Dekmantel Podcast

Tutu is someone who people speak about with a real sense of reverence despite the fact she very much remains in the shadows of the scene. The reason? Her electrifying DJ sets, which are brilliantly experimental, brave and adventurous in the way they pay no attention to rules or traditions. The Spaniard born Gemma Planell plays anything from IDM to ambient, to grime, bass and plenty of hard to define sounds in between, all with a sense of precision and dexterity that few could match.

After impressing at our festival as well as on Boiler Room, Red Light Radio and at Sonar, she now makes a much anticipated entry into our mix series. It starts in typically brazen fashion with a monologue about the power of silence and then, a passage of silence. A giant fog horn then gets things underway again and you're carried through ambient and neo-classical, experimental minimalism and hellish techno. Weird rhythms and odd sonic textures are constantly being served up into a brilliantly mind-bending whole.

Oceanic makes distinctly modern house and techno with attention grabbing synths and lithe sound design. The Dutchman's production is often quirky and curious and finds him bringing plenty of subtly inventive new ideas to his grooves. They have come on the likes of Nous'klaer Audio, while last year he put out a live recording of one of his many sets at Amsterdam's De School. It was an experimental ambient mix from the club's auditorium and this week he starts in a similar fashion before getting down to his more dance floor orientated sound.

The mix races up to speeds of 150bpm, often with hyperactive drum programming and day glo synths lighting up the airwaves. The whole thing races by like a high speed hallucination, a trip to another dimension that somehow never sounds like house, or techno, or anything in between. It is genre-fluid, thrillingly unusual music littered with alien lifeforms and cyborg funk of the highest order.

Chicago born @Antenes is a Brooklyn based synth obsessive. She builds her own modulars and then sets them to the future to cook up rough edged warehouse tracks that are gritty and bleakly atmospheric, as well as more textured, detailed ambient work. She has done installations at Moogfest as well as playing as far afield as China, Colombia and Japan, and has appeared on LIES, Silent Season, Bunker NY and Mord. She DJs as well as playing live, has roots in goth and industrial as well as noise from her early years playing guitar, but also has a real love of techno, electro and experimental.

Her darkly absorbing mix for us this week includes tracks from Electric Indigo, Stephanie Merchak, Fjader, Oisel, Rrose, Lonefront, DJ ESP, Erica Mar, Wata Igarashi, Silent Servant, Ewa Justka, Bergsonist and Uun. It reflects her interest in a healthy amount of ominous dance hypnagogia while also drawing from a large pool of influences from the experimental to her roots in the Midwest. “The ESP track in there has some weird filtering and panning with the crunchy drums for example,” she says, “I love hearing how raw it is”.

French born but Amsterdam based for almost 20 years, Kléo draws on her work as a visual artist when she's painting colourful musical landscapes in the DJ booth. She also takes the same approach when programming soul, jazz and boogie at Café Belgique. It is a homely space that suits her heartfelt sounds, while her Red Light Radio show has become synonymous with music that is just as sensitive. After appearances at both Lentekabinet and Dekmantel Festival before now, she finally brings her bright and beautiful approach to our mix series.

Over the course of two hours she delves deep into lots of cuddly strains of house music from deep and jazzy to romantic, melodic and late night. Her tender touch draws you in close and keeps you there with lots of warm chords, pillowy pads and plenty of love struck grooves. This is one perfectly suited to long winter nights and snuggling up with close friends.

Many people have an NTS show, but few are as closely attached to the London station as much as DEBONAIR. A key part of the team in its initial days, she has not only become a much loved host, but as Programme Director in the station's first year she helped to make the station the vital and vibrant cultural hub that it is. She is an adventurous DJ who rides rough punk basslines, gnarly electro and EBM as well as various party starting house and techno styles. That ability has taken her to headline sets at cult clubs like De School, DC10 and Panorama Bar and now our podcast series.

