Dekmantel Podcast

Skymark is someone who flies rather under the radar despite being a DJ who can light up your spirit with his carefully constructed sets of deeply resonant music. Like his selections in the booth, his productions combine soul, funk, Brazilian, gospel and jazz into spine tingling moods and grooves that emanate strong life forces and fill you with positivity. They come in the form of perfectly sun kissed albums like Primeiras Impressões and boogie fuelled Waves From The Nucleus on labels like Neroli, nsyde and Rush Hour as well as his own his own Modern Sun Records.

The Swiss born, Rio based artist is a real student of sound and so time in his company is always a genuine lesson, and so it proves with the all vinyl mix he has done for us. It’s a joyous mix of shimmering, shining disco, soul, boogie and gospel gold that takes you ever higher. Making tough transitions feel smooth and seductive, he provides an utterly perfect summer soundtrack that you will be reaching for whenever the sun comes out.

Don’t DJ breaks rules. He takes risks. He goes with his heart and not his head. The music he makes is littered with odd sound sources, from oversized flutes to the sound of crushed plastic cups to frog noises, and his rhythms are always complex and challenging. He releases it on Fullfridge Music, Berceuse Heroique, and also runs his own Disk and is a master of fusing different sound worlds into compelling new forms.

And that’s the case on the podcast he’s done for us. “I got drunk and recorded an all over the place old time favourites mix. it’s cursed,” he says. That means it’s a raw, instinctive selection with the mistakes left in and plenty of tough riding transitions that make it all the more thrilling. It’s exactly the kind of approach you would expect from the man: who else could squeeze in the likes of MC Hammer, Neneh Cherry, Frak and DJ Sotofett and still make it work? This is truly the work of a standalone DJ.

Jonas Rönnberg is full of ideas. Since 2013 he’s turned out 15 albums and a handful of EPs that find the Swede forever cooking up moody techno landscapes. His atmospheres are heavy, and there is always a bleakness to his work; a darkness to his drones that is cannot fail to suck you in. Labels like Northern Electronics and Semantica have proved perfect homes for his longform sounds, and serious as his music can be, the man himself is also very playful: his latest release is a romance inspired album that rushes with the excitement of falling in love and soars with acoustic guitars and lush pianos.

Over the course of an hour here he shows off many contrasting sounds and offers a real snapshot of his hyper-active mind. One moment you’re up against of wall of glitch, then pop vocals and heavenly pianos, then suspensory ambient that is as beautiful as the beats that follow are brutal. It’s an ambitiously freeform session that never lets you settle in one place and, despite—or maybe because of—the strangeness of it all, cannot fail to hook you in.

Each of Steffi’s three studio albums on Ostgut Ton have brought with them new musical explorations. The Dutch born Panoramabar Bar resident’s debut was a warm and classic house affair with steamy vocals. Her second in 2014 was a more techno and electro styled work that took cues from the sleek futurism of Underground Resistance. But her latest, World of The Waking State from late last year, was her most fully realised and individual yet. A deep affair with flourishes of IDM, it’s utterly emotional and intricate, with pulsing drums coloured by deft synths that flash about with a life of their own. It was a perfect continuation of the mix she served up for fabric, but this new one for us follows a different path.

Slowly awakening from spaced out ambient, it explores kinked electro, more rugged EBM style grooves and tough, drum lead tracks that are all tied together by a sci-fi sense of atmosphere. Like everything Steffi does, it manages to pack a real punch at the same time as touching on a range of moods from melancholic to optimistic. Now over two decades into her career, Steffi remains as unpredictable and compelling as ever.

Samuel Kerridge is one of the most striking techno producers around. Offering up a wall of noise and rhythm, texture and experiential electronics, he stands alone and really doesn’t care what anybody thinks. This attitude allows him to push borders and explore new ground on labels like Downwards, Contort and Blueprint. There Berlin based Brit is as exceptional in the DJ booth ask he is the studio and live arena, and his output remains as vivid and vital as ever six years after his spellbinding debut.

This mix is arresting from the off. It’s a blizzard of overdriven drums and frazzled synth lines that are impossibly restless and raw. Even the moments of relative emptiness and calm are pregnant with tension and menace before things race off once more and leave you gassing for breath. It’s an impressively exhilarating ride that balances light with dark and calm with chaos in just the right proportions so as to never let up and never let you go.

