Dekmantel Mix Series Archive 1-500

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Dekmantel Podcast 206 - Fatima Nov 26, 2018

Show notes

It was a long time coming, but last month Fatima finally dropped the follow up to her debut album Yellow Memories. And Yet It’s All Love—released on long time home Eglo—found the artist’s newly matured vocals taking centre stage amongst production that was slightly more paired back. It revealed her very real talents on the mic and her ability to go from buttery smooth slow jams to resoundingly chest pumping neo-soul anthems via curiously innocent lullabies and grown-up jazzy invention. Covering a wide musical and emotional scale, the record mixed up all consuming seriousness with the same sense of fun and playfulness that characterises her essential radio shows on NTS. They are treasure troves of r&b, hip hop and neo-soul that can be 20 years old or not yet released, and that’s what she serves up on her ‘Maple Motivation Mix’ here. It’s an intimate and personal listen that offers a window into the artist’s wide array of influences. Like Fatima’s own rich musical output, it variously bumps and grinds, melts your heart or empowers you, and will keep you coming back for more time and time again.

Dekmantel Podcast 205 - Specter Nov 19, 2018

Show notes

Chicago’s Specter is a maverick, but one who has remained somewhat under the radar. Over the course of twenty years, he’s continually turned out gritty house that manages to be deep yet physical. For the last eight of those he has released on Theo Parrish’s Sound Signature—a suitably unconventional home for his unconventional grooves. Most recently he excelled on his debut full length, Built to Last, which reworked house music into various colourful, experimental and bass heavy new forms. As well as rare studio skill, Spectre is a hardworking DJ who can light up a loft or jack a warehouse. On his Dekmantel mix, he decides to serve up a two hour mix that is suited to home listening. It’s all simmering, slow burning deepness to start with before gradually the drums grow more raw and angular. The mood remains reflective and thoughtful, though; a meditation on the more cerebral side of house music, which is just one of the many things Specter does so well.

Dekmantel Podcast 204 - Black Merlin Nov 12, 2018

Show notes

Like his name suggests, Black Merlin is something of a wizard. His music is drenched in worldly sounds and colourful cultures, not least his forthcoming Kosua album, a second on Island of The Gods. Inspired by his love affair with the island of Papua New Guinea, it features recordings of the local tribes, jungle sounds, wildlife and ancient dance customs so is a living and breathing document that immediately transports you to the southwestern Pacific. It comes after years of dizzyingly diverse releases on the likes of Pinkman, Mannequin and She Lost Kontrol that mix up EBM, techno, ambient and house, plus collaborative projects such as Karamka and Spectral Empire. His 90 minute mix for us is as stylish and unrestricted as you would expect, and given that we’re in Halloween month, it feels like it’s come just at the right time. Starting out with soot black apoca-disco, it traverses its way through study industrial, urban desolation and factory floors in meltdown. It’s mechanical and shadowy, but always filled with a sense of tension and suspense that keeps you enthralled.

Dekmantel Podcast 203 - Violet Nov 05, 2018

Show notes

Lisbon is enjoy plenty of time in the spotlight at the moment, not least thanks to artists like Violet, who is busy on many different fronts at once. As a lone force she producers anything from big techno breakbeats to rave tinged acid house. Next to that she’s also co-founded Radio Quântica, which is an essential platform for local underground artists and activists. She also performs as part of an all female rap group and covers classic tunes made solely by woman. Besides that, she even found time to start her own new label, Naive, this year. It should come as no surprise that such an active mind packs a lot into her 75 minute mix. Tripped out cosmic breakbeats kick things off before the drums grow more distorted and synths begin to howl as you’re dumped onto a dance floor at 3am. A subtle rave euphoria washes over the mid section before dusty breakbeats and slippery electro see things out. Despite the driving nature of the underlying drums, this is a mix that exudes warmth, soul and romance.

Dekmantel Podcast 202 - Eva Geist Oct 29, 2018

Show notes

Italian-born but Berlin-based Eva Geist doesn’t make music so much as cinematic trips. A composer, synthesiser and vocalist, she has made albums for Macadam Mambo and Elestial Sound that draw on sythwave, leftfield electronics and ambient to make for occult sonic adventures. Her mastery of analogue machinery results in enigmatic offerings than can variously be spiritual, tribal or trance inducing, but always take you into an unusual world of rarefied melodies and soft beats. Her mix for us is a very personal, living and breathing affair that was put together on a new setup. It’s a collection of jams, each recorded on a different day, and laced up with field recordings taken in glaciers in Kazakhstan during the filming of a documentary and art installation Eva is collaborating on (it’s called Baden Projekt and you can find details here https://vimeo.com/badenprojekt), as well as her voice, small acoustic instruments and some excerpts of speeches by Carmelo Bene, Paolo Barnard and Pier Paolo Pasolini. “It's basically a short novel about birth, consumerism, life as a big illusion and so on,” she explains. The resulting 45 minutes of ambient, drone, spoken word and found sounds is like a soundtrack to a movie that exists only in your mind, and is truly absorbing.

