Dekmantel Podcast

Territroy is a coming together of long time techno innovator Stathis Kalatzis and Panagiotis Melidis, who is best known as Larry Gus from his work on DFA. This new collaboration explores the similarities and differences between the two distinctive artists: the club focussed drums and physicality of the former, and the meticulous song craft and chord structure of the latter. It has resulted in a brand new album, Skulls & Plants—due in June on our own UFO label—that explores rugged rhythm, dark internal spaces and twisted synth work that is a full of beautiful contrasts.

That distinctive duality and sense of split personality is clear to see in the mix they have put together for us. And few in the series have started as wildly, with freeform jazz expressionism bursting out of the speakers before dying away to reveal a loose and tropical rhythm littered with percussion and hand drums. Looseness and, frankly, weirdness, characterises the next couple of hours as psyched-out synths and manic drumming, computer meltdowns and more radical jazz stylings all intertwine with each other in truly beguiling fashion. If you like your music to be challenging and rule breaking, this is the one for you.

Today we’re all super hyped for for Lente Kabinet this weekend so to get us even more excited we’ve got Job Jobse making his entry to the series. He will play a closing set at the festival and as resident at De School is a master for serving up the perfect record at the perfect time. Initially a slow burner, he’s long been loved by Amsterdam locals for his richly melodic take on house, techno, Italo and disco, and himself is happy to call it trance.

It’s certainly a spell being and emotional style that characterises his work here. With something of an old school slant, there are stiff vocal cuts and robotic grooves that slowly loosen up and turn to more hands in the air and zoned out fair before getting more sci-fi and occult later on. As ever with Jobse, it’s feel good and fun without being obvious.

After a few years bubbling under, Cera Khin could well be about to breakthrough. And few deserve it more than the Tunisian born, Berlin based artist as she is busy on many different fronts, from hosting radio shows on NTS and Noods to running her own LazyTapes label. It has put out music she has made with Ossia as well as solo 12”s from Peder Mannerfelt, but her has not as yet showcased the full breadth of her tastes which range from Afro to Egyptian grooves, grime, rave and ambient.

This mix is just as wild and full on from the off, but more directly focussed on the dance floor. High energy techno ranges from mutant to acid to hardcore, with corrugated ghetto funk and euphoric rave all mix in with tight and technical skills. It’s a blistering introducing to how Khin sounds in the club and is a great way to kick start your week.

There is an effectiveness and simplicity to Mall Grab’s house music

that very quickly made him a star. The artist from an Australian town

makes tracks as dusty as homeland, but imbued with feel good melodies,

irresistible drums and smart samples that elevated them above pure

tools. This raw, instinctive, unfussy sound has found him on labels

like Looking For Trouble as well as the Steel City Discs label he runs

with Jarred Kennedy and Jackson Fitzsimmons. Back in February he

stepped out with an EP under his own name in a mission of

“self-discovery” and it’s a journey the world continues to be closely

tuned in to.

His mix is a high octane selection of brilliantly physical sounds.

From supersized house to throwback breakbeats, he slams it all

together with a fist pumping efficiency that means two hours race by

in a flash. It’s a fun mix, too, with old school rave flavours, saw

tooth stabs and bumping kicks all brimming with the sort of life that

makes Mall Grab such an appealing and accessible talent.

Kampire has been bringing the authentic sound of East Africa to Europe for a few years now. She was born in Uganda and raised in Zambia but paints a weird and wonderful musical picture that draws on Congolese rhythms, tropical bass and Afro-pop. Outside of music this core member of Uganda’s Nyege Nyege collective is a writer and activist who is fighting marginalisation and oppression and has an infectious energy that carries over onto stage as she platforms various underrepresented sounds, scenes and artists.

Her punch one hour mix is a succinct snapshot of her sound. It takes us direct to her African heartland through a series poly-rhythmic beats and tumbling basslines that cannot fail to get you pump up and wiggling your behind. From restlessly energetic tracks to sun-kissed township sounds via hyper-driven futurism it’s a white knuckle ride that will have you on the edge of your seat.

