Dekmantel Podcast

There is no one quite like San Proper. The Dutchman is a rare and real character in a scene that is all too often devoid of genuine personality. It shows in the wild music he makes, the wonderful Red Light Radio shows he hosts and the often weird sets he serves up at clubs and festivals round the world. Releasing most often on Rush Hour but also on Dopeness Galore and Perlon, he can do dark minimal as well as big hearted soul and can lay down a big guitar riff or program an off kilter drum line all with equal élan.

His Dekmantel podcast finds the Dr. dig deep into his vinyl collection and serve up 23 slabs of soul, funk and afro magic across two hours that feel very personal. Traversing scenes, styles and tempos with flawless mixing and blending, he tells a very colour tale that breaks all the rules of a usual mix yet still makes complete sense. It is the sound of a selector who has open ears and who, ten years since his first release, is as thrilling and unpredictable as ever.

Paul Woolford’s Special Request alias has developed into so much more than the jungle and breakbeat project it started as. Proof of that comes this month with his Belief System LP, a magnum opus spread across four slabs of vinyl. The first half is a techno trip full of visceral twists and turns scattered with references to his love of pirate radio. The second half is the soundtrack to a fatalist mind movie that is dark and broody. Woolford’s mastery of sound design elevates the whole thing to a new level, and listening to it is as absorbing and complete an experience as you could wish for.

As a DJ with many years experience under his belt, his work in the booth is just as essential. In his Dekmantel Podcast he takes us on an unpredictable roller coaster that veers from sparkly New York disco through to haunted beats, twisted electro and monstrous techno. Spin backs, face melting basslines, rave and punishing drums make it as much a party starting main room mix as a heads down let’s ‘av it marathon. It’s fun, full on and pushes and pulls you in many different directions without ever letting the energy levels dissipate.

In 2017, Glasgow based label Huntleys + Palmers celebrates ten years in action. In that time, Andrew Thomson has ensured it became a fertile musical breeding ground and an impossible to pin down outlet that offers up anything from afro to techno to bass music. Auntie Flo, SOPHIE and Alejandro Paz have all emerged from the Glasgow based stable and have put out music that plays with off kilter rhythms. Andrew's curatorial ear has also made the parties of the same name just as unpredictable, and before it closed he was also a programmer at London’s legendary Plastic People.

The mix he has served up here under the Huntleys + Palmers moniker, takes a typically widescreen view and includes “tracks that I've been playing for a while and expect I'll continue to play in years to come.” Starting steady and worldly with dub and deep cosmic grooves, it grows more twisted with wiry electronics and frazzled synths before pulling back again, then repeating the cycle. It makes for a perfectly paced and well balanced mix that bubbles and boils and always keeps you guessing without ever falling off the edge.

The music Dane MacDonald plays and releases on his Common Edit label is as warm as his North Canadian roots are not. Always serving up sets with love, he is a big bearded, long haired dancer at heart, and someone who has a close relationship with west coast disco dons Eddie C and Koosh. Now based in Berlin and still pressing up records that will always fire up a more friendly, cosy party, his reputation has grown beyond the cult. Digging deep through rock, new age and freaky disco, he knows how to throw a party as well as how to throw down records.

Over the course of 90 minutes he takes us on a sparkling journey where only he knows the destination. One minute you’re lost in a warm and festive disco cut, the next getting down to a low slung boogie track. Heavier drum led house comes later on, before heavyweight dub disco tunes lead us to a jazz-funk crescendo that sizzles with real joy.

After only three EPs since 2016, Borusiade aka Miruna Boruzescu has proved herself to have a very specific and focussed musical aesthetic. It is a dark, shadowy style of synth laden and stripped back disco that is tinged with echoes of industrial, acid and EBM. Correspondant, Cómeme and Cititrax have put out her music, and her perfectly gloomy sound translates to her DJ mixes. She first started playing 15 years ago as one of the few women on the Bucharest scene, and as such knows how to tell an emotive story—no doubt in part thanks to her love of cinema as well as classical music.

Her Dekmantel mix is an hour of stark post-industrial sound, desolate landscaping and noir disco techno. From rugged, rattling tracks that sound like a factory in meltdown to more deep and subliminal marching tunes that convey no human life at all, it is a mix that is always on the move, slowly but surely. Ending in a place of angst and paranoia, it’s the sound of a DJ at the top of her game.

