As a follow-up to his acclaimed release for British music magazine The Wire entitled Elektrotehnika, Tehnika 1 cements the beginning of an explosive music-curating career for Laibach member Ivan Novak. The bulk of the tracks on Tehnika 1 come from Novak's native Yugoslavia, where in the early '80s he -- along with his Laibach bandmates and Videosex -- controlled and fostered the growing electronic and industrial scenes. Tehnika 1 is a representative display of the different projects of just a few artists, though it looks like many. Odd aliases disguise the fact that there are really only a handful of producers and remixers present. Of course, the same can be said for many techno comps released domestically as well. With solid European techno throughout, the few artists involved are definitely onto something with cross-cultural appeal. Essentially, the tracks compiled here comprise a revisited version of that original compilation issued by The Wire. A suite of minimal techno flecked with moments of Chicago house madness and quelled with stark, reverb-soaked dub effects, Tehnika 1 more or less acts as a sampler for the goings on in the Yugoslav techno community. Nothing extremely brilliant ever surfaces here, but truthfully, the end product is a memorable one. Sometimes the success comes solely from the arrangement of music, and here it works quite nicely. ~ Ken Taylor