Dekmantel Podcast

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.

One of our all time favourites delivers a 4,5-hour long live recording for this week’s Dekmantel Podcast: BMG is the man in charge of the Interdimensional Transmissions label and Ectomorph - two dynamic, long-standing Michigan institutions. Brendan M. Gillen is part of the history of Detroit as much as the acclaimed superstars. Through a network of pseudonyms such as Ectomorph, BMG, Flexitone, Existence And Uniqueness Of Solutions and others he wrote pages and pages of history. Gillen will play this year’s Dekmantel Festival By Night as part of the No Way Back showcase, featuring Bryan Kasenic, Carlos Souffront, Erika, and Derek Plaslaiko. The mix was recorded at a The Bunker Limited night at Trans Pecos.

Peter Van Hoesen might be best known for his techno work, but the Belgian’s real resumé is actually much more diverse. Formally trained on organ, bass and guitar, the Time to Express boss has put out albums of abstract sound design, has composed for contemporary dance, has been a sometime promoter, run various labels and works with Yves De Mey as Sendai. He also recently stepped up to mint our own new sub label, Dekmantel UFO. On that EP he showed his ability to distil groove and atmosphere into intense soundscapes filled with fascinating details, and it is the same story with the mix he serves up here.

Over the course of an hour, Van Hoesen sucks you deep down into his hypnotic sound world, where train track grooves and suspensory pads trap you in the moment. As things unfold, rays of melodic light, unsettling analogue sounds and broken drums all make for a more unhinged ride that is both seductive yet visceral. It makes for an intense listen that takes you right to the heart of an otherworldly the dance floor in the dead of night, no matter where you listen to it.

Kosme is a label boss, producer, DJ and promoter who has built his own discerning musical empire in France. That musical empire is one laced with a spaced out spiritualism, with trippy sci-fi melodies and a seductive sense of groove, whether on 12” format via labels like Thema or his own Cosmic AD, at his cult Cosmic Adventure club night at Le Sucre or in the DJ sets he plays. Kosme is without a doubt one act to watch in this years Dekmantel Festival By Night program at Amsterdam's Melkweg.

A real sense of serenity and space also characterises his work, as it does the mix he has put together for us, which is quite different to many recent offerings in our series. Atmospheric and sleepy to start with, it soon gets coloured with playful melodies, beautifully synthetic sounds and warm rubbery drums. It is a charming and romantic affair that is lovably naive and innocent in its breezy grooves and sunny moods.

What stands Marcel Fengler apart, as well as his knack for refined atmosphere, is his widescreen vision: he reaches for records from all across the electronic spectrum and from throughout the ages. His official mix for Berghain proved that, snaking as it did through a number of different moods and grooves, but all with a sense of cohesion that betrays his many years behind the decks. As a producer, too, he has amassed an assured body of work on Ostgut Ton in both LP and EP format that is fantastically functional.

The mix Fengler has put together for us is a high impact hour of firmly rooted rollers embellished with spooky synths and knotted acid, kinked drum lines and insistent claps. Always on a smooth upward trajectory, it is a mix that you can feel transporting you to another realm and one that manages to balance punishing passages with airier moments of trance inducing atmosphere. As such it packs a lot in, but never feels rushed, and leaves you desperate for more.

Many people claim to have eclectic tastes, but few carry through on their promises as ably as Illum Sphere. The Manchester man is as likely to drop a hip hop joint as he is freak you out with some wave or dub, make you move your ass with some boogie or pummel you into submission with some techno. It is the same story at his night, Hoya:Hoya, which has grown into one of his native city’s most acclaimed parties, with unbeatable residents like Jon K, Krystal Klear and Jonny Dub a key part of that. Given his magpie approach to playing records, it’s no wonder the same goes for Illum Sphere’s style when producing. He has put out his wares on 3024, Fat City, Young Turks and Tectonic, and is now a regular Ninja Tune artist with a brand new album one the way later this year. 

The mix, which is the first after his Fabriclive in November 2014, Illum Sphere serves up is typically atypical. Over the course of eighty minutes he takes you up, down and round and round through a hard to categorise world of sound. Atmosphere and texture are as important as beats and tempos, and it is hard to think of anyone as able to cover as much ground, with as much of a sense of cohesion, as this most fascinating musical man.

New York City’s Veronica Vasicka very much discovered an untapped musical mine when searching for music for her radio show more than a decade ago. That mine was full of rare, overlooked and forgotten DIY synth records from the 70s and 80s and inspired her to start her own label, Minimal Wave. Since then it has become an imprint with a very focussed musical and visual identity, has spawned compilations on Peanut Butter Wolf's Stones Throw Records and has made Veronica an in demand DJ all round the world.

At those gigs, she offers up a sleek musical vision that is mirrored here in the mix she had done for our on going series. Starting with a poignant monologue about new music, it then drops into a rugged groove that is industrial and machine made, abstract and futuristic. The ensuing hour touches on the robo-techno of Levon Vincent, terse beats and raved-up electro as well as some colourful and trippy disco. A lot is packed in, but a buffed metal sheen ties the whole thing together and subtly oozes the very essence of Minimal Wave.