Simoncino is a life long student of classicist house and techno. Having soaked up all Chicago and Detroit has to offer for as long as he can remember, Simone Vescovo fomented his own style that draws on the past but looks to his own life for emotional inspiration. Always made with an authentic selection of original hardware such as vintage synths and analog drum machines, his frayed and nostalgic sounds have come on L.I.E.S and Creme Organization, Mathematics and Echovolt. Remixed by everyone from Larry Heard to Chez Damier, this Italian is an adopted son of the cult US house scene who also runs his own HotMix label.

All of his influences are laid bare on the mix he has served up for us: from deep and vocal stuff to lo-fi and gritty offerings, there is a timelessness and melodic freshness to Simoncino’s house that really stands it apart. Growing ever more cosmic and spaced out as it unfolds, this trip ends up in a blissed out utopia filled with real romanticism.

Though very much part of the lo-fi techno movement of recent years, Florian Kupfer’s past includes six years as a soprano choir boy. As such it is no surprise there is a real sense of enchanting grace to his work, which most often comes on LIES, but also on Russian Torrent Versions and Wille Burns’ W.T. Records. Whether mechanical and menacing or sombre and heartbreaking, his grainy grooves always manage to cast a spell on the dance floor.

The mix he serves up here makes scant use of drums, especially early on where lingering piano solos, looming ambience and foreboding acoustic guitars add up to something incredibly powerful despite being so sparse. Grinding drums and malfunctioning synths eventually take over and work to soundtrack a desolate industrial space where all traces of humanity have long gone. It’s bleak but beautiful, much like everything to which Kupfer puts his name.

Honey Soundsystem is an American creative collective that has become hugely influential in the decade since they formed. As DJs both solo and as a team, the San Fran foursome has more than made its mark with an eclectic sound that draws on the diverse backgrounds of the musicians, performers and designers involved. They also host their own parties—famed for fantastic art installations as well as carefully curated headliners from all across the musical spectrum—and run plenty of labels between them, including HNYTRX and most famously Dark Entries, which has poured many attention on Patrick Cowley with a series of resurrected releases.

Very much setting their own agenda, then, the group does just the same with their two hour mix for us. It is a fresh offering that rolls through a bouncing selection of well polished house and techno. Clean and tinged with a stylish sense of retro-futurism throughout, there are nods to darker synth wave sounds and colourful disco vibes that will keep you coming back for more.

Little is known about Stump Valley, but the Italian duo sure did make an impact with their unassuming EPs on Off Minor and Uzuri in the last two years. Before that they had worked solo on numerous projects, and came together over a shared love of vinyl and with the aim of making something “old sounding but modern conceived.” They melt jazz and ambient moods into languorous house soundtracks that suck you down into the deep, and often remix their own material into more urban sounding, street influenced music as Mtrpls.

Their mix is unhurried and curious, with spacious jazz and churning, Rhodes laden grooves making way for raw broken beats and much more. A very real human heart lurks beneath every track, from the wild melodic cuts to the more hard hitting deep house thudders. Plotting an unpredictable but inviting arc, our latest podcast is as intriguing as the duo behind it.

UK artist Lone emerged on a wave of rave nostalgia and computer game sound effects back in 2009. His earliest albums and EPs were like juicy peaches with reflective and refracted stabs making for succulent party sound tracks. Since then he has emerged with a new direction on each new album, his latest being full of jungle and hardcore tropes that cannot fail to make you move. As well as releasing on Werk Discs, he has made R&S his home and has become a real jewel in the underground’s crown.

As such it is a real treat to have a specially recorded mix from him, and one that gives us a hint at where he is at musically right now. Featuring four brand new Lone cuts as well as unreleased material from Ross From Friends and Gnork, his selections are decidedly deep and seductive with bumpy house and deconstructed grooves the order of the day.

Space Dimension Controller’s music is as obsessed with sci-fi themes as the man himself. His latest album—Orange Melamine on Ninja Tune—is another ode to hazy ambient sounds, cosmic energies and colourful soundscapes which proves that once more. It was written in a teenage Jack Hamill’s bedroom and is a thoroughly absorbing affair as indebted to Eno as it is to Boards of Canada. Before that he has released conceptual albums like Welcome to Mikrosektor-50 as well as plenty of other EPs on R&S and Clone Royal Oak, all with decidedly intergalactic bents.