In just a couple of years, Glenn Astro has emerged at the centre of an exciting new micro-scene. The German producer is a student of hip hop, funk, soul and jazz who uses that knowledge to imbue his own sounds with a looseness and roughness that makes them immediately appealing. Words like dusty, deep and woody always come to mind when listening to his music, and so far it has landed on Tartelet, Box Aus Holz and of course his own Money $ex Records. Last year he also put out an excellent full length with label co-founder Max Graef on Ninja Tune which went in cosmic new directions, and in 2017 he has continued to impress with his instinctive DJ sets.

His mix for us is a one hour distillation of all these sounds. It’s variously lunges and romantic, then more club focussed and beat driven. There are some lovely cover tracks, plenty of jazzed up grooves and flourishes of disco, all knitted together with a great sense of pace. There is a live and authentic feel to much of the music that makes it sound almost like a studio jam than a mix, and that’s another reason you'll play it over and over.

Virginia wears many different musical hats and always has. The Berlin based woman is a DJ, vocalist, song writer and producer who saw chart success early on in her career, as well as receiving underground acclaim for her album Fierce For The Night back in May 2016. She has written music with the likes of Steve Bug, has played a hybrid live and DJ set all over the world and has ties to labels like Ostgut Ton, Dolly Deluxe and Underground Quality. She has also famously provided vocals to some of Steffi’s most classic vocal tracks such as ‘Yours’, so is very much the voice of contemporary house music.

Her podcast for us is entitled Greetings From My Garden - Music For The Heart Mix and shows off another side to the artist. It is made up of music more suited to home listening than dancing in the club, and features tracks from Massive Attack, Slam, The Orb, plus a new one of Steffi’s forthcoming album on Ostgut Ton. As such it’s a soothing listen of dreamy synths and comedown sounds, deep grooves and selection emotions that is the perfect soundtrack to the last days of summer.

Lil Tony is a big part of the Finnish scene and revered name on the international circuit. Back home he runs some of the city’s key venues, such as Kaiku, and while on the road he spins well informed sets of house and techno influenced by the American Mid West, but that also expend to take in disco, soul, electro and more. In the studio he turns out slick tracks for Innervisions, HPTY and Mood Music, is part of the Nuspirit Helsinki collective and is all set to play at Dekmantel Selectors this week hosting a boat party with Kaiku.

Now, he steps up with a mix consisting 100% of Finnish music mainly from the eighties. It touches on disco, new wave, ambient, soul, Italo, electro, funk and boogie and paints a vivid picture. “I want to give special thanks To Mikko Mattlar, Perttu Häkkinen, Joshi, Pirkka and Juha Mäki for helping me find some of these gems,” says the man whose hour mix starts icy, atmospheric and melodic before slowly thawing out. As the drums appear and the melodies get more cosmic, you begin tapping along then the diva disco vocals, big synths and retro grooves all sweep you away into a world of proto-house and pixelated chords that are brightly coloured and unashamedly fun. Catch the Finnish version of Charlie’s ’Spacer Woman’!

The dance scene in Istanbul might not be one of the most talked about in the world, but whenever it is mentioned it’s impossible not to talk about Zozo. She is a left of centre DJ who was previously in charge of the musical direction of Hush, a gallery and bar on the Anatolian side of Istanbul, and nowadays she plays cult clubs like De School and Salon des Amateurs. She has also put out key cassettes like ‘Witchez of Anatolia’ on Sameheads, as well as being part of the famous curveball label Macadam Mambo. Reaching for curious sounds from her homeland as well as new wave, disco, synth pop, house and acid, a Zozo set of "oriental crime" is as magical as it is mysterious.

And her mix for us is no different. In her own words, "frogs, communication, Russians, aliens, nature, wizards, friends, psychedelia, technology, joy, fear, love, human beings, publicity, toxic world and internet" are all sources of inspiration here and it shows. Her 75 minute set is wholly intoxicating, with synthetic sounds and real world samples, languid grooves and drunken rhythm all slowly unfolding and pulling you into their midst before tripping you out. It's weird and wonderful, and sounds like little else out there right now.

After graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, American DJ Richard went on to set up White Material. It’s a label and artistic collective including the likes of Young Male that became synonymous with roughed up, frayed house and techno. In 2015, Richard served up a debut album on Dial that was a deep meditation on foggy, ambient coated house drones. Since then, aside from DJ gigs round the world, he has been rather quiet in terms of releases.

That means this podcast from him is timely indeed, and shows us just where he is at: serving up jagged rhythms, industrial cold wave cuts and bleak, grainy atmospheres that are devoid of human life if not for the odd dehumanised vocal yelps and pained cry. It’s fizzing, mid tempo but engaging stuff that is underpinned by a tension and darkness that always keeps you intrigued.