Techno innovator Jonah Sharp, better known as Spacetime Continuum, is putting finishing touches on an album he plans to release this summer.

"It's definitely a progression," Sharp said from his San Francisco home studio. "I'm using live musicians and a bit more improv."

Sharp will release the album on his Reflective Records, which has yet to lock a national distributor. Spacetime Continuum fulfilled a five-record deal with Astralwerks with 1999's Double Fine Zone.

"I'm glad to be off Astralwerks," Sharp said. "The label changed drastically from when I signed on. Now they're doing this rock-dance thing, Primal Scream and such. It's a new genre, the Americanized version of what Astralwerks used to be."

Sharp also hinted at his movement away from what has become the U.S. electronic-music scene, noting that for the first time in its 15-year history, he intentionally skipped the Winter Music Conference, an annual dance-music industry gathering in Miami Beach, Fla.

Aside from his untitled upcoming album, Sharp is recording a track for Ubiquity Recordings' No Categories series, which has featured DJ Greyboy, Slide Five and The Automator, with Kool Keith, on past compilations.

A London native and trained jazz drummer, Sharp moved to the U.S. in 1992 and released his debut, Alien Dreamtime, on Astralwerks the following year. The album, a live collaboration with author Terrence McKenna and didgeridoo player Stephen Kent, is a classic techno recording. His 1996 release Emit Ecaps is considered a landmark of organic ambient electronic music.