Maddening techno tracks from An-i's 'Kino-i' EP

Pointed guns and risky producers can both elevate heart rates without ingested stimulants. Take An-i’s Kino-i EP, three screaming versions of the same track that leave you as white knuckled as clenched teeth.

A project from recently Berlin-based Doug Lee, Kino-i is the masochistic nightmare to this former New Yorker’s reputable sleazy and sex soaked disco house as Lee Douglas. Machinery and madness are the themes here, told combatively through a static quality of industrial blows and exasperated loops. The track erupts within its first third, only to hit an even higher peak of hysteria before entering its last. Throughout, reverberating shouts – man and machine – lurch from cracks in the chaos.

“Kino i (mix)” is the A-side and most massive of the three, “Kino i" (dub), the more DJ inclined version, and “Kino i" (beats) is the final cut, stripped of the frenetic commotion like a scrapped car. Those averse to techno or noise music might turn away here, yet thrill seekers will surely see why warehouse parties, like psych wards, are best suited to bleak, concrete spaces of emptiness.

An-i’s Kino-i drops vinyl only on February 10 on Cititrax, a sublabel of NYC’s Minimal Wave, with a digital release to come in March.