The term “ambient techno” implies a balanced blend of genres: cloudy atmospheres of ambient with the percussive grit of techno. But more often than not the latter half of the term feels secondary; rarely do you hear ambient techno albums that are as suitable for club play as they are for sedentary, “post-rave” listening.
Few have released ambient techno with the consistency of Dial, a label run by David Lieske (a.k.a. Carsten Jost) and Peter Kersten (a.k.a. Lawrence). Some of Kersten’s earliest music was released by his spiritual godparents at Kompakt, and the influence of those who founded the label, namely Wolfgang Voigt, Michael Mayer, and Jürgen Paape, on Dial’s output is easy to hear, particularly in the patient repetition and the prioritization of the whole work over individual moments.
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