It's a mix that very much does its own thing and starts off on a high energy tip with plenty of punchy drums and flailing synths making you immediately cut loose. Things only grow more intense from there with as DEBONAIR explores techno and electro from many different angles - angry and coarse, spaced out and deep, thumping and futurist. This is the sound of a DJ in full flow, going with her instincts and very much keeping you on the edge of your seat and guessing at what might come next.

Last month, the Parisian duo of Guido Minisky and Hervé Carvalh aka Acid Arab took us on another absorbing musical tour with their latest album Jdid on Crammed Discs. Typically widescreen in influences, it is a real melting pot of sounds, melodies, percussion, strings and vocals from all across eastern music that bring new character to tried and tested house and techno rhythms. The Acid Arab sound is a daring collision of worlds but one this pair have managed to pull off better than anyone.

And that is the case on their far-flung mix for us: it's an colourful one that takes you from a bustling African market one moment to a dirty warehouse the next and on to dusty dunes and expansive river banks, all with a sense of cohesion that somehow makes complete sense. The tempos remain slow and unhurried, but the mix itself is always on the move.

Plaid's techno is some of the most thoughtful out there, and the way

the British pair deliver it is often just as interesting. Take

Ed Handley and Andy Turner's latest album, Polymer, which came with its

own interactive web environment and encouraged us to think about the

role artificial substances play in our lives. Musically it was

a harder-edged mix of broken techno and heavy snares, but still offered

the sort of technicality and emotion that has always stood the Warp

duo apart.

In their mix for us they put all their many years of know-how into a

timeless selection of tense and engaging electronic sounds. It touches

on far-gazing and futuristic techno, melancholic ambient passages and

onto scintillatingly melodic IDM and twisted jungle. It's a real

rollercoaster from two jedis of the scene.

One of the many highlights of this year's Lente Kabinet was a radiant

set from Barbara Boeing. It brimmed with music from her homeland of

Brazil and spanned everything from funk to synth, pop to soul. After

many years building up her digital archives, it was only a couple

years ago that Boeing decided to start collecting vinyl in order to

open up new musical worlds and challenge herself as a DJ. By now she

is skilled at bringing together disparate and sometimes almost

un-mixable sounds into one absorbing tapestry, and can often be found

doing so at the Alter Disco night she runs in Curitiba with best

friend Phil Mill.

Coming off the back of her recent European tour she has put together a

mix of superbly easy listening South American sounds from the worlds

of AOR, pop, soul and tropicalia. Slowly working its way through the

gears, the lively percussion gradually makes way for more propulsive

house style drums that pump the dance floor with distinctly Latin

overtones. It's a classy and uplifting way to start your week.

re:ni's secret weapon is the way she plays with rhythm with such ease.

Whether banging 130bpm club tracks or nailing down slick UK techno,

keeping it deep with 100bpm rollers freaking you out with acid she is

a devilishly dexterous DJ. Because of this she has become an NTS

regular, firm favourite at places like De School and Dimensions and

counts Timedance boss Batu and the Livity Sound crew as fans.

In the mix for us she serves up all sorts of futurist beats that are

wired up with electronics or stripped back to more haunting and

hypnotic sound worlds. Reni's ability to manipulate rhythm and

texture, time and space is utterly thrilling and finds her go from

slowed down dub to high octane minimalism and on to jungle with ease

over the course of this slick 90 minute selection.

Cleveland bridges many different musical divides. He is a DJ, producer and party promoter from Luxembourg but based in Brussels, and in all those disciplines likes to focus more on mood and texture than specific genres. He has a sound that is thought provoking and complex but never too academic, and has explored the deeper, more synth heavy end of the dance spectrum onlabels like Hivern Discs, WHITE and ESP Institute.

Across ninety minutes here he offers up lovably loose grooves that range from musical and lavish to more heads down and propulsive. Tripped out house bleeds into twisted techno and floating ambient laced grooves drift next to minimal classics, all in the sort of story telling fashion that also defines his excellent shows on Red Light Radio. Heady yet engaging, Cleveland's sound is very much deserving of your attention.