Magic Teapot Records is an exclusive online record store in Barcelona, but also a recently launched record label (run by Daniel Baughman— A&R at Hivern Discs, booker at audiophile venue Nica —, Marco Gegenheimer - who releases on Studio Barnhus as MLiR - and Jens Ingelstedt). The DJ duo though is made up of Baughman and Gegenheimer, and when they come together they unleash hidden vinyl gems that get you dancing and romancing. Their sound is one that has a lot to say and draws on steamy tropical delights and intoxicating world music that could be thirty years old or brand new.

Their mix for us is a 90 minute live recording of them doing what they do best at Nica, namely taking us around the globe on a real adventure that has a sense of musical wanderlust running right through it. There are intimate moments of acoustic heaven bleeding into soft, drunken synths and glorious passages of churning reggae and twinkling disco along the way. It’s music with meaning threaded together by a air of expert curators.

DVS1 came up as a raver in the Midwest, throwing techno parties for over 20 years and getting up to mischief, often next to huge stacks of speakers that still influence him to this day. He is now well-established as a vital DJ and resident at Berghain and Panorama Bar. 

This mix is something special and a side of DVS1 normally not heard or recorded! A true digger and passionate record collector running the eclectic Mistress Recordings and the more pure techno label HUSH. Here he crosses into house territory for a special dekmantel mix. 

Of the podcast we have here, he says, “This mix is two hours of a four hour rare “house” set recorded LIVE in Sept 2017 at an undisclosed location. I make it a point not to release many mixes and while most people know and follow me for my techno sets, this mix is for those who dig a little deeper and appreciate it all… Enjoy!" There is still a real sense of pace to the mix as it glides effortlessly though flurries of percussion into vocal numbers, cosmic curveballs and piano laced anthems. It’s a fascinating insight into a whole other side of one of techno’s foremost talents.

Khidja is a Romanian duo focussed on fusion. They met at high school in Germany and since then have soaked up sounds from all over the world, as well as from their Romanian homeland. From jazz to gypsy music, traditional instrumentation to techno, they skip between genres and generations with ease. Mixing up synths and cult instruments like the setar or ney, their organic soundscapes have come on labels like Hiven Discs and [Emotional] Especial and always add up to intoxicating and esoteric trips.

Across the course of 90 minutes for us, they lay all that bare. It’s a punk minded session that journeys through sci-fi noise, freaky disco and no wave sounds with real intensity, building to dense peaks before dissipating and sinking down into a slithering groove. Bold and adventurous, Khidja explore the roots and peripheries of electronic music in brilliantly beguiling fashion.

Every mix in our series is special for different reasons, but there’s no denying that a new one from DâM-FunK will always turn heads. The multi-talented American DJ, musician and vocalist is a one man funk machine who has spent his life distilling boogie, g-funk, electro and synth pop into his own modern take on the genre. The Stones Throw afficionado and Glydezone head honcho has an encyclopaedic knowledge of music, is a prolific producer and collaborator with the likes of Snoop Dogg, and for ten years has hosted his own LA party Funkmosphere. Also, make sure to keep your eyes and ears pealed for his upcoming release ‘Architecture II’, dropping in August.

This selection is very much like a night at one of those events: at nearly three and a half hours long, it touches on every facet of DâM-FunK’s sound from the opening and closing eighties synth-pop of Prefab Sprout to Jayda G’s recent tribal house cut ‘Sestra’s Cry’. Next to those, an impossibly diverse list of house and funk names includes Omar-S and Sylvia Striplin, 808 State and Barry White, Bas Noir and YES. As is always the way with DâM-FunK, each track is given the respect it deserves. The mixing is unfussy, often allowing tracks to end before slamming in the next one. Sometimes he moves the mix forwards, at others he takes a brave sidestep that would seem impossible on paper but that makes perfect sense in the context of this mix. All that means its likely you’ll keep on coming back to this timeless selection for many years to come.

Mixed live in Ladera Heights (Los Angeles, California), via all original wax pressings owned by DāM-FunK.

Batu’s on a roll. He always is. In a few short years, the Bristol producer has made his own Timedance label widely acclaimed as one of the best out there, while his own productions constantly nudge swinging, bass heavy and broken beat techno in subtle new directions. They have come on the likes of Fringe White and Hessle Audio, while earlier this month he signed to XL Recordings for his latest EP. Always experimenting, challenging himself and and challenging us, he is an innovative artist driven by creating something new.

In the DJ booth he’s just as interesting, and here serves up 100 minutes of music that show off his many different styles. His characterful broken beats eventually turn to techno, UK funky drum patterns and then get turned inside out as you’re left to float in a sea of ambient synths and subliminal rhythms. It’s a mix run through with the spirit of UK music from across the ages and wilfully flips mood and tempo so that you can start and end the mix at any point and it will always make sense.