Dekmantel Podcast 201 - Andy Votel Oct 22, 2018

Show notes

Last month, Andy Votel put out his Midlife Crisis Disco Mixtape on limited cassette and it sold out in minutes. However, the English producer, designer and DJ has very kindly given us the exclusive honour of releasing the mixtape digitally, for the very first time, through our podcast series. He is, of course the man behind reissue label Finders Keepers as well as Twisted Nerve, and has released a wealth of music under various pseudonyms on labels like XL. He is someone who is utterly free from categorisation having mixed jazz and hip hop at The Hacienda, documented the history of Welsh protest music on BBC Radio 4, collaborated with Demdike Stare, Suzanne Ciani and Gruff Rhys, and produced for Badly Drawn Boy amongst a lifetime of other dizzyingly diverse projects such as presenting radio shows for Gilles Peterson and NTS. As the title suggests, his latest mixtape is focussed on outsider disco, and is made from original vinyl pressings only. Like the tens of others he has done over the years, it’s a masterclass jam packed with heat, propped up by funky drums and run through with boogie baselines or soaring strings. The tape brims with squelchy synthesiser colour and features vocals in a range of languages that lend it a worldwide feel and global appeal. It’s one for the ages, that’s for sure.

Dekmantel Podcast 200 - Surgeon Oct 15, 2018

Show notes

Time sure does fly when you’re having fun, and so it is that we’ve already raced up to podcast number 200. We’ve managed to call upon a suitably large name for the honour; someone who has very much shaped the techno scene over the course of the last 20 years and continues to excite people every time he plays. That man is Surgeon. As a performer, Birmingham’s Anthony Childs was one of the first men to embrace and exploit the possibilities of Ableton Live and Final Scratch. His mastery of that technology made his sets even more improvised and innovative, and over the years he has never compromised his vision. He plays with a sense of devastation and destruction that explores the very outer edges of what is possible, while always keeping the dance floor absolutely locked in. It’s been the same since he founded his hometown’s first techno club, House of God, at the start of the 90s. As a producer—whether solo or in celebrated collaborations with Regis as British Murder Boys or Ben Sims as Frequency 7—he seems to be getting better with age. Right from his first EP on Karl O’Connor’s Downwards in 1994, surgeon has had a hard hitting, linear style that remains to this day. Recent years saw him return to a primitive rave style and incorporate the gritty industrial influences of his youth. But in 2018 he evolved again and served up what many consider to be his best album in years. Luminosity Device features a more rhythmic, playful sense of drum programming next to his meticulously crafted synths and enthralling sense of urgency and future paranoia. The nuance in his tracks is now as intriguing as the visceral power of the kicks, and it all adds up to an album that works as well on headphones, at home, as it does on the dance floor. It’s proper techno by a proper techno head. And so is the mix he has put together for us. Over 1 hour 45 minutes, the man calls upon plenty of pivotal names from Juan Atkins and Oscar Mulero to Donato Dozzy and James Ruskin. There are plenty of twists and turns along the way, so that zoned out passages of dubbed out drums are followed by intergalactic space battles and moments of synth laden intensity. It’s a testament to Surgeon’s skills that he can take you to such far ranging corners of the techno world without ever getting lost.

Dekmantel Podcast 199 - Peaking Lights Oct 08, 2018

Show notes

October welcomes Peaking Lights to our podcast series but also our label, because on the 15th of the month the Californian electronic pop duo serve up Sand of Sea. It’s their first release of the year and a six track trip into their woozy and immersive, dubbed out electronics. It comes after a decade of Aaron Coyes and Indra Dunis and honing their sound on a broad selection of labels from Domino to 100% Silk. The husband and wife pair are known for their spellbinding live show and have put out nine LPs that mirror the shimmering horizons and long warm nights of their LA hometown. This super extended four hour jam is a comprehensive overview of what they can do. It has a global narrative that takes you to a humid African plain then on to a beach a sunset. It veers from clunky mechanical grooves to blissed out synthscapes with ease, and tempos always stay at an invitingly slow pace, so there is plenty of space to think and get lost between the beats. Summer might now be in the rear view mirror, but this mix will always bring some sunshine into your life.

Dekmantel Podcast 198 - Mathew Jonson Oct 01, 2018

Show notes

Mathew Jonson brings lovers of all forms of dance music together. His live show is one of the best in the business: an elegant techno adventure with pounding drums and well crafted synths that endlessly twist and turn through emotional highs and darker physical depths. In short, he is someone as schooled in jazz as he is electronic synthesis. He’s a master of his hardware; a human who can speak through his machines. His meticulous approach also carries over into the studio and has given rise to plenty of underground hits on his own labels as well as a fine selection of others. His mix for us this week is a 90 minute recording of his masterful live set at Dekmantel 2017. Wasting no time in getting down to business, it kicks off with classic electro and from there the killer baselines just keeping on coming, some from his own back catalogue, some from outer space and some from the future. It’s a mix with a compelling sense of momentum and one that traverses sounds and scenes with ease.

Dekmantel Podcast 197 - VRIL Sep 24, 2018

Show notes

VRIL is one of the most reliable artists in techno. He emerged with a style that was his own and has pretty much stuck to it ever since. Eight years after his debut, that loopy, dubby take on the genre sounds as vital as ever, and most often comes on labels like Delsin, Dystopian and Giegling. A live set from the German is just as floor facing and effective. It will veer from deeper moments of intensity to trippy, off kilter drum patterns that are designed to keep you moving. Here he serves up a perfectly mix that syncs perfectly with the changing season: it’s all warm and cuddly from the off, with cosy dub techno cocooning you in an inviting sound world that slowly transitions into more twisted and straight up techno. Whether the drums are thumping or laying more horizontal, there is an absorbing intensity to VRIL's work that proves he is someone who has a real mastery of his art.

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