Nu Guinea came together over a love of studio jam sessions. The Berlin based Italians fuse live instrumentals and synthesisers that journey to far corners fo the musical world, from weird disco to exotica, world grooves via ethno rhythms. Their most adventurous work has come in the form of albums on their own NG Records as well as Early Sounds Recordings, one of which found them rewire original Tony Allen drum recordings with their own jazz-funk vibes.

In the mix for us this week they stir up a steamy summer session of boogie bass, township funk and squelchy synth goodness. It’s 90 minutes of storytelling music that speaks of a lifetime of digging deep into local sounds and scenes and stitching them all together with the sort of underlying grooves that transcend boundaries and bring people together under the sun.

OKO DJ is a core member of a few key collectives: the first is the Brothers From Different Mothers label she has been signed to, and the second is LYL Radio, where she heads up the Paris department and hosts the monthly Synchronisme ou Barberie with the Bruits de la Passion crew, as well as her own women-only show Pu$$y Nightmare. She is utterly diverse in the music she plays, which ranges from doom laden psych to 80s synth to cold body music via futuristic soundscapes. Mixing with a focus on vibe and feeling rather than scene or style, she is freed up to go wherever the music takes her.

And so it is that her mix starts with an energised spoken word monologue then transitions to experimental beats, spooky synth tracks and jungle all within the first fifteen minutes. Dark and foreboding passages are often offset by more exotic moments of calming ambiance and for every frazzled synth and blizzard of drums there is a restorative dub moment to reset the mood. Such a series of highs and lows, darks and lights is not often found in the same set, and what’s what sets OKO DJ apart.

A true student of world music, specifically scenes across West Africa, Auntie Flo’s music is an always authentic distillation of afro drums and rhythms. His latest album was the finest example of that and featured collaborators from Senegal, Cuba and London who all added a true sense of character to his meticulous production. The tracks ranged from broken beat to string laced soul and featured found sounds from Moroccan markets and bustling townships that took you on a truly global adventure.

His mix, of course, travels just as far and wide and plays out like an audio diary that tells a thousand stories. There's gorgeous instrumental fair setting the scene and sojourns into heavy drums that’ll have you in a trance psychedelic melting pots of intoxicating synths and wind instruments and steamy and menace, it takes you places you’ll likely never have been before.

Chinese born Tzusing has spent time in Chicago, Singapore and Taiwan and “this condition of dislocation” is what informs his music. It is a brash mix of industrial textures, harsh broken techno and subversive pop, trap and rap that is all blurred into one borderless offering that mirrors his own personal intersections. That music has come on LIES since 2011 and has given rise to standout LP 東方不敗 in 2017 that lead to shows on Boiler Room, Dommune and at Berghain.

He was quiet on the release front in 2018, but has started this year with a new split EP on Pan, and now offers us a musical catch up ahead of him playing at Dekmantel Festival later in the year. Over the course of seventy minutes he jumps around restlessly, but somehow his sounds remain united by shiny metallic surfaces whether he’s mixing in Asian pop, whirring computer sounds in meltdown or horror-core. To us, it sounds like a futuristic soundtrack to some hyper urban metropolis that’s on the brink of collapse, and it’s genuinely compelling.

Mike Parker, you would assume, is a perfectionist. His techno is meticulous, his grooves as hypnotic as any. Over the course of two decades he has honed in on his vision with ever increasing accuracy. He manages to get huge amounts of detail into his tunes that elevates them above purely functional material and lands him on labels like Semantica, Prologue and Tresor in both EP and LP format.

The American is just as deep and powerful as a DJ, even without the use of kick drums. And that’s the path he follows over the course of one absorbing hour here, laying out a cinematic journey into space that is propelled by ambient synths and sci-fi motifs that set real scenes and have a real sense of narrative. At times it is blissful, at others more unnerving, but rarely will you hear an ambient mix as coherent and compelling as this.