While the music industry is wondering whether the album format is still relevant, Dave Clarke chose 2017 to be the year he releases his first long format, The Desecration Of Desire, after 25 years of hard techno EPs. If discographers mention four of his albums on their page, the first three are only made up of divides tracks. In an interview conducted by The Skinny, the Englishman talks about it like his first "proper album". And what a disc! An icon of British warehouse techno (with the now classic series of three Red EPs, which laid the foundation for Dave Clarke’s style), the producer - who has been living in Amsterdam for several years now - has caught everyone off-guard with a songwriter album. There are no epileptic 4/4s or chugging beats on the horizon, but we find here instead dark bass and rhythms reminiscent of Bristol at the start of the ‘90s. Above all, by releasing music made for the dancefloor, Clarke demonstrates that he knows how to make songs. It was he after all who wrote the lyrics for the single Charcoal Eyes, recited by the croaky voice of Mark Lanegan (the American nomad singer of the Screaming Trees and Queens of the Stone Age), for a track that brings to mind a club scene in an English film from a few decades ago. The other featured artists (Gazelle Twin, who brings her nervous and tortured side to Cover Up My Eyes, Mt Sims on Frissons in industrial mode, or Anika for I’m Not Afraid, somewhere between Tricky and Depeche Mode) are in tune with the dark tone painted on this album by Dave Clarke, that unveils an unexpectedly joyful side. © SB/Qobuz