Lo Shea

100 YEARS is a new label and venue set up by esteemed Sheffield promoter, producer and studio engineer Liam O’Shea.

The fist release features two tracks by him as LoShea and comes as a celebration of Sheffield’s enduring association with both techno and stainless steel. As for the first release, it couldn’t be more Sheffield or more techno, frankly. Lo Shea took himself into the heart of Forgemasters Sheffield – a huge steelworks – and made field recordings that he then took away and turned into two powerful tracks that evoke the feeling of their environment - sweaty men in overalls lugging lumps of steel into blast furnaces, rumbling cranes, tumbling 100 tonne pipes and a generally oil stained air of coal fuelled industry. ‘Steel City’ starts of with the hum and throng of huge machines and blasts of hot air bursting through. Then come the pummelling, over sized kicks and ticking, jostling percussive sprinkles to form a wiggling but heavyweight groove straight from the heart of a smoggy factory.

Flipside ‘Prang’ is just as stern and all consuming, with juddery snares and metallic hits peppering a monstrous bottom end. Throughout its course, the track breaks to grimy found sounds and field recordings before kicking with a renewed energy once again. Both tracks are hugely evocative, stuffed with industrial imagery yet speak to Sheffield’s long love of abstract electronica. In another interesting historical tie up, artwork for the label is by The Designers Republic, the same company who worked on the early art for another of Sheffield’s most famous and finest sons, Warp Records.

• 1 Steel City
• 2 Prang