and 87 BPM — from 'Find That Gunshot' to 'Love Tonight' — half-time notations that read at double speed in the booth: folds in the map where the pulse feels different even though the intensity never drops. And the final stretch genuinely descends: from 'Sensure' (141) to 'Overkill' (142 and, at 8:08, the longest cut), durations stretch out, A major and B major appear back to back, and the landscape opens up before Lethal One's 'Army Of Acid' closes in F minor, restoring the opening shadow. Within Nothing But's sprawling catalogue of series — Anthems, Selections, Essentials — this volume is one of the ones that best understands hard techno can be organised by colour, not just by impact.
Sources: Beatport · Bandcamp · Nothing But