Over the course of three hours here, Hamill really stretches his legs and shows us many different sides. There are, as expected, cosmic and deep space overtones early on, but also a love of playful melodic house, disco jams and party starting anthems also shines through. This, then, is a shapeshifting selection that twists and turns and keeps you on your toes throughout.

It is a wonder it has taken us this long to get Tom Trago involved in our series. The Dutchman has been a pillar of the Amsterdam scene for years, either as a producer for Rush Hour and a veteran of no fewer than three artist albums, or as a resident at places like the sorely missed Trouw. He also runs his own Voyage Direct label, has worked with everyone form Aardvark to Bok Bok and, of course, played our festival once again this past weekend. Trago’s sound--in both the booth and the studio--is a colourfully eclectic mix of disco and afro, hip hop and jazz, as well as house, techno and electro, and it as charming as the man himself.

His two hour session for us is a perfectly soothing selection to get you back into the groove after a full on weekend at the festival. From horizontal ambient and deeply seductive house, the mix stays pretty spaced out and lazy for the first hour, before more driving drums and pumping chords colour the second half. Always warm, human and inviting, it is a suitably personable mix from one of house music’s nice guys.

Joy Orbsion is someone we have a long and fruitful relationship with here at Dekmantel. He is, and always has been, a pure embodiment of UK dance music. His sound is steeped in English musical history (often explicitly in the form of sampled monologues) but also very much makes a new history of its own. He’s had countless underground hits from his definitive post-dubstep breakthrough ‘Hyph Mngo’ to his peak time tech tools with Boddika, and each one marks a mini reinvention of his style. What ties them all together, though, is O’Grady’s unique penchant for blending garage, bass, funky, house, techno and old school jungle into his own fresh concoctions.

The two hour podcast he has served up here -as a perfect warm up to our festival this weekend- is split into two parts. Says the artist himself, “the first half is basically a way of showcasing producers that are doing great things at the moment and is completely made up of new, unreleased music, and the second half is basically winding things down with a load of stuff from my record collection. A come down, of sorts.” Starting with a spoken word snippet from his jungle playing uncle Ray Keith, the mix is initially atmospheric and moody, with sleek and stripped back drums and smeared synths making for a heady and intimate mood. After picking up through skewed bass patterns and skeletal techno, the second half seduces with elegiac rhythms, jazz selections and spoken word tracks as well as delicious soul sounds, reggae and stoned broken beat. The results show exactly where Orbison is at musically, as well as offering an insight into where he has come from.

Few people have shaken up the dance world as much as Ron Morelli in recent years. With his punk attitude and lo fi aesthetics, his L.I.E.S. label has flooded the underground world with raw, dirty, imperfect music for freaks and outsiders. The New Yorker himself produces a sketchy variety of sound that draws on “the fear and repulsion of basic human interaction,” amongst other things, and he has also nurtured his own community of likeminded artists. Together they have made for an unlikely but influential crew of weirdos whose take on noise is truly singular.

The one hour set he has served up for us here is just the same. It is a largely atmospheric affair that marries knackered drums with glassy melodies, deep space energies with an impending sense of apocalyptic doom. Always absorbing and subversive, this is insular music that runs a gamut of emotions from tortured to optimistic and thus keeps you trapped in Morelli’s musical head from start to finish.

Danny Wolfers aka Legowelt is irrepressible. Creativity flows from the Dutchman like water from a tap: if he’s not making his own fan magazines, writing and performing in web movies about space weed, drawing album art based on his own dreams or making his own synths, he’s probably making music. That music comes under an intricate web of aliases on labels all over the world , and at Dekmantel we recently signed him up as Occult Orientated Crime, one of his more ambient leaning projects, for the May album Just a Clown on Crack. It was a dark and abstract affair and in that spirit Legowelt recorded us a podcast of similarly subversive and immersive sounds.

Over the course of 80 minutes, the mix has you suspended in outer space as all manner of spaceships and alien life forms drift by your window. Rippling synths and smeared pads, gurgling machines and silky melodies all stretch out into the distance and range from rueful and reflective to rather more meaning later on. It is the perfect soundtrack to sooth busy modern minds.