Dekmantel Podcast

By choice, @mark_seven keeps a low profile. But the truth is, he is one of those low-key but influential characters you really should know. The Stockholm-based Brit is a busy record dealer and online store owner as well as DJ and producer with a penchant for timeless disco and house. He showcases this in his productions, but also via his much-loved Parkway and Parkwest labels which explore both the soulful and more punchy sides of disco and early house. Loosely defined by raw drums, sweet Italo melodies and hints of early garage, this work has made him a firm favourite of everyone from Hunee to Jamie Tiller to Eris Drew.

After 30 years in the game, there aren't many aspects of house and disco he hasn't explored. All that feeds into his glorious mix for us, which is in celebration of the 10-year Parkway Records anniversary in mid-October. It is packed with happy, classy tunes and big vocals from across the ages. The crunchy drum textures and tinny melodies, warm basslines and infectious claps all transport you to a utopian dance floor packed with smiling faces and loose limbs. It's a life-affirming selection that will uplift and enrich your soul.

https://soundcloud.com/mark_seven

https://soundcloud.com/parkway-records

Darwin (@darwinspec) juggles many different roles in dance music as well as she juggles her records in the DJ booth. The Canadian-born, Berlin-based artist runs her own REEF parties at Berghain, and has nurtured a wealth of emerging talents on her SPE:C label. She is also the founder of Clean Scene, a climate action collective that wants to explore a more sustainable future for dance music. They recently authored a stark report about the industry's carbon footprint, which you can read through cleanscene.club/report.pdf.

Darwin's sound is rooted in various UK styles, from bass to dubstep, garage to breakbeat. That is evident in the 100-minute mix she lays down for us this week. It opens with thoughts about environmentalism and some indigenous jungle recordings before grinding through chunky Afro drum patterns and supersized bass. The pressure builds throughout, the cavernous rhythms grow ever more muscular as the urge to snake your body becomes overwhelming. It's a perfectly balanced, well-controlled mix that showcases the irresistible power of heavyweight bass music.

Techno has been reclaimed and refined in the last few years. For Ghanaian-American Discwoman associate Akua (@akua_b), that means a deep dedication to bringing forth narratives about the genre's history. It's about original, authentic and rebellious old school values of the sort that Underground Resistance defined so early on. It's about breaking modern expectations with a fresh sense of attitude. Her recontextualisation of techno centres its long lineage for contemporary audiences. All this most often plays out in Akua's blazing sets, most often during the late-night and early morning hours of the clubs around her New York City hometown. They find her transmute 90s nostalgia while connecting the dots between past and present. "Playing fast feels cathartic," she says, "and helps me deal with the nostalgia I have for a time that I never got to experience but remember and connect with so fondly.”

This week's mix is a testament to that: it starts with 1994's 'Global Warning' from the late great K-Hand and goes on to cover decades of history at warp speed. There are frenetic layers of percussion and hammering kick drums, bouncing bass lines and arresting rave synths all threaded together into something hugely powerful and muscular. It is only a DJ with Akua's sense of control that can serve up a chaotic collision of sound in such a compelling way.

Tracklist

K-Hand - Global Warning [Warp, 1994]

Voltage 9 - Untitled B1 - Candema [Synewave, 1994]

Drax (Thomas P. Heckmann) - Search [Trope Recordings, 1998]

Mike Dearborn - Warning [Majesty, 1994]

Gene Hunt - Juno 106 [Contaminated Muzik, 1998]

NYCO - Plasticity [ESP Collective, 2021]

DJ Shufflemaster - 808 Cosmetics [Self-Released, 2018]

Mike Dunn - Damn You All [Trax Records, 1994]

DJ Powerout - Lift [Synewave, 1995]

DJ Slugo - Taris Sleeps Wild [Dance Mania, 1995]

DJ Rush - Control Yourself [Djax-Up-Beats, 1999]

Fuzz Face (DJ Hyperactive + Woody McBride) - New Ones [Communique, 1996]

DJ Slip - Bushwick Birds [Kanzleramt, 2001]

DJ Hyperactive - Get In [4 Track Recordings, 2008]

Joey Beltram - Caliber [Warp, 1994]

Surgeon - THX-1139 (Level) [1996]

Creeper - Spoke [Cluster Records, 1997]

DJ Jes - True Honesty [Contaminated Muzik, 1998]

Tevatron - Molekule [Re-load Records, 1998]

Jana Clemen - Momentum [Convex, 2001]

Decoder - Populations [Self-Released, 2021]

Unknown Force - Internal Drive [430 West, 1995]

Bios - Basic Black [Black Nation, 1998]

DJ Apollo - Hooligan Stomp [Head In The Clouds, 1996]

DJ Genderfluid - Dirty Funker [Wet Trax, 2021]

Woody McBride + DJ T-1000 - Test Three [Generator Records, 1995]

Fumiya Tanaka - Micro One [Torema, 1995]

Max Watts - Ichi 3 [ESP Collective, 2021]

DJ Rashad - Acid Bit (Feat. Addison Groove) [Hyperdub, 2013]

@peverelist is one of those artist’s whose legacy is already assured. His labels Punch Drunk and Livity Sound have been at the cutting edge of their own unique musical niches for more than a decade. Fusing their native Bristol’s history of dub, sound system culture and bass, their output deals in endlessly fascinating genre mutations that continue to push electronic music forward. Peverelist’s own captivating rhythms and precise sound designs have always been at the heart of that, bridging the gap between hypnotic techno and heavy bass.

