Berlin-based techno producer Oliver Koletzki has certainly enjoyed something of a rapid rise over the past few years; after pressing up just 500 copies of his debut 12” Der Muckenschwarm back in 2005, the track ended up falling into the hands of Sven Vath, who immediately signed it to his highly-respected Cocoon imprint. Propelled by this initial success, Koletzki was soon getting booked for prestigious clubs and festivals during 2005/06 and getting asked to remix the likes of Rockers Hi-Fi and Cassius. While he also founded his own Stil Vor Talent label around the same time back in 2005, it’s taken Koletzki until now to release Get Wasted, his highly-anticipated debut artist album and one that shows him working with a range of different collaborators, including Bpitch Control’s Kiki, Florian Meindl, Ziggy Kinder and Martin Eyerer. One of the first factors that’s immediately apparent upon listening to Get Wasted is Koletkzi’s lack of concern for the expectations of techno purists, the contents here fluidly moving between techno, tech-house and soul-latin sounds, often all within the same track.

Sequenced in the style of a free-flowing live/DJ set, the tracklisting kicks off with the warm Brazilian-sourced textures of When We Were Young, feathery flamenco guitar strokes gliding against rolling batucada percussion loops and subtly-placed electronic elements, before fat double-bass chords and shimmering handclaps take things out on a rolling tech-house/samba that calls to mind a more dubbed-out version of Masters at Work. From there, Dieses Lied Glaubt An Sich sees things getting darker and techier, with cut-up vocal samples and ricocheting percussive elements jacknifing back and forth while some curiously Balearic-sounding house pianos undercut the menace generated by the brooding sub-bass swells and robotic bleeps – indeed, halfway through they manage to hijack the track entirely, taking it unexpectedly towards vocal soul-house.

Don’t Forget To Go Home, a co-production alongside Kiki takes things down into vast walls of throbbing bass-synths whilst performing some crazy filter trickery on the rattling hi-hats and processing the trailing snares hits out into bursts of static, before Get Wasted Part 2 ushers in the sorts of pressurised assembly-line atmospheres that would be easily at home on an Audion record, as urgently bleeping synth loops battle for space against sinister buzzing electronics and what sounds like an arsenal of 808 kicks.

The grandiose Requiem Fur Die Vernunft easily represents the track here that’s perhaps most likely to alienate the aforementioned purists as well as Koletzki’s most ambitious undertaking – fusing a propulsive disco-house undercarriage bolstered with handclaps and sampled bass licks with jagged bursts of digital processing, it somehow manages to generate a sense of shoegazer/indie atmosphere that calls to mind mid period New Order or Ride as vast synthetic orchestration reaches up from beneath layers of jangling guitar chords. If it’s easily the biggest unexpected departure Koletzki undertakes here, Bud Spencer sees the Berlin producer returning things to more familiar techno surrounds, as gliding Model 500-esque analogue synths tumble against a silky-smooth backing of zapping electro rhythms, before the urgent synths beneath start to rise in volume and add a welcome discordant undercurrent reminiscent of some of LFO’s prime moments.

Rather than worry about the mounting expectations of his audience, Koletzki has simply focused on following his own individual muse, and ‘Get Wasted’ is all the better for it. Highly recommended.

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