One name carries all ten cuts here, and it turns out to be enough. Carl Taylor, a DJ and producer from South Yorkshire, released 'True Faith' on Maastricht's EPM Music —a label active since 2001— back in January 2012, and fourteen years later the album returns remastered, with no guests and no remixes: just the producer, exactly as he conceived it.
It helps to know who he is. Taylor arrived at that record with twelve years in the game and releases on labels like Bugged Out, F-Comm, Dust Science and F1 Recordings, plus a method he openly defended: no track took him more than three hours, everything sequenced on the MPC, because overanalysis, in his words, can suck the life out of a production. That real-time pulse shows in the tempo band, packed between 120 and 127 BPM, where the variety comes from character rather than speed.
The names that orbited the project matter too: the singles that preceded the album carried remixes from Orlando Voorn, Mark Broom and Luis Martinez, a hint of the respect Taylor commanded at the time. Those versions aren't included; what remains is the original material, and it stands on its own. 'Violet' opens on his melodic side —critics at the time singled out precisely that gift for melody without softening the dancefloor—, 'Orbit' and 'Perplexer' push the rawer edge, and 'Onyx', at 127 BPM, hits with the relentless drive already noted back in 2012.
The detail that best portrays Taylor sits at the extremes: 'Chordal Link', a 2:46 electronica miniature in Eb minor, and 'Lost Memories', almost eight minutes of hypnotic techno closing the record at 127. Between the sketch and the long haul lies his whole range. 'Only U', the lone house cut in the set, is a reminder that the soul in his techno was never press-release posturing but a constant. Remastering isn't always about looking back: this one sounds like a case for a catalogue that aged better than many of its peers.
Sources: Bandcamp · Textura