Dekmantel Podcast

DJ Plead is a comparatively new alias for an artist who has been busy on the Melbourne scene for years. Jarred Beeler started as part of a DJ trio, then played in a percussive dance duo known as Poison, but as DJ Plead he has made most impact. Drawing on the Arab influences that come from being half Lebanese, he layers Middle Eastern percussion on top of lithe club rhythms and the results on labels like Nervous Horizon and DECISIONS are electrifying.

This week's podcast proves he's also a master of threading together unhinged grooves and weird syncopations in the club. At times the drums are piled up so high and unevenly they feel like they're about to collapse in a heap around you, at others they're drawn out and deeper, sinking you into a hypnosis. Worldly drum sounds and intoxicating eastern melodies colour in the airwaves throughout, making this a series of glorious sonic collisions that up to one hell of a dance.

Eris Drew is one of those artists who seemed to blow up over night, but who had actually been hard at work for decades. A long-time residency at Chicago's Smart Bar brought her to international attention, and her own Motherbeat parties at various places around Europe furthered that reputation. It is there that she manages to cook up pure, unadulterated dance floor love and euphoria with hi-energy selections and a unifying sense of oneness that is put together with her own so called “orchestration” mixing techniques. An inquisitive musician and innovative recording artist, she has also just put out her debut solo EP on Interdimensional Transmissions and runs T4T LUV NRG with partner Octo Octa.

This week's mix is all of the above and more: a throbbing, impulsive and full bodied experience that serves up the most bumping house grooves but run through with the warm ambient glow of a post-rave comedown. The music feels at classic but also thoroughly contemporary: it will make you pump your fist in sheer joy, but also sends warm waves of euphoria through your body. This is the sound of the Motherbeat.

Eris on her mix:

"In a recent interview for DJ Mag I talk about my connection to the song “Secrets of Mediation” by Dutch producers Alex Dijksterhuis (Jamez) & Gaston Steenkist (Dobre). At Chicago raves in 1994 and 1995, this track revealed to me that modern dance music contains archaic ritual elements such as trance-inducing resonances, penetrating sacred drums, and language transformed into glossolalia. My DJ mix for Dekmantel is inspired by my formative dance experiences and by the intense extended sets I play at psychedelic raves such as Motherbeat and No Way Back. The mix includes bass music, progressive, breaks, house, techno, and minimal, all of which I collage, drop and scratch to put us into a tunneling trance."

Full tracklist here: dkmn.tl/270-ErisDrew

Mor Elian began DJing at parties even before she was strictly old enough. That was back home in Tel Aviv, and since then she has spent time in Berlin and Los Angeles. She now has also settled into her role as one of electro's most vital artists thanks to head-turning EPs on Delft and most often her own Fever AM, as well as recently minting Cinnaman's brand new Visible Spectrum with her Clairvoyant Frog EP. The strong independent spirit she has had since her youth led Mor to setting up LA-based party Into The Woods, and right now the music she makes and plays is just as singular as the artist herself.

This mix proves that across 90 thrilling minutes which take in many different, futuristic blends of techno and electro. There's trippy sci-fi stuff for the afterparty, dark, strobe lit bangers for the peak of the night and deeper, more stripped back sounds to keep you in the zone. The tunes race by at high speed but also come stuffed with the sort of details that keep your mind in overdrive as you ride the rugged rhythms on the seat of your pants. Strap in.

American Phase Fatale is one of the residents responsible for defining the current Berghain sound. As well as regular DJ sets in the Berlin techno dungeon, his latest album, 'Scanning Backwards' — which was released on in-house label Ostgut Ton last month — was made with the cavernous club in mind. Just like his arresting DJ sets take influence from post punk, EBM and industrial, the album also looks outside techno's usual borders: snippets of speech, "brain-penetrating instrumentation" and plenty of raw textures all inform its grooves and make for a hugely visceral listen.

On this week's mix, he serves up an uncompromising set of angular rhythms, doom laden synths and fizzing techno that is perfect for the darkest dance floors out there. Importantly, there are still nuances along the way despite the pumping machismo of it all. They keep you on the edge of your seat as the dystopian drama unfolds and all consuming bleakness draws you ever deeper into a world devoid of human life forms. It's beautiful brutality from start to finish.

It's impossible to talk about the sound of DjRUM without using the word cinematic. Whatever he does, it has a feeling of grand importance, widescreen elegance and moving emotion that elevates it way above a dance floor soundtrack. Throughout the course of his career, the UK artist has drawn on downtempo, blurred the lines between drum & bass and dubstep and always imbued his music with spoken words snippets, piano and chamber instruments. His Portrait With Firewood album was a real high-water mark in 2018, and last year his latest outing on R&S once again managed to draw on every aspect of electronic music and come up with something all his own.

