I first met Wolfgang Gartner when we shared a van from Las Vegas' Cosmopolitan hotel out to the site of the Electric Daisy Carnival, and I quickly got the sense that he didn't want to talk to me. It was the little things that gave him away—like responding to my first questions with curtly monosyllabic answers, and then simply leaning his head down on his backpack, wedged against the van window, and making a visible display of power-napping. I got the hint: just hours away from show-time, he was in no mood to talk. Turns out I had him all wrong, though. When I ran across him a few nights later, back by the artist trailers, he couldn't have been more welcoming. (Note to self: remember not to bug the artists mere hours before they go on stage.) Read on for the full interview, and check out Gartner's new album Weekend in America on Beatport here.

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Remix albums, the ones featuring a slew of different producers reworking a given artist, are a dime a dozen. Then there's another kind, pairing a single remixer with a single album. No Protection, in which Mad Professor dubs the hell out of Massive Attack's Protection, is surely one of the touchstones of the genre. I'm not sure that Jamie XX and Gil Scott-Heron's We're New Year reaches quite those heights, but it's a project in a similar spirit. Gil Scott-Heron is a poet and black activist whose work in the '70s helped pave the way for hip-hop; Jamie XX is the 20-something producer most famous for his participation in The XX, but with a growing reputation as a top-notch producer of left-field bass music. On We're New Here, Jamie XX pulls threads from Scott-Heron's 2010 album I'm New Here and weaves them into a radically new form.

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It all began, as so many things do, one Sunday afternoon at Berghain. Emika—a British producer signed to Ninja Tune, a resident of Berlin, and a die-hard fan of the iconic club—had a flash of inspiration when she heard the flick of the faders on the lighting desk during a breakdown in the DJ's set. What if she recorded the sounds of the space itself—its concrete walls, its looming expanse, its metal trim—and gave them back to the residents to make music with? The idea finally came to its full fruition this week with the release of Fünf, the fifth-annivesary compilation from Ostgut Ton, Berghain's in-house label. Residents and friends of the club (including Marcel Dettmann, Shed, Steffi, Nick Hoppner, Ryan Elliott, Prosumer, Dinky, Soundstream, Cassy, Ben Klock, Luke Slater, and Margaret Dygas, among others) have taken Emika's sound set and turned her site-specific audio back into powerful, sometimes pummeling techno and house. The feedback loop is more than a fitting tribute to the space itself; it's a testament to the creativity of the whole Ostgut team, a reminder that creativity needn't be left at the coat check. We spoke to Emika to find out more about the project; read on for a fascinating account of sound, space, and inspiration.

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As far as I'm concerned, we could have Halloween every week. Not for the parties—I've never been a fan of costumes—but rather, for the music. Nothing beats a little dark ambient terror 'round my house. (Not for nothing was last week's Unsound Festival, with its theme of "Horror," the highlight of my musical year.) Seems like more than a few artists feel the same way. Magda's new album, From the Fallen Page, is the most goth-oriented thing that the Minus artist has done yet. Brian Eno's Small Craft on a Milk Sea, out next week on Warp Records, has more than its share of skin-crawling moments. And Balam Acab's excellent See Birds EP puts a deliciously spooky spin on dubstep-tinged ambient electronica. In honor of the occasion, I've put together a special Top 10 highlighting some terrorific tunes that'll have the trick or treaters jumping out of their skin when you answer the door. Check out all 10 tracks below, and click on the embedded chart at bottom to get the tracks.

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If you're planning to be anywhere near Krakow, Poland in the coming weeks—and, given that it's just a couple of hours by plane from most of western Europe, that's easy to arrange—I urge you to check out the Unsound Festival, which Resident Advisor wisely named as their #2 pick of the European festival crop for October. It's rare to find a festival that so seamlessly merges the worlds of electronic dance music, experimental music, contemporary composition, noise, sound art, and multimedia. This year's lineup is typically strong: Actress, Ben Frost, Black to Comm, Carlos Giffoni, Cosmin TRG, Demdike Stare, Derek Plastlaiko, Dorian Concept, FaltyDL, Jacek Sienkiewicz, James Blake, Jazkamer, Joy Orbison, Kyle Hall, Lindstrom, Lustmord, Mice Parade, Mike Huckaby, Mordant Music, the Moritz Von Oswald Trio, Oneohtrix Point Never, Oni Ayhun, Petre Inspirescu, Raime, Shackleton, Terror Danjah, Tim Hecker, Wildbirds & Peacedrums, and Zombie Zombie are just some of the artists booked for a week of events that take place at indoor venues across the city. This year's theme is horror, and there are numerous events addressing the topic, including film screenings, installations, lectures and workshops, Carlos Giffoni's No Fun House of Horror, and, best of all, the legendary Italian prog-psyche band Goblin performing their music from Dario Argento's slasher films.

