Lakker - Struggle & Emerge (2016)

Here's a techno album with a difference. Lakker's second long player for R&S sees the Irish duo sample sounds, field recordings and other broadcast sounds from the national Dutch TV archive. Based around the theme 'the Dutch and water', which includes catastrophic events such as the flooding of Zeeland in the 50s, which claimed nearly 2,000 lives, and the Nazis damaging Dutch waterways as they retreated in 1945, Struggle & Emerge has the potential to sound grim in the extreme. However, it is to Lakker's credit that from such austere sources they sculpt such noble ambient soundscapes as "Emergo", the hissing, haunted white noise of "Broken Clouds" and the punishing but strangely uplifting drill & bass of "Maeslantkering Gating".