Crate Exploratory: Ari Jukka- Box Trax Vol. 2 (1996 Techno)

I love finding super obscure releases like this. The only information I’ve been able to find about Ari Jukka is that he had a small handful of techno releases on little known labels during the mid 1990s, this being one of them. This song is a pretty simplistic techno affair. The 909 permeates itself over all of the percussion and helps add a bit of a nostalgic feel. There are about three short synth stabs and a 1-beat vocal sample that are used interchangeably around the percussion. The other tracks on this record are similar; they use very few samples yet are still catchy. The label this record came out on (Trainspotters Nightmare) was owned by producers Glenn Wilson and Cari Lekebusch. The latter of whom went on to work with Adam Beyer in the past decade and has a slew of releases on Truesoul, Drumcode, and Code Red. I’m assuming Jukka is either from Sweden or Germany.

Side note- I like how the label was named “Trainspotters Nightmare”. Flicking through pics of their back catalogue on Discogs, I’ve noticed that none of their releases had track titles on the labels. On this specific record, the label title was written in braille and pressed to blue marbled vinyl. A punter never would’ve been able to decipher who this track was by if they were watching some DJ play it at a rave in 1996!