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This week's album pick is a hybrid of sorts. We Love Space Sundays commemorates 2020Vision's residency at the We Love parties at Space Ibiza this summer. Mixed by label head Ralph Lawson, the mix doubles as a showcase for the Leeds-based label, highlighting this year's big releases from Hector, Burnski, Audiojack, and more, along with a few 2020 classics, like Lawson's own 1997 mix of Blaze's "Lovelee Dae." The mix moves from blissed-out disco of Ray Mang's "Ocean Mix" through a dozen flavors of deep, pumping, dubbed-out house; there's a careful touch of vocals running throughout, but only enough to ensure a warm, sensual vibe—never enough to tip things into divaland. For all its sun-drenched pleasures, it's a mix that works just as well now that sweater weather is upon us. We asked Lawson to walk us through some of his picks for the mix; read on to see what he has to say about six of the session's highlights.

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Terence Fixmer's flair for dark drama is all but unparalleled. Across numerous records for International Deejay Gigolo, Citizen Records, From Jupiter, and others—including his many collaborations with Nitzer Ebb's Douglas McCarthy—the French artist dissolves the boundaries between classic techno and EBM into throbbing analog sequences that spill over with sensual dread. Comedy of Menace, released on Jochem Paap's Electric Deluxe label, actually marks a return to techno of a more purist stripe, with fewer pop chord progressions and less overtly industrial influence. All the energy is in the sounds and the sequences, as Fixmer builds powerfully immersive cuts designed to shake basements to their foundations. We interviewed Fixmer to talk about his industrial past, his favorite production techniques, and which of his tracks are best complemented by leather trousers.

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We usually reserve the Album of the Week spot for "artist albums"—that is, the work of a single producer or group—but this week we turn our attention to a compilation: Rush Hour's Vibes New & Rare Music. Named after the Detroit record store run by Rick Wilhite (aka the Godson), Vibes New & Rare showcases new and exclusive material from Wilhite's friends and peers. Alongside established (even legendary) figures like Theo Parrish, Sherard Ingram's Urban Tribe, Kenny Dixon Jr. (aka Moodymann) and Glenn Underground, you'll find up-and-comers like Kyle Hall and other relatively unfamiliar names (Raybone, Derwin Hall). What they all share in common is an approach to Midwestern house and techno that's classic without getting mired in tradition. Many of these tracks sound like they could have been recorded at any point in the past decade and a half—in the best way. They don't play at being soulful; they take "soul" as a point of departure for some truly out-there grooves. A world away from the pristine, sample-CD-based productions of so much contemporary deep house, these artists aren't afraid to get their hands dirty, with plenty of grit and discord underlying even the sweetest chord progression. Simply put, anyone into old-school-yet-adventurous house and techno needs to check this out. You'll find audio clips of all 14 tracks after the jump.

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It's been six years since Superpitcher released his debut album (and only one, until now), 'Here Comes Love'; it's been three years since he and fellow techno dandy provocateur, Michael Mayer, unleashed Supermayer's rather odd 'Save The World' upon an unsuspecting public. Now, with little advance notice, Superpitcher (Cologne's Aksel Schaufler) brings us 'Kilimanjaro', a masterful long-player by turns seductive and bizarre. Despite Kompakt's reputation for punchy tech house, Superpitcher has always chafed at dancefloor constraints—remember his version of 'Fever'?—folding elements of '60s and '70s pop into his Cologne techno oom-pah structures. 'Kilimanjaro', with aims as ambitiously high as its title, goes even further in its transgressions, expanding Superpitcher's range without losing sight of fundamentals. It's not hard to figure out what Schaufler was listening to while he made the record; there are echoes of Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys, Grace Jones, and even Pink Floyd (!) in his instrumentation, structures, and lyrical citations. Still, highlights like 'Voodoo', 'Country Boy', 'Black Magic', 'Joanna', and particularly 'Rabbits in a Hurry' hit with plenty of force, with muscular bass lines and clean, functional percussion pushing forward through colorful, inspired arrangements; the synthetic core of the tracks is fleshed out in guitars, electric bass, acoustic percussion and even flute. Beyond Superpitcher's keen sense of craft, what stands out most is his unusual sense of humor, which runs through lyrics, oddball vocal inflections, and kitsch-inspired arrangements (like the haunted dub of 'Voodoo'). We caught up with Schaufler to find out what prospective alpinists should prepare to encounter in the delirious thin air of 'Kilimanjaro'.

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Given dance music’s focus on the new-new-new, a lot of older music can fall by the wayside. But there’s nothing like the feel of chancing across a forgotten track that never sounded as good as it does right now. Cratedigger Essentials is a feature highlighting those forgotten gems that our guest selectors keep on hand for when something a little different is called for. This week, we've got Jimmy Edgar in the hot seat. Signed to Warp for several years, the Detroit native recently resurfaced on K7 with 'XXX', an electro-funk extravaganza that touches upon vintage techno, new jack swing, Prince, and more. Its lascivious lead single 'Hot, Raw Sex' gets further hot and bothered via remixes from Kris Wadsworth and Machine Drum. Check out Edgar's classic picks below.

