Galileo Rebuilds Early-2000s Schranz on His First Systolic EP, “Let’s Scratch It”

Galileo’s way into electronic music was the technical staff of a Madrid club. That was 2021, and standing next to the booth every night turned the job into something else. Self-taught from there, he built his following around Elements Cave and Mad Rave, with regular sets at Muv, El Sol, Studio 76, Goya Social Club, Zull the Club, Hangar 48 and Siroco. Those sets run 140 to 180 BPM and rarely come in under ninety minutes, built on old-school loops and urban vocals instead of the drop-heavy structures that fill most hard techno rooms right now.

“Let’s Scratch It”, out September 17 on Systolic Records, is his first EP for the label, and it goes back to the template the genre was built on in the early 2000s, when a looped, distorted kick and a percussion line were the whole arrangement. Galileo rebuilds that with current tools, a cleaner low end and a vocal treatment that took him longer than anything else on the record. “It was more trial and error,” he says, testing vocal types and textures “until everything fell into place naturally.”

“It’s not a nostalgic revival, it’s an update,” he says. “Keeping the aggression, the speed and the noncommercial attitude of classic Schranz, but with more contemporary production, cleaner in some places and more experimental in others.” Classic Schranz, in his reading, “never died. It’s just been waiting for the right moment to come back.”

The other two tracks take that somewhere else. “Headbang” is the rawer, more urban side of his production, fast and blunt. “Mantra of the Abyss” closes with deep vocals over hard drums, the closest the EP gets to melody without easing off the pressure.

“Street Pulse”, his debut track with fellow Madrid producer Collateral Damage, spent six consecutive weeks in Beatport’s Top 100 Global Hard Techno and peaked at #30, and he counts Klangkuenstler, Vendex, O.B.I and Nikolina among his support. Galileo calls the EP a tribute to Schranz across its eras: “from the archive to the present, from the club of before to the club of now.”

Get it on Beatport