TuneLab
Sita Shah
London | Makaan Takeover
There’s a particular brand of London techno that doesn’t care for minimalism, favoring broken beats and sheer attitude instead—Sita Shah’s Makaan Takeover set is a definitive document of that sound. The vibe is dark, industrial, and physically demanding, a room moving as one heavy mass. Shah deploys a relentless hard techno and breaks attack, locked at an average 141.5 BPM and predominantly using the 12A key for a driving, hypnotic thrust.
The energy is overwhelmingly focused in the low-end, with skeletal mids and highs that slice through the mix like shards of glass. Her mixing is tight and purposeful, using long blends to layer percussive elements and create a swirling, chaotic texture that’s utterly compelling. The tracklist is a connoisseur’s selection: Flore’s ‘Nobody Hear You’ is a tense, atmospheric opener.
She mines gold from the harder edges with Temper’s ‘Work That Body’ and Brooklyn Bounce’s ‘Get Ready to Bounce’. For the heads, Rove Ranger’s ‘101010’ and James Ruskin & Truncate’s ‘Sketch 3’ are peak-time weapons of the highest order. The journey is a brutalist architecture, starting with the foreboding ‘Nobody Hear You’, ascending to a peak with the raw power of Klint’s ‘Pigment’, and then deconstructing it all with the iconic, booty-shaking break of Trina’s ‘B R Right’ as a brilliantly unexpected closing track.