A foundational document of late 1990s Berlin electronic music, Icol Diston finally lands on vinyl in full. Issued by Keplar as a remastered 2LP with new artwork, this expansive reissue gathers the three 12-inch EPs that Uwe Zahn, working as Arovane, released on Torsten Pröfrock's legendary DIN label between 1998 and 1999, previously available only as a CD compilation issued by DIN itself in 2002.

To return to Icol Diston now is to reenter a particular Berlin moment with surprising clarity. Zahn has spoken of the 1990s as a time when the city's history "felt still so tangible and yet somewhat ghostly", the weight of the war and the GDR pressing against a new buoyancy on the streets. The five tracks gathered around the title EP, alongside the earlier I.O. and the closing AMX remixes, register that double pressure with rare precision. They sit in close conversation with the dub techno coming out of Chain Reaction, with the early Monolake records, with the clicks-and-cuts ferment radiating from Mille Plateaux, but they refuse the period's cooler, more architectural impulses. There is heat in this music. There is mood.

What strikes most is the texture of the recording itself. The tracks were committed live as stereo takes straight to DAT, and the practice shows in their breathing quality, in the way percussion edges into the foreground and recedes without the surgical cleanliness of sequencer-driven work. I.O. and Andar fold delicate jazz fragments and metallic micro-detail into slow dub pressure, the kick a distant pulse felt more than heard. Parf and Torn sharpen the focus toward something closer to electro and broken techno. The title track Icol Diston opens onto colder, more spacious terrain, percussive elements suspended in a long reverberant volume. And the closing pair, Außen Vor AMX and No. 8 AMX, find Zahn reworking Pröfrock productions, No. 8 in particular pulled deep into dub territory by an enormous low end and a single tonal sample held like a bell across the track.

The lineage is by now clear. Arovane's work from this period has flowed forward into the practices of Vladislav Delay, Pole, the entire Raster-Noton orbit, and any number of more recent figures working at the seam where ambient, dub, and rhythmic abstraction meet. But this music has not aged into a historical document. It still moves with its own logic, still carries the particular Berlin air it was made in, still surprises at every return.

Remastered and cut by Kassian Troyer at D&M, with cover art by Jim Kühnel based on a photograph by Zahn himself. One of the essential reissues of the decade for anyone tracking the longer arc of European electronic music.