Charlotte de Witte’s debut album is a 70-minute steamroll of uncompromising techno, paying tribute to the sounds that have defined the genre for decades. The Realm opens with a solitary kick drum huge enough to rattle your bones before the rest of the acid-techno toolbox comes gradually into view, with squelching 303s cycling, and hi-hats dropping in and out with enormous weight. In an era of constant, disposable techno releases, this one definitely stands out.

No Division features a ferocious vocal from XSALT that recalls Maxim from The Prodigy over a pounding 4/4. Insistent loops drill into your skull for six minutes at a time, and simple acid techno phrases repeat until they become mantras. You can feel de Witte’s ten years of supersized festival sets in the architecture of every tense build and controlled drop. Vidmahe is one of the album’s most hypnotic detours, driven by an Arabic vocal sample whilst Become is pure, straight-down-the-line acid techno. The record takes on real emotional weight in the material that taps into the church-choir lineage of Faithless with Momento Mori and Domine both pulling from that tradition, the latter sounding like a harder version of Jam & Spoon’s The Age Of Love remix, delivered at a violent and unrelenting tempo. The cameo from Comma Dee on The Heads That Know is a curveball that combines acid energy with grime, pulling British rave DNA into the palette of the record without breaking any of the cohesion, whilst Higher moves to a wide-open, atmospheric breakbeat that recalls Bicep. Late album showstopper After the Fall features Lisa Gerrard, the best possible voice for the agonising, uplifting, spiritual mood de Witte has been reaching toward. Hymn folds every core element into one place in a rowdy and euphoric climax, in a simple and flawless execution. Built from the oldest tools in the techno box, but powerful enough to flatten a warehouse.