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Shed's René Pawlowitz reminds me a little of James Murphy's persona in LCD Soundsystem's 'You Wanted a Hit', with its memorable refrain, "You wanted a hit/ But maybe we don't do hits." True, Shed's dusky, sedimentary techno couldn't be further away from LCD's forceful dance-rock, stylistically speaking. But Pawlowitz shows the same kind of ambivalence about fulfilling populist expectations. In an interview with De:Bug magazine this month, he makes it clear that he's no great fan of nightclubs or their occasionally lunkheaded patrons—for instance, the clubbers who ask him, in the middle of his set, why he isn't smiling. Regardless, the man knows how to make hits. His records as Wax and EQD routinely top Resident Advisor's monthly DJ charts as well as Beatport's own lists of most frequently charted tracks. The reason is simple: they're perfect distillations of techno at its most gracefully functional. Pawlowitz goes so far as to describe them as DJ fodder—tools, essentially. (In German, he actually calls them "DJ-Futter": literally, pet food for DJs.) 'The Traveller', the followup to Shed's 2008 debut album, 'Shedding the Past', is something else entirely.

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Andy Butler—best known as the force behind DFA's disco-loving Hercules and Love Affair—keeps the old-school spirit alive with his new label, Mr. International. The label is all about staying true to a distant era in house and techno. "I don't want anything that sounds pre-'85 or post-'94", specifies Butler, laying out the parameters of his retro-minded project. The first release is a collaboration between Butler and Jason Kendig, an original resident at Detroit's Family party and current member of San Francisco's Honeysoundsystem crew. 'And I'm (So In Love With You)', which was produced entirely on period-appropriate analog technology, harks back to the glory days of KMS, Strictly Rhythm, Nu Groove, and other icons of house and techno's restless glory days. "I want to evoke strictly that sound on this label, so I've been pretty hard-ass with people in terms of what the output is", says Butler. The track comes with remixes from KiNK and Deetron, two artists who are well familiar with raw period sounds. To celebrate the label's launch, Butler schooled us on some of the go-to tunes in his set.

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Hallelujah: Luke Abbott's debut album is finally here. Part of my relief is strictly selfish: the record's arrival means that I get to cross two much-salivated-after tracks off my want list—'Soft Attacks' and 'Holkham Drones', which appeared on James Holden's recent 'DJ Kicks' mix and XLR8R podcast, respectively. I'm also relieved that Border Community seems finally to be picking up steam again, after a year of all too sporadic releases. The album, also called 'Holkham Drones', marks a triumphant return for the label, picking up where Abbott's 'Whitebox Stereo' EP left off last fall, and working similar ideas into an even dreamier shape that's perfect for home listening.

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Hallelujah: Luke Abbott's debut album is finally here. Part of my relief is strictly selfish: the record's arrival means that I get to cross two much-salivated-after tracks off my want list—'Soft Attacks' and 'Holkham Drones', which appeared on James Holden's recent 'DJ Kicks' mix and XLR8R podcast, respectively. I'm also relieved that Border Community seems finally to be picking up steam again, after a year of all too sporadic releases. The album, also called 'Holkham Drones', marks a triumphant return for the label, picking up where Abbott's 'Whitebox Stereo' EP left off last fall, and working similar ideas into an even dreamier shape that's perfect for home listening.

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I come today not to praise "witch house" but to bury it. The problem isn't with the name itself—in fact, I love the idea of "witch house," but then, I generally embrace all manner of ridiculous genre names, if only because life's too short to be serious about music all the time. (I once got Michael Mayer seriously riled up with my semi-ironic coinage of "micro-goth"; I still don't think he's forgiven me for it.) No, the problem with witch house is that the music that's been associated with it—so far, pretty much just the band Salem—has been pretty execrable, a mixture of coldwave synths and chopped 'n' screwed Houston rap that looks good on paper but sounds half-assed on record (and even worse on stage). Plus, where's the house music? Brooklyn's Balam Acab, aka the 19 year old Alec Koone, is also getting lumped in with this witch house thing, at least according to Pitchfork, who gave his debut EP an 8.0 score and a swooning review. There's precious little house music here, either, but the difference with Balam Acab is that the music is actually good. Really good, in fact. The five tracks on his 'See Birds' EP are a hazy sprawl of buzzing sawtooth synths, blunted drum-machine beats, and woozily treated vocals; you can definitely detect the influence of Burial, Flying Lotus, wonky dubsteppers like Zomby, and the psychedelic whatchamacallit of Mount Kimbie. There might even be a smidgen of Oneohtrix Point Never's DMT-powered escalators to heaven.

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