Home › Guides › Melodic Techno Like Tale Of Us
Hear it now
Press play.
This is BALIMORE — written, produced and mixed by Steven Ran Cohen. Full tracks, no sign-up, no download. Four minutes is enough to know whether this is your sound.
- Lane
- Cinematic melodic techno
- Tempo
- 118 – 126 BPM
- Signature
- Space used as an instrument
- Vocals
- Rare, treated and pitched
Two things stated plainly before anything else. This page is not affiliated with the artist it discusses, is not endorsed by them, and sells nothing — no tickets, no merchandise. For shows and tickets, go to that artist’s own official site or their announced ticketing partner and nowhere else. And my information has a cutoff: labels, line-ups and rosters move, so read every name here as a direction to search in rather than a current fact.
Restraint is the technique
Most melodic techno adds. This corner of it subtracts. A record in this lane will often run eight bars with nothing but a kick, a single sustained note and a long reverb tail — and that emptiness is the point, because it makes the next element feel enormous without the element itself being loud.
Texture over melody. The lead is frequently not a tune at all but a treated sound: a string sample pitched down, a vocal stretched past recognition, a room recording. You remember the atmosphere rather than a hook you could hum.
Delayed resolution. Where a club record resolves every sixteen bars, these hold tension well past the point of comfort — sometimes never fully releasing it. That is why this music works on headphones and at 3am and tends not to work as a single.
A tempo floor, not a ceiling. Often 118 to 124, slower than the rest of the lane. The slower tempo is what gives the reverb tails room to breathe; push the same arrangement to 132 and the tails overlap and the space collapses.
Where the lane continues
Mind Against and Adriatique sit closest. Innellea, Mathame and Colyn work adjacent ground. For the heavier, more festival-sized version of the same harmony, ARTBAT and Kevin de Vries. For the analogue, hardware-driven cousin, Stephan Bodzin.
What to search instead of the name
Cinematic techno, melodic techno 120 BPM, ambient techno extended mix. Searching “emotional techno” returns everything; searching a tempo returns this.
And, in the interest of being straight with you
BALIMORE is my own project — I write, produce and mix all of it myself as Steven Ran Cohen. I am not going to claim it belongs beside the name at the top of this page; that artist has spent years in rooms I have not played. What I will say is that it is built in the same lane with the same arrangement logic, the player above is free, and four minutes will tell you more than any comparison I could write.
BALIMORE sets
Continuous 20–80 minute mixes, written, produced and mixed by Steven Ran Cohen.
- Best Hits Psytrance 2027 — The Last Light1:20 · psytrance
- No Borders After Darkafro & latin
- Techno House Best Mix 2026 — Project Xpeak time
- Tech House Mix — Time To Shine Againtech house
- YouTubeplaylist
Questions people actually ask
What genre is Tale Of Us?
Melodic techno at its most cinematic — usually 118 to 126 BPM, sparse arrangements, treated textures in place of hooks, and tension that resolves late or not at all.
What is the Afterlife sound?
A restrained, filmic strain of melodic techno: slower tempos, long reverb tails, space used deliberately, and vocals treated as texture rather than as lyrics. Space and patience define it more than any particular chord.
What artists sound like Tale Of Us?
Closest neighbours include Mind Against, Adriatique, Innellea, Mathame and Colyn; for the larger-room version, ARTBAT and Kevin de Vries. Rosters change, so treat any list as a search direction.
Why does this music sound slower than other techno?
Because it usually is — 118 to 124 BPM rather than 128 and up. The slower tempo leaves room for long reverb tails, which is where the sense of space comes from.