Dekmantel Podcast

Mafalda has quietly become a truly influential part of the London music scene. Born in Portugal but based in the English capital since 2014, she moved there after a powerful club experience involving Sadar Bahar and has since gone on to create many of her own. Not only does she play at Europe’s most cultured clubs and festivals, but she also co-runs the peerless reissue label Melodies International with Floating Points, DJ Love On The Run and Elliot Bernard, is resident at the much loved You’re A Melody night and worked at Cosmos Records. A serious digger and eye opening selector, she plays moving music with a positive message.

In just over an hour here, Mafalda pours out her heart through a series of moving jazz tracks that are imbued with various elements of soul and Afroism. Sweeping vocal tracks range from raw and funk fuelled to blue eyed and sombre. As well as showcasing her ability to dig out high quality music that will have ID requests immediately flooding in, this perfectly sequenced mix is also the sort to get the right club in raptures despite the decidedly non-dance floor nature of the selections. As a DJ, curator and digger, then, Mafalda is one of the best out there right now.

The Maghreban is the most recent alias of an artist who has projects dating as far back as 1995. They deal in everything from drum & bass to jazz, hip hop to techno, and this most recent moniker doesn’t find the producer narrowing down his scope in any way. Proof comes with his debut album 01DEAS on R&S next month. It is a wildly diverse record that takes in 13 different genres studies from afro rock to freak house, jazz beats to dub rollers. Each one is perfectly produced and sounds utterly authentic.

It should be no surprise, then, that the hour selection he has put together for us is just as wilfully schizophrenic. It’s a masterful mega mix of sounds and scenes and styles that really shouldn’t go together, but they do. Curious synth jams segue into serene electro, swinging dub house brushes up with horror soundtracks and high summer afro grooves dance next to cosmic disco in effortlessly coherent ways from start to finish.

Hot on the heels of his latest EP on Ninja Tune comes a new podcast from Nathan Fake. An outsider artist since day one, Fake uses cheap and easy-to-acquire technology to make his always idiosyncratic sounds. They have always been leftfield and thoughtful dreamscapes that fuse techno, experimental and ambient together, but have recently tended towards a darker, more intense place.

That is played out across the 65 minute selection he has put together for us here. It features unreleased music from Fake and friends, as well as tracks from Karen Gwyer, long time Border Community label mate James Holden, plus Peverelist, Autechre and more. After a synth heavy and beatless start, lo-fi and fuzzy styles of electro, acid and techno all add up to the sort of primal yet intriguing trip you would expect from such a revered underground figure.

Twin Peaks is an improvised partnership made up of DJ Yazi from avant guard hip hop collective Black Smoker Records, and Future Terror resident Haruka. Both hail from Japan and their collaboration first started with a back to back DJ set. It soon—necessarily—evolved into a larger set up consisting of four decks and two mixers that allows the pair to fully realise their vision, which is to serve up a scintillating and diverse mix of sounds and scenes in seamless ways. Hardware is also occasionally added into the mix, but whatever tools they use, the results are always adventurous and expressive.

This two hour session is a perfect example of the sort of magic that happens when this pair come together. Opening with otherworldly ambient bliss, psychedelia takes over before soot black broken beats begin to make a more physical impact. Things get ever-weirder from there, whether that’s with passages of spooky dub or paranoid techno. Throughout the session, though, you feel wholly consumed by, and lost in, a convincing parallel world that is as cinematic as it is cerebral.

Max Graef is at the centre of his own little musical world that includes being co-foudner of Money $ex Records and part of the Oye Records and Box Aus Holz crews. It’s a world of loose house grooves, jazzy influences and disco flourishes with lo-fi aesthetics that has spawned two essentials albums—on Tartelet and Nine Tune respectively—as well as countless singles. More recently he has delved into techno, though, proving that he is an inquisitive artist who has plenty of tricks up his sleeve. He is a wizard on a range of outboard gear as well as having some very real playing chops when it comes to keys, guitars and percussion.

As a DJ his organic style always comes through, which means his mix for us is an impromptu thing that calls on lots of different grooves. Sometimes hurried and minimal, at others spacious and deep, it’s a showcases of all the many influences that Graef distills into his own productions and is a nuanced listen that stands up to home listening. Included along the way are a couple of forthcoming solo tunes, as well as one with long time musical sparring partner Glenn Astro, so have fun picking them out.

