Dekmantel Podcast

Italian-born but Berlin-based Eva Geist doesn’t make music so much as cinematic trips. A composer, synthesiser and vocalist, she has made albums for Macadam Mambo and Elestial Sound that draw on sythwave, leftfield electronics and ambient to make for occult sonic adventures. Her mastery of analogue machinery results in enigmatic offerings than can variously be spiritual, tribal or trance inducing, but always take you into an unusual world of rarefied melodies and soft beats.

Her mix for us is a very personal, living and breathing affair that was put together on a new setup. It’s a collection of jams, each recorded on a different day, and laced up with field recordings taken in glaciers in Kazakhstan during the filming of a documentary and art installation Eva is collaborating on (it’s called Baden Projekt and you can find details here https://vimeo.com/badenprojekt), as well as her voice, small acoustic instruments and some excerpts of speeches by Carmelo Bene, Paolo Barnard and Pier Paolo Pasolini. “It's basically a short novel about birth, consumerism, life as a big illusion and so on,” she explains. The resulting 45 minutes of ambient, drone, spoken word and found sounds is like a soundtrack to a movie that exists only in your mind, and is truly absorbing.

Last month, Andy Votel put out his Midlife Crisis Disco Mixtape on limited cassette and it sold out in minutes. However, the English producer, designer and DJ has very kindly given us the exclusive honour of releasing the mixtape digitally, for the very first time, through our podcast series. He is, of course the man behind reissue label Finders Keepers as well as Twisted Nerve, and has released a wealth of music under various pseudonyms on labels like XL. He is someone who is utterly free from categorisation having mixed jazz and hip hop at The Hacienda, documented the history of Welsh protest music on BBC Radio 4, collaborated with Demdike Stare, Suzanne Ciani and Gruff Rhys, and produced for Badly Drawn Boy amongst a lifetime of other dizzyingly diverse projects such as presenting radio shows for Gilles Peterson and NTS.

As the title suggests, his latest mixtape is focussed on outsider disco, and is made from original vinyl pressings only. Like the tens of others he has done over the years, it’s a masterclass jam packed with heat, propped up by funky drums and run through with boogie baselines or soaring strings. The tape brims with squelchy synthesiser colour and features vocals in a range of languages that lend it a worldwide feel and global appeal. It’s one for the ages, that’s for sure.

Time sure does fly when you’re having fun, and so it is that we’ve already raced up to podcast number 200. We’ve managed to call upon a suitably large name for the honour; someone who has very much shaped the techno scene over the course of the last 20 years and continues to excite people every time he plays. That man is Surgeon. As a performer, Birmingham’s Anthony Childs was one of the first men to embrace and exploit the possibilities of Ableton Live and Final Scratch. His mastery of that technology made his sets even more improvised and innovative, and over the years he has never compromised his vision. He plays with a sense of devastation and destruction that explores the very outer edges of what is possible, while always keeping the dance floor absolutely locked in. It’s been the same since he founded his hometown’s first techno club, House of God, at the start of the 90s.

As a producer—whether solo or in celebrated collaborations with Regis as British Murder Boys or Ben Sims as Frequency 7—he seems to be getting better with age. Right from his first EP on Karl O’Connor’s Downwards in 1994, surgeon has had a hard hitting, linear style that remains to this day. Recent years saw him return to a primitive rave style and incorporate the gritty industrial influences of his youth. But in 2018 he evolved again and served up what many consider to be his best album in years. Luminosity Device features a more rhythmic, playful sense of drum programming next to his meticulously crafted synths and enthralling sense of urgency and future paranoia. The nuance in his tracks is now as intriguing as the visceral power of the kicks, and it all adds up to an album that works as well on headphones, at home, as it does on the dance floor. It’s proper techno by a proper techno head.

And so is the mix he has put together for us. Over 1 hour 45 minutes, the man calls upon plenty of pivotal names from Juan Atkins and Oscar Mulero to Donato Dozzy and James Ruskin. There are plenty of twists and turns along the way, so that zoned out passages of dubbed out drums are followed by intergalactic space battles and moments of synth laden intensity. It’s a testament to Surgeon’s skills that he can take you to such far ranging corners of the techno world without ever getting lost.

October welcomes Peaking Lights to our podcast series but also our label, because on the 15th of the month the Californian electronic pop duo serve up Sand of Sea. It’s their first release of the year and a six track trip into their woozy and immersive, dubbed out electronics. It comes after a decade of Aaron Coyes and Indra Dunis and honing their sound on a broad selection of labels from Domino to 100% Silk. The husband and wife pair are known for their spellbinding live show and have put out nine LPs that mirror the shimmering horizons and long warm nights of their LA hometown.

This super extended four hour jam is a comprehensive overview of what they can do. It has a global narrative that takes you to a humid African plain then on to a beach a sunset. It veers from clunky mechanical grooves to blissed out synthscapes with ease, and tempos always stay at an invitingly slow pace, so there is plenty of space to think and get lost between the beats. Summer might now be in the rear view mirror, but this mix will always bring some sunshine into your life.

