Dekmantel Podcast

Proud Brooklynite Adam X is one of the most pivotal figures in techno. As a founding father of the US rave scene with his brother Frankie Bones, he played hard and fast in the early years before losing himself in industrial. Having very much driven the revival of interest in that style, he remains at the sharp edge of the scene from his current home in Berlin, where he continues to turn out raw and visceral sounds on his Sonic Groove label.

To read in depth about his backstory, check out the recent feature we did with Adam while you dive into his podcast on www.dekmantel.com. It is a timeless two hour selection that covers deeper techno as well as the sheet metal synths and hammering beats Adam is known for. Strobe lit, sweaty and grimy, it oozes the sort of realness that has always separated him from the crowd.

Austrian music obsessive Heap is someone who always digs deep into the past, but also the present. His empire includes Discus Throwers, which is a concept store that deals in special gems from the world of house, techno, synth pop and kraut, as well as his Neubau label, productions on labels like ESP Institute and Berceuse Heroique and DJ sets that can be brave and beguiling or banging and brash.

For this week’s mix, Heap keeps it deep with a selection of leggy and gently cosmic disco tracks early on. His is a thoughtful take on the genre, with expansive tracks that could be brand new or 30 years old all sitting nearly next to each other. As things grower darker and more intense later on, elements of acid, electro and proto-house all make for a colourful and late night trip.

Dea Barandana is an artist we are thrilled to see make the step from his local scene towards the international circuit. Originally from Jakarta, where he started out mixing records for a local breakdance crew, he was eventually throwing warehouse parties before ending up one island further, on Bali, where he’s a familiar face at Potato Head Beach Club and Studio Eksotika.

This mix he did for us lays out his talent for weaving together unfound rarities from then and now, connecting dots between different musical tropes of the Asian diaspora. The result is a meandering journey across forgotten recordstores and dusty crates, reminiscent of island life and the smell of kretek, to modern club music and back.

Starting off like a warm breeze, the mix quickly gears up to grooving disco and bright Asian synthpop. Further down the 100-minute trip, the journey spirals from its effervescent moods down into darker, more spiritual affairs, with compelling percussion and sturdier basslines — just before locking down with laidback, dreamlike endnote to seal it off.

Galaxian is an arresting artist who blurs the lines between many different sounds and scenes. A militant style in the booth is matched by his helmet-wearing on stage persona: he gobbles up and spits out anything from industrial to electro, EBM to synth with an impossible amount of energy and improvisation. His dark drum programming and synth eruptions soundtrack cyber attacks that are utterly visceral and unorthodox and ah hour in his presence will leave you feeling exhausted he packs so much in.

This week we have a live recording from his gig at Concrete in Paris from December last year. It’s a blistering trip through his world, a flurry of ideas, textures and genres that sound as if they are fired from a machine gun. It will get you up on your toes and keep you there, leaving you wide eyed and ready for action no matter what time of day you listen to it.

The attention the Amsterdam scene currently enjoys is, in no small part, down to the tireless work of Sandrien. She’s been there since the nineties, with residences at Trouw and now De School, close ties to Rush Hour and also through her own parties, which have been bringing the likes of DJ Nobu and Blawan to the city for years. Her uncompromising techno style has taken her around the world and to labels like Ben Sims’ Theory, amongst others. In short, she is a living local legend.

Sandrien takes a long view on this mix, starting with an escapist ambient selection that gets your attention. It transports you to a different world before the DJ puts her foot down and brings the grooves. Things remain decidedly cinematic and intergalactic over the course of the next hour, with various shades of deep techno eventually ending up in a place of ambient beauty not far from where you started. It’s a rounded mix that begs to be played over and over.

The Netherlands has been an incredibly fertile breeding ground for electronic music in recent years, and Identified Patient is the latest fascinating artist to emerge. For that reason we snapped him up for a debut on our UFO series just this month: his Signals In Snakes EP is four tracks of beguiling acid, darkwave and industrial electronics that exist in their own weird universe and come after a breakout Boiler Room show and plenty of well regarded sets at De School in Amsterdam. Always exploring new rhythms and tempos, he continues to do so with a fine entry into our mix series.

He really shows the breadth of his range here across a nearly two hour mix that starts like a soundtrack. It depicts cosmic landscapes, indigenous tribes and alien worlds through a series of sludgy rhythms and futuristic dub chuggers before more propulsive drums take you to the club. Identified Patient never hurries his work but is always moving you along, with spacious and eerie tracks, breakbeat bangers and deep minimalism all included along the way in a mix that is brilliantly evocative and otherworldly.

Deena Abdelwahed has a two way relationship with music: in her early years back home in Tunisia when she programmed nights at Nüba, she was known for introducing the likes of footwork, UK bass and kuduro along side experimental house and techno to the local scene. Meanwhile, her own music on labels like InFine has introduced European audiences to bass and techno with plenty of fascinating Arab influences. This was best showcased on her Khonnar album late last year, which came with plenty of inventive rhythms, weird sound designs and generally challenging musical ideas.

Abdelwahed’s mix for us comes ahead of her performance at Dekmantel Festival in August and showcases her ability to twist basslines and layer in spiritual ambiance to absorbing effect. It manages to be punchy and physical yet thoughtful throughout, and also comes with plenty of the Arab influences - vocals, instrumentation, rhythms - that make her work so standout.

Just last month, Canadian Jex Opolis debuted on our label with a cosmic and feel good electro EP that came washed in Italo influences. It was the latest in a long line of colourful releases—largely on his own Good Timin’ label—that have explored a timeless mix of synth pop, leftfield, house and nu disco since 2013. As someone with a background playing in bands, he knows how to properly arrange a track, which always shows, and he even uses his own voice for extra layers of personalisation.

His mix for us is a fun one: vocals ricochet around over boogie basslines, tropical percussions flails away next to glistening Casio keys and day-glo disco is never far away. House grooves take over later on and power through with more lush chords and it all makes for exactly the sort of thing you want to hear on an open-air, sun-kissed festival stage.

French trio J-Zbel keeps it low key. The unknown collective from Lyon has released exclusively on Brothers From Different Mothers since 2015, and in May this year offered up a fantastic debut album. The oddly titled Dog's Fart Is So Bad The Cat Throws Up was an eclectic double 12” mash up of rave, hardcore, breakbeats, acid and techno that is full throttle and uncompromisingly high energy. With little else to go on but for their music, it’s fair to say J-Zbel enjoy the sweat and intensity of the dance floor and are not afraid to take musical cues from outlier scenes like trance and gabber.

That lends their music a thrilling and unpredictable edge that also permeates this podcast: it’s 1 hour 40 minutes of tempo hopping, mood switching sounds that are have your hands pumping to rave one minute and your body skanking to some abstract future grime the next. It’s a refreshing and widescreen take on strobe lit styes that hits like a train.

Iranian born Mozhgan has a love of dark and ghoulish sounds that always play out when she’s on the decks. In 2011, she started her own We Are Monsters party in San Francisco and it very much went against the grain, mostly thanks to her own definitive sets which draw on 80s synths and vintage hardware as well as exotic and ethnic rhythms, cold wave sounds and industrial textures. Since then she has established herself on the global circuit with sets at cult places like Burning Man and Panorama Bar.

She will join us at Dekmantel Festival later this summer and tastes us with what to expect with this new mix. It’s a rugged and low slung affair with jerking body music and frosted synths making for an alien vibe throughout. While often abstract and desolate, there are moments of sci-fi beauty and heady depths along the way that make this mix a cinematic experience from start to finish.