Sara Landry releases Divine Intervention, a 14-track album that pulls hard techno into psytrance

Sara Landry has released Divine Intervention, her second album, on her own label HEKATE Records. It landed on 16 October, two months after she announced it in August with the single Angel Dust, and it follows Spiritual Driveby, the 2024 debut that cemented her as one of the defining names in the current wave of hard techno.

This is not a straight sequel. Across 14 tracks, Landry pushes the sound she is known for into psytrance, psy techno, hard bounce and hardstyle, a blend she has been testing in her live sets for a while. The album opens with its title track, a psytrance cut made with Electric Universe, the German project founded in Hamburg in 1991 that Landry has credited as a mentor in her psytrance work. The last advance single, Awakening, pointed the same way.

The guest list mixes peers and newer names. Hands Up with Alt8 and Shake That came out as singles, as did Angel Dust, a high tempo collaboration with teenage producer Alex Farell. Elsewhere there is Energy with Ali James, Expansion with Aaron Hibell, Decon with Godtripper and the track Interesting, before Feel 4 U with Alt8 and Saint Monet closes the record. Landry has described the album as being about bringing people together to dance.

For DJs, the interesting part is the tempo and genre bridge. Hard techno sets have been flirting with trance, bounce and psy for a couple of years, and an album from one of the scene's biggest names that leans fully into that crossover gives selectors a batch of tools that sit between the two worlds. Expect several of these tracks in peak time sets over the winter.

For artists and managers, the release is also a case study in the artist label model. HEKATE gives Landry control over the release calendar, the collaborators and the A&R direction, and it lets her bring newer producers onto a big release rather than handing that role to an outside label. If you run a hard techno project with a growing audience, the question of when to start your own imprint is worth asking well before your second album, not after it.