100 YEARS is a new label and venue set up by esteemed Sheffield promoter, producer and studio engineer Liam O’Shea. The fist release features two tracks by him as LoShea and comes as a celebration of Sheffield’s enduring association with both techno and stainless steel. It was 100 years ago this year that stainless steel was invented by engineer Harry Brearley of the Brown-Firth research laboratory in Sheffield while seeking a corrosion-resistant alloy for gun barrels. “To commemorate this Sheffield invention, which has to be Sheffield’s most widespread and successful international export, I have set up a new record label to release the finest techno music I can from around the world” beams LoShea himself. “Techno is the sonic manifestation of industry in my eyes... not only in its sound and the places it is played, but in its enduring quality. It’s hard and resistant to the ebbs and flows of scene changes and fashion, it will always be with us, it’s primal and rooted in industrialisation… from Detroit to Berlin to Sheffield.” As for the first release, it couldn’t be more Sheffield or more techno, frankly. Lo Shea took himself into the heart of Forgemasters Sheffield – a huge steelworks – and made field recordings that he then took away and turned into two powerful tracks that evoke the feeling of their environment - sweaty men in overalls lugging lumps of steel into blast furnaces, rumbling cranes, tumbling 100 tonne pipes and a generally oil stained air of coal fuelled industry. ‘Steel City’ starts of with the hum and throng of huge machines and blasts of hot air bursting through. Then come the pummelling, over sized kicks and ticking, jostling percussive sprinkles to form a wiggling but heavyweight groove straight from the heart of a smoggy factory. Flipside ‘Prang’ is just as stern and all consuming, with juddery snares and metallic hits peppering a monstrous bottom end. Throughout its course, the track breaks to grimy found sounds and field recordings before kicking with a renewed energy once again. Both tracks are hugely evocative, stuffed with industrial imagery yet speak to Sheffield’s long love of abstract electronica. In another interesting historical tie up, artwork for the label is by The Designers Republic, the same company who worked on the early art for another of Sheffield’s most famous and finest sons, Warp Records. To celebrate all this there will be a launch party at Hope Works on 20th April featuring NonPlus boss Boddika and precision technoist Trevino, as well as Lo Shea himself and local legend Chris Duckenfield. This happens to be National Record Shop day, a fitting coincidence given that Hope Works will be a vinyl only label. The venue itself will double as an art space and rave centre akin to Manchester’s Warehouse Project or Bristol’s In: Motion. It’s a former WWI gun barrel factory, part of the same industrial area in which Harry Brearley was working, so comes drenched in history. Its raw open spaces and looming industrial atmospheres make it the perfect place for people to enjoy techno in its native environment.