It’s people like Mano Le Tough who make DJing into an art form, as you can tell from the mix he has done for us ahead of our festival in São Paolo this weekend. The connection he makes with dance floors are always as deep as can be; with a real sense of melody, emotion and song like structure, he crafts sets that make a lasting impact on those who hear them. This has resulted in him being one of the busiest DJs on the circuit, on a par with deep house heroes Ame and Dixon, who he plays with regularly. As a producer, his smooth and mellifluous sounds land on labels like Permanent Vacation and more recently Pampa, which is a perfect fit for his curious sense of melody.

This week’s mix is an hour of deep house that rumbles through a humid jungle, zones you out with hypnotic vocal tracks and encourages you to day dream amongst distant pads. Even when things turn more towards a techno groove later on, you still remain deeply entrenched in the groove, marching on through to a trippy climax that gently stirs you out of your hypnosis with a real celestial charm.

Courtesy is one of techno’s newest breakthrough stars. The Greenland born, Danish raised DJ, Ectotherm label boss and journalist first turned heads with some key online mixes in 2016 which showed she will reach for whatever works be that rave, electro or breaks. Since then she’s further established herself with her own regular NTS show and sets at key places like De School and Berghain, and in three weeks time she will play our festival in Sao Paolo.

To get in you on the mood for that she’s first turned out a new mix which, as usual from Courtesy, is characterised by fascinating contrasts. It’s high in energy from the off, and races through a number of styles of house and techno that ranges from twisted to dubbed out to ghetto. Getting ever-quicker as it goes, there’s a subtle sense that you’re building towards something throughout the set. It makes it an absorbing, high octane ride that never settles in once place but at the same time feels like one complete story.

As long as Melbourne has had a house music scene, Francis Inferno Orchestra has been at the heart of it. Though now lives in Europe, the Australian’s sound is melody rich and tinged with disco dazzle when in the studio, while as a DJ he has an anything goes approach that turns up plenty of surprises. As well as co-running Superconcious Records, he releases on Let’s Play House and Drumpoet Community and has previously guessed on our Dekmantel Radio Show.

For his mix, he goes sublimely slow and serene to start with. Beautiful ambient pads, twinkling keys and swooning strings encourage you to day dream before gently persuasive drums pick things up. From there, it’s an unpredictable ride full of twists and turns that one minute serves up acid, the next tribal drums, then hands in the air house. Before the end there is a return of ambient and even slow motion funk gets dropped. With spring just round the corner, this is a perfect mix to take us there.

UK artist Gatto Fritto is someone who operates in the shadows, in his own little world. The man born Ben Williams played our Selectors festival in Croatia last year and holds down residencies at Berlin institutions Sameheads and Renate, which prove why he is such a revered DJ. His work as a producer, too, has resulted in some exceptionally cosmic disco on standard bearers like International Feel and Dissident, as well as his own Fritto Morto. It’s twinkling, spine tingling stuff awash with melodies, FX and astral synths that transport you into the cosmos.

A sense of frosty melody and plenty of pixelated synths characterise the nearly two hour selection he has put together for us here. It starts in abrasive and arresting fashion with serrated lines and stark drums before unravelling into sci-fi grooves then Italo, proto-disco and slippery electro. After exploring these diverse yet interconnected sound worlds for the first half, the second half races through an icy and intergalactic brand of techno that leaves you utterly breathless.

It is not the first time that we turn to a Cómeme artist for our next mix. The singular Latin American label was the first to release music by Ana Helder in 2011, and has continued to do so since. The Argentinian artist has a rough riding house sound built on kinked grooves and wonky synths. It’s uplifting and has taken her to DJ sets all round the world. Back home in Rosario she also promotes her own parties and has earned a reputation as someone with a subversive, unpredictable style.

The hour she puts together here is a happy selection of upright tracks that pay no regard for genre or period: there is alternative 80s indie from Bob Chance, dubbed out drum tracks from Mr G and stripped back minimalism from Losoul and A Guy Called Gerald and its all mix up with African percussion and one of Anna’s own slippery and trippy cuts, ‘Sexe’. If Ana wasn’t on your radar before, this mix will certain ensure she stays firmly in your sights in 2018.