Artist: MarAxe, Lively Racket, Coutts, FL3X Techno
Title: 'Headliners EP'
Label: Corrupted Data XL

Four producers, a track each, and Corrupted Data XL has called the result 'Headliners'. The label has been putting records out since 2022, from Guernsey. MarAxe, Lively Racket, Coutts and FL3X Techno are the four, and it is out now.

MarAxe is Markus Axelsson, and he works out of Umeå. His own bio has him as the founder and manager of STØK Recordings, and the label's page agrees, adding that it takes hardtechno and hypnotic techno and nothing else. That is where most of his own catalogue has gone, with the rest spread across Naked Lunch, Frame Workxx and DSR Digital. He has been through WT once already without anybody saying so at the time: D.A.V.E. the Drummer's remix of his 'Zulu' turned up in The Machine's Waveform Sessions mix.

Lively Racket has the widest visible spread of labels of the four. Hallowed Codex carries the bulk of it, and the rest is scattered over MINNUS, Hexane, Techno Pulse, Trankacid and Wicked Waves. 'Chaos and Die' went out on Asylum Recordings as a collaboration with 51CK, and 'Ego Death' landed on Hexane. Beatport gives Tipperary as the base, and the act's own Facebook page carries an Irish flag and little else, so take the county as the store page's word rather than a settled fact.

Coutts has the deepest tie to this corner of the scene. Keep On Techno has taken more of his records than anyone else has, across the main label and its Keep On Techno X offshoot, and Filth Infatuated Digital introduced him as a Northern Irish name when he first landed there. That crew will ring a bell if you read our write-up of Kev D's 'Double Zero EP', because Mark Neenan's Filth Infatuated is the same operation. Nothing But and LW Recordings have him on the books too.

FL3X Techno is the hardest to pin down. The records are easy enough to find, on RAW WORX, Klangtrauma, Assemble Records, LW Recordings, ZERO.RECORDS and Night Format, plus a 'Chroma EP' for OHA and a slot on Nothing But's hard techno series.

What is not findable is a bio, or a single interview, so the Bandcamp collection attributed to FL3X Techno giving away the Cork, Ireland location, and the existing catalogue is all there is to go on.

The four are not strangers to each other. STØK's 'Year 3, Vol 01' compilation put Lively Racket and Coutts on the same record under MarAxe's curation, so most of this line-up has shared a running order before.

Pick the lot up on Beatport, and the label's back catalogue is on Bandcamp if you fancy a dig.