Mathew Jonson brings lovers of all forms of dance music together. His live show is one of the best in the business: an elegant techno adventure with pounding drums and well crafted synths that endlessly twist and turn through emotional highs and darker physical depths. In short, he is someone as schooled in jazz as he is electronic synthesis. He’s a master of his hardware; a human who can speak through his machines. His meticulous approach also carries over into the studio and has given rise to plenty of underground hits on his own labels as well as a fine selection of others.

His mix for us this week is a 90 minute recording of his masterful live set at Dekmantel 2017. Wasting no time in getting down to business, it kicks off with classic electro and from there the killer baselines just keeping on coming, some from his own back catalogue, some from outer space and some from the future. It’s a mix with a compelling sense of momentum and one that traverses sounds and scenes with ease.

VRIL is one of the most reliable artists in techno. He emerged with a style that was his own and has pretty much stuck to it ever since. Eight years after his debut, that loopy, dubby take on the genre sounds as vital as ever, and most often comes on labels like Delsin, Dystopian and Giegling. A live set from the German is just as floor facing and effective. It will veer from deeper moments of intensity to trippy, off kilter drum patterns that are designed to keep you moving.

Here he serves up a perfectly mix that syncs perfectly with the changing season: it’s all warm and cuddly from the off, with cosy dub techno cocooning you in an inviting sound world that slowly transitions into more twisted and straight up techno. Whether the drums are thumping or laying more horizontal, there is an absorbing intensity to VRIL's work that proves he is someone who has a real mastery of his art.

Lawrence le Doux is impossible to pin down. The Belgian has been beating his own path since the nineties under a range of different guises. His latest album Host—following a soundtrack on Hivern Discs and years of everything from rap to hardcore to ambient—came on his home label Vlek and was an embodiment of the last 30 years of electronic music in his homeland. From digital dub to house to industrial, it covers plenty of ground in authentic style and made for a fascinating listen.

Over more than eighty minutes here, he serves up an equally kaleidoscopic mix filled with beautiful moments. It’s a late night affair that takes in ambient house, trippy 5am techno, dubbed out grooves, beguiling broken beats, trance, afro and plenty in between. Transitions feel natural and coherent even if, on paper, they shouldn’t. It’s a mix that comprehensively proves Lawrence le Doux’s understanding and knowledge of electronic music runs deep.

Lots of artist like to think they have their own singular sound, but not many are as hard to categorise as Lutto Lento. The Polish artist cooks up intoxicating brews of churning drums, weird samples, lithe synths, jumbled percussion and plenty more. Is is dancehall? Is it techno? Is it ambient? Who knows, but it’s beautiful in its abstraction and makes for some of the most compelling sound collages you are likely to hear.

As a DJ he has an approach to sound that is just as eclectic and magpie. This mix one starts off with warped, twisted synths that sound stripped from the UK hardcore continuum, before growing into big, tumbling drums. A flurry of dancehall, broken rhythms, raved up Indian bass all follow and leave you in awe of the man’s ability to thread to tether so much different stuff with such a strong sense of cohesion. Truly, he is one of a kind.

Olivia has been intrinsically linked wit the Polish electronic music scene for almost 15 years. Maybe most famously, she is a resident DJ at Unsound, but next to that she also runs her own Radar night at celebrated Krakow club Szpitalna 1—where she is also chief booker—and DJs as one half of Chrono Bross. Both technically excellent and well versed in the history of house and techno, she mixes liquid acid with cosmic melodies, Detroit futurism with Dutch rawness and is someone fascinated by the paranormal, the infinity of space and the potential of robotics. All this informed her full bodied and psychedelic debut release on K-Hole Trax, and the mix she has put together for us.

There is a dystopian air to start with, where fizzing synths and malfunctioning machines make for uncomfortable listening before jerking rhythms tinged with elements of electro and EBM being to make you move. Unsettling and abstract throughout, it’s a dark mix for strobe lit dance floors that is industrial and dehumanised, but one that is never less than compelling.

Pariah has recently returned with Here From Where We Are, his first solo material in a while. The debut album on Houndstooth finds the producer develop beatless, synth heavy soundtracks into long, thoughtful pieces that are utterly absorbing. It’s a new musical identity for someone closely associated with visceral techno thanks to his work as one half of live duo Karenn with Blawan, but as a DJ he still pumps the dance floor.

This mix is testament to that: it’s ninety minutes of diverse electronic music that dips into afro drumming, sleek minimalism and off kilter UK bass as well as some cheeky garage. As it wraps up, drums make way for subtle and supple synth rhythms that leave you utterly horizontal, a mile away from the sweaty state that proceeds it. Like Pariah himself, it’s tied to no one sound or scene and is wholly refreshing as a result.