Last November, Knockdown Center proudly premiered RUSH, our new techno series that invites some of the heaviest international headliners to push the venue to its maximum potential. The debut edition, headlined by I Hate Models, was a smash success, and on the eve of the holiday season we announced the followup: on January 27th, Italy’s 999999999 is joined by Herrensauna co-founder and resident MCMLXXXV and rising talents Annie Lew and ÆON.

Each artist is advancing an undiluted personal vision of techno that sets them apart. Let’s explore their work:

999999999 first emerged in 2016, coming out of Italy’s rich acid techno lineage. Alongside peers like Boston 168 and Tapefeed, they draw on a rich back-catalog of twisting, full frontal 303 mangling, bringing the wiggly earworms of the iconic Roland bass synth into new, ferocious territories. Early tracks like “X0001000X” opted in on a classical style reminiscent of Plastikman: heaving analog kick drums for days, sizzling acid lines ornamented with some crunchy distortion and very little else. It’s a timeless combination that works so well for a reason: the human mind, when faced with unflinching repetition, can lean into those otherwise microscopic details to find wells of tension, release and emotional impact.

But just because repetition works doesn’t mean you have to repeat yourself. 999999999’s steady growth has been less apparent in the short term; each release builds on the last, with measured deliberateness. Take a wide view, however, and their evolution is striking. This year’s “Anatomy EP” seizes your attention with surging BPMs and a sound design that plants one foot squarely in the realm of industrial. 999999999 feels as much like the mechanized, futuristic descendant of Wax Trax! - the Chicago label that defined industrial dance/rock hybrids in the 90s - as they do a techno group. It’s a testament to their skill and conviction that they make it work. These are tracks that you would want playing at the apocalypse, bringing a Final Boss furor that’s truly climactic and hard to follow up.

MCMLXXXV counters this with a more darkly-hued spaciousness. Setting the tempo in techno’s upper registers, he finds pockets of tactile strangeness amidst the insistent, burrowing velocity. It’s this artfulness that has made Herrensauna, the Berlin rave series he co-founded with CEM, such a landmark event. The party’s ethos combines performance, daring, even garish fashion, an earthy, dirty punk thrust and tightly coiled sonics. MCMLXXXV plays on the edge of the grotesque, the epic and the tensile with a sculptor’s command of space and contrast.

Annie Lew and ÆON each represent the next wave of US techno. Lew is a resident at Boston’s Infra, a series that has pushed harder, more subterranean strains in a city not known for its electronic music. ÆON is the founder of Flux, a standout in NY’s wave of new, cutting edge queer techno hybridizations. Her sets wind between monstrous scale, sickly-sweet vocal flips, and cold-blooded, thousand yard stare loop techno. In full, the lineup presents a journey through some of techno’s most compelling and intriguing modern forms, with a galvanizing intensity that demands a response.