And that’s the path he heads down on this week’s mix. The one hour selection weaves a thread through all the sounds you’d find in his orbit - stripped back beat science and Gqom, UK funky and mesmeric dub techno. Always stripped back but never devoid of character, this is physical yet meditative music that taps into that deep desire we all have inside: to move to the sound of pounding drums.

American Kareem Ali (@kmx19) came to dance music late but has very quickly made a big impression. The formally trained trumpeter has a fascination with the cosmos that colours all his music. Over nearly 50 releases he has proven himself adept at making everything from sleek electro to deep house, driving techno to cinematic ambient. The breakout producer also runs his own CosmoFlux label which he hopes will one day become a non-profit that hosts day parties aimed towards young people of colour.

In the mix for us this week, he laces together a smooth and seductive set of richly musical house grooves. It is songs that he is playing mostly, with proper chords and gorgeous vocals that always enrich the soul. Ali is a devout man who is averse to dance music's tendency towards hedonism, but his selections here truly uplift. There is a spiritual aspect to what he does that warms the heart and brings joy in a different sort of way.

@cinema-royale is a DJ who plays flawlessly, no matter the setting or style of music he reaches for. As a lifelong lover and collector of film soundtracks, he likes to take the weird and make it wonderful; to make out-of-context moments into transcendental delights. As one of Amsterdam's deepest diggers, he can put records together that no one else can and is part of the core Dekmantel family. In February, he put together his Profondo Nero compilation for the label and made connections between soulful disco, breaks, electro-rap, Balearic, boogie and much more in ways that only he could.

This week he takes us deep across a superb two-hour mix. Rather than following the traditional arc of a DJ set, Cinema Royale is happy to pump the party with a glossy retro-boogie gem then pull back to dubby disco vibe. His sounds are always bright and big-hearted, the grooves uplifting and feel good. Like any decent movie, this is a fluid but unpredictable mix that will have you coming back for more time and time again.

This instalment of our annual Selectors Podcasts series comes from Mika Oki, who is probably best described as a sensory artist. Heavily influenced by a background in sculpture and electro-acoustic music, her work frequently revolves around weaving together sound and vision – simultaneously creating and exploring intangible spaces, be it in installations, performance pieces, music, or mixes. And when it comes to the latter, Mika Oki has proven, time and time again, that an amalgamation of grime, reggaeton and dancehall might just be an essential component of a well-crafted, esoteric soundscape.

What you’ll hear in this industrial and organic mix partly derives from Mika Oki’s friends, producers and residents at LYL radio, as it happens that she recently opened the third, Brussels-based branch of the Belgian webradio together with a collection of dedicated musicians. Combined with sounds reminiscent of “broken machinery” and a “glitched, collapsing world”, we are left with a celestial selection that converges across the realm of sonic experimentation and - somewhat otherworldly - club rhythms. One thing is for certain: this mix will leave you wondering what you were doing before you started tuning in, once it’s over.

@anastasiakristensen has been offering a new definition of techno for the last five years. When she plays, she plays from the heart, with unbridled energy and a rare sense of colour. She can bang out brutal beats then pivot in an instant to hi-NRG synth riffs. She'll mash up old school breaks and bleeps then rave to the future on a wave of electro. Her productions are just as impactful on labels like Houndstooth and Arcola. Yet despite the seriousness of her skills and the intensity of her sounds, she always plays with a smile.

The Danish DJ pulls no punches on this week's mix. It seems to encapsulate her every side - peak time festival rave as well as more nuanced back room selections. What unites it all are the drums, which can always be felt as much as they can be heard. Sometimes they bounce under a sparse synth line. Midway through they are raw, flat-footed, unrelenting. Towards the end, they unravel into a flurry of jungle breakbeats. It's not easy to play such high-energy music but keep things dynamic, yet Anastasia does it with style.

Karen "KG" Nyame (@karennyamekg) has been dubbed the “Goddess of Rhythm,” and for good reason. Her body-popping sounds draw from restless African polyrhythms, the high-energy drum patterns of diasporic club music and the boom of UK bass. KG herself is as restless as her music - she works as a presenter on Capital Radio, produces for labels like Black Acre and Future Bounce, and teaches at her own music workshops in collaboration with Red Bull Music.

KG continues to twist up the world's many musical cultures with this week's podcast. Although she can at times go dark and heavy, here she tends to draw for deeper moments. There are passages of super silky and vocal deep house, elastic drum tracks and infectious UK funky tunes that are all seamlessly fused together into something with a seductive sense of flow.

Each year, we ask a few artists from the Dekmantel Selectors line-up to deliver a mix in anticipation of the new edition. Who could be a better fit than DJ Python to re-initiate this tradition?

Even before Dulce Compañia, which introduced the Python alias to the world, Brian Piñeyro has been providing a wide array of unique sounds to those who care to listen. To be fair, he makes it hard not to care, and also to describe his ambling, dembow-inspired rhythms as something other than ‘deep reggaeton’. But if Piñeyro has taught us one thing, it is that music is just moods flowing into one another. Sometimes, the mood is a percussive therapy session, and sometimes it warps drone-driven electronica, tingly synths, and steely dancehall.

It is unsurprising that this mix is all about the mood too. A 60-minute journey across genuinely emotive songs and honeyed hymns. In his words, it’s just about “enjoying the time with people around you, whatever shape the people or the time may take”. When listening to this mix, keep in mind DJ Python’s approach to making soup: you can only really do it well if you allow yourself to move beyond the recipe. The only thing left to do is let go and get locked in.