When he was asked about the first Orbital album since 2012’s Wonky, Paul Hartnoll said that he was torn between writing a really aggressive, Crass-type album and going back to the rave sensibilities of the early 1990s. Monsters Exist may well have some of the former, especially in the atmospheric “The Raid”, but it’s still largely a disc of hands in the air, trancey techno.

The long career of New York electronic duo Suicide finally came to an end upon the death of their vocalist Alan Vega in 2016. They had not, however - and to say the least – been very prolific in decades. Their reputation rests almost entirely on their first two albums, most especially their debut. But what albums those are. Their primitive synthesizer drone-rock’n’roll still casts a giant shadow 40 years on.

It took Soulwax 12 years to release 2017’s From Deewee, a triumphant one take clash of live drums and electronic wizardry. It’s taken less than 12 months for their follow-up; at their current rate, we can expect another release sometime next weekend. As described in an opening voice-over, this is an “essential mix” equivalent to a mixtape, originally created for a BBC Radio 1 session.

Ryuichi Sakamoto has conquered underground and mainstream with seeming ease over four decades, never dropping off in the quality of his releases. Indeed his most recent projects, following his return to public life after treatment for throat cancer in 2014-15, are among his best.

The welcome to Glasgow audio-visual artist Robbie Thomson’s performance engenders a hefty sense of anticipation. It’s almost nervousness-inducing as we’re handed ear-plugs and warned about how very loud it’s going to be. Then, walking into the main hall from the bar, all is gloom. From 1849, for a century-and-a-half, this venue was a church and attached school, its claim to fame a dismissive mention in Jane Eyre. But this evening the stained glass windows are blacked out, blocking the evening sun.

There have been reports that as many as 50% of vinyl-buyers don’t actually listen to it. They keep records as a token of affection for the artist in question. This seems curious but, then again, most young people don’t own turntables and the idea is anathema to the way they consume music. However, while there’s a healthy market in reissues and older artists, the most cutting edge music imaginable is appearing on plastic. Check out our Vinyl of the Month! All musical life is reviewed below.

Throughout their career, James Ford and Jas Shaw have proved themselves to be nothing if not versatile. From the subtly swirling psychedelia of Simian, to the various dancefloor shapes they’ve thrown as Simian Mobile Disco.

There’s a regular problem with techno albums. The DJ-producers who make them are usually so deeply embedded in club techno that when it comes to making a long-form collection, leaving the dancefloor and showcasing variety, they’re incapable. What, to them, sounds like a sonic adventure, to the rest of us sounds like a series of four-to-the-floor bangers that, after a couple, grows quickly monotonous, however good they’d have sounded at 3am in strobe-strafed Belgian warehouse darkness.

Holland-living Brit Oliver Way, however, has some success evading this particular curse. Way, after all, has form in escaping techno’s straitjacket. He is one half of the Detroit Grand Pubahs, an outfit who’ve shown themselves capable of deadpan humour and tongue-in-cheek outings. His debut solo album, once it gets going, has a similar sense of adventure and relative eclecticism.

At first things don’t look good. After a very promising Damian Lazarus-like, Middle Eastern-flavoured piece, “Dust Storm”, Way settles down into the usual bosh-bosh-bosh of a night out in Belgium. However, after a moody soundtracky thing (“Calling Danny Boy”) with DJ Ben Long, he hits his stride with a juicy selection of electro, Fatboy Slim-style cut-up, the geezer-ish Underworld-like “Lucky Dip”” and “Bad Bwoy Tune”, which is a ringer for The Prodigy’s “Voodoo People”. Going even further out on a limb, “Thorpe Road” struts its ragga’n’sax stuff over the much-used bassline to Wayne Smith’s “Under Me Sleng Teng” (as heard in SL2’s rave monster “Way In My Brain”), and “Stained Glass Shadows” sounds as if it hails from another album altogether, an eight minute, Hammond-laced midnight funk jam created on trad instrumentation. The latter, a number apart, is the album’s stand-out track.

With From The Shadows Oliver Way offers a lesson to his techno peers in stylistic exploration. In doing so, he keeps things interesting and the listeners’ ears tuned in.

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Overleaf: Listen to "Dust Storm" by Oliver Way, featuring Jasmin Nolan & Liam Nolan