His mix for us this week is a perfect ethereal rave that finds plenty of beauty in the sparse rhythms he draws on from the worlds of garage, techno and drum & bass. There is a delicacy and elegance throughout, even when the beats hit hard and fast as they do at the overdriven and manic mid point. The amen breaks come thick and fast after that, but eventually melt away to propulsive ambient soundscapes that suspend you in time and space. Blissful.

Milos Kaiser is already confirmed for Dekmantel Selectors this August, and the São Paolo selector is exactly the sort of man you want to hear playing on a sunny beach. Over the past decade he has constantly excited people with his far ranging sets of rare and unknown gems. They represent every facet of Brazil's rich musical tapestry but always become dance floor heaters in his hands. He runs his own bar, Caracol, with friends, and is known for making his own edits of the tunes he plays.

Over 70 minutes here he goes deep into a smorgasbord of synth sounds from tropical to pop, darker to more electro tinged. There are long legged and laid back grooves to get you slowly bumping, and more punchy tracks that get hands in the air and the good times flowing. All in all it makes for a joyous listen that is so warm and bright you will almost be able to feel the rays on your face and the sand between your toes.

It might well have been her set at Freerotation in summer 2018 that really got people talking about Gigsta. It was there that the hardcore heads in the crowd were all abuzz with her fresh mix of heavy bass, house funk, off kilter rhythms and kinked synths. Since then she has become more and more visible at key parties round Europe, not only as resident at Berlin's Room 4 Resistance but also through her painstakingly researched and assembled radio shows for Cashmere, where she takes cues from literature, NASA launches, spoken word pieces and plenty more.

As the eagled-eyed will know, Gigsta has already been confirmed for Dekmantel Selectors in August, but to keep us going until then she has served up a special mix for us. You never know what you'll get with the Belgian artist, it could be hard and fast, could be grime, or could be garage. Here she goes for creepy and unsettling ambiance that eventually gets contorted into warped bass music, hyperactive club, hammering techno and euphoric jungle. It shows an unrivalled command of tempo and makes for a real seat-of-your pants ride.

Nene H has been hailed as one of techno's most strikingly singular artists. In the studio she mixes up her passion for folk and religious music as well as bruising club sounds with layers of spirituality, found sound and analogue aesthetics. Despite only first getting involved in the scene in 2015, she is already at home at places like Berlin Atonal, either playing live or laying down a DJ set, and also has a masters in piano.

As a DJ she can often sound quite different to how she does in the studio: her mix here is hyperactive affair that will well and truly kick start your 2020 with brutal drum patterns and twisted electronics that take no prisoners. There's also distorted techno rap and malfunctioning club music tightly woven together in a light speed mix that somehow packs all this and more into just one hour.

Low Jack has been bringing an accessible experimentalism to club music throughout his career. The DJ and live act from France is a firm favourite on the digital arts festival circuit with a dark, tension filled and industrial tinged sound that has landed on L.I.E.S., Les Disques De La Bretagne and Trilogy Tapes and taken him to clubs like Berghain. Next to his techno he has also recently blended digital dub, dancehall and dubstep on newly self-released EPs that break all the rules and means he remains a fascinating auteur.

His mix is the perfect way to awaken yourself from a post-festive slumber: its all bristling drums and rib rattling bass, crashing hits and broken beats that fire every synapse in your body. There are trap cuts, dark dancehall bombs and hyper speed jungle rhythms all somehow stitched together into a lively selection that covers a dizzyingly diverse spectrum of sound.

Norway's Prins Thomas is a giant of an artist whose influence looms large over the whole of the Scandi-scene. The space-disco king has a sound that draws on electro, krautrock, psychedelia and prog in melodically majestic ways and has given rise to a wealth of fully realised studio albums and classy dance floor singles, mostly on Smalltown Supersound. His latest record, 2019's Ambitions, is one of his best: it found him strip things back and reinvent himself once more over the course of plenty of gently absorbing grooves and mindful moods.

As a DJ he is just as well equipped to take you on real dance floor odysseys built on ever present grooves, but coloured with melodies from the celestial realms. And that is the case on his 90 minute podcast for us, which journeys through frosty northern tundras as well as twinkling night skies with equal elan. The ups and downs along the way are subtle ones, but together they create something perfectly escapist and somehow very suited to this time of year.