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Heading into its fourth year, New York based Hidden Recordings has been a guiding light in the North American techno renaissance. Eschewing the call of Europe, label owner Deepak Sharma - in addition to being one of NYC's hardest working and busiest DJ- has created a space with Hidden to redefine the genre on his own terms.

One of the most interesting aspects of Hidden is the dichotomy of philosophies that drive the label - on the one hand it is one of the few labels left in North America that still presses up 12" singles and is also the weapon of choice for Sharma as a DJ. While in contrast, his label partner Dieter Krause lives in rural northwestern Germany, the two brought together solely by non-analog technologies. Far from trying to make a statement, the sense in the Hidden camp is that these decisions are always just pragmatic. The label's leadership is in many ways akin to the organic DIY indie label uprisings of the Eighties in the US. When Sharma says, "You can really only control one thing and that's your effort. If you are truly in love with the music you want to share with the world, you will find a way to express yourself - regardless of economy and music trends" it could have just as easily been uttered twenty-five years ago by another upstart music mogul in training. The spirit, the passion to tell the story, and then to work hard for it is a path only for the brave - it's no wonder that Sharma has been called "the hardest working man in dance music" by some. The sad fact is that in America the underground scene is disconnected -as it often is - and it takes a tremendous amount of will (and luck) to succeed despite being locked out of the public eye.

Thus far the gods of techno have shone upon Hidden Recording's efforts including producing music for the Heineken Global ad campaign a few years ago. But it has always seemed that the only luck any successful label gets comes from having a sterling catalog, which in this case is something the duo of Krause and Sharma seem to have in abundance. The two provide the label with the bulk of its releases and also its biggest sellers, which span everything from minimal tech house bangers to guitar laced shoegazer/downtempo explorations for the headphones. These guys have an ear for both the cinematic and energetic and plan to unleash their first full length together in the coming months of 2010. It's a watershed moment for the label and could rightly establish Hidden Recordings as one of the premier techno outlets in the US.