"Valerio met Voiski while doing his art studies in Paris" Ligovskoï begin when asked how they first came into contact with the owner of Parisian imprint Dement3d, for which they have recently provided the second release. ”He played him some of our very first pieces, and Voiski liked them straight away. He and the Silicate label that Voiski founded with some other musicians invited us to participate in the project “Outland”, a CD compilation based on the science fiction film of the same name. One of our pieces from this compilation has been published and we performed live during the release party. That’s how we have met Heartbeat, who was trying to build Dement3d at the time. Our collaboration with Dement3d started and we worked together on our EP - All four original tracks are very important to us; they evoke different images and emotions that we’ve come across over the last three years.”

Whilst the first of their releases have only begun to materialise in the last few years, Nikolaï Azonov & Valerio Selig's relationship in fact stretches back a good ten years - the pair first met in high school. “We spent a lot of time together talking and playing the music trying different styles” they explain of their introduction to electronic music. ”The discovery of ambient music was a real revelation for us, it seemed obvious to us that we wanted to follow this path. We really found ourselves in this music; there was some kind of alchemy.” Despite the pair's long standing friendship however, the collaboration process is not quite as straight forward as you might expect, with Brussels based Azonov living near 200 miles from Selig's residence in Paris. “We work from a distance. One starts a song and then sends it to the other to add some elements etc. When we feel we have enough material we meet in Nikolaï's studio for construction, arrangement and mix of the songs.”

Recorded in Brussels, Ligovskoi’s mix for us covers a range of influences, including some of the formative listening material alongside their own productions ”Each of the tracks in its own way had a significant impact on us making us the Vibrate release showing future paths to follow and doors to open.”

Residing in Malmö, Sweden, Finn of Tomland (aka Finn Albertsson) approaches the art of DJing differently. Since the hedonistic excesses of the ’90s, Albertsson has operated under a different guise, his Finn Of Tomland project marking the start of a slower, deeper, more considered sound. Few DJs have the courage to include such a wide-range of different styles in their mixes; ranging from dank dub landscapes to hyper-frenzied noise. It is arguably this freeform approach that has led to Albertsson receiving wide acclaim for his sets, an achievement noted by Copenhagen venue Culture Box, with whom he now has a residency.

Alongside his work as a DJ, Albertsson also runs the fantastic SonuoS imprint, exposing a range of leftfield producers to the scene at large, pushing an array of sounds as diverse as his DJ selections. With this in mind, If you like what you hear in this mix don’t hesitate to visit the SonuoS Soundcloud page, here.

DSNT is a multi-disciplined creative company based in Belfast. Given the multifarious domain that the collective work in, they are often somewhat difficult to define. Oisin, the groups spokesman sets the record straight. “It predominantly works on a per-project basis. I usually take a curatorial role on each project and put a team together. We have a Belfast crew that run the parties and help with the label which comprises of Nez, Ryan Dallas, G.Boo & Sebastian. We couldn’t have put on half of the guests we have done without them. They also help with the A&R and a lot of the music we have signed has been influenced by them.”

Despite the fact the group have a strong foothold in events, their operations include a wide manner of things. Previous engagements have included artist management, events management, record producing, graphic & motion design, filming & editing services, art exhibition curation, visual arts and motion graphics. They recently provided the visual show for Headless Horseman’s appearance at Atonal Festival for example. “It was an amazing experience, one of the highlights of my adult life” Oisin begins. “We worked on it for about four weeks straight, from 10am to 3-5am each night. At the start there was three people in the team working on the visuals and then in the last week we pulled in some extra guns in the form of Carlos Purcell who absolutely smashed it. It was a complete honour to be part of the event and we’re massively grateful at the trust the Horseman placed in our hands to produce something that I feel was really special. Berlin Atonal was the perfect festival, the production & curation of the event was so tight.”

Having been a huge supporter and follower of DSNT for some time now it seemed fitting to invite them to feature in our podcast series, ahead of their third birthday. "In short, if you want to make money, do something else" Oisin begins when asked about the landmark. "Its been an amazing 3 years, great learning experience and an opportunity to meet some really amazing people, probably what I love more than anything is watching the community grow and develop over the past few years." Summing up the mix as ”Str8 up bangorz all the way”, Nez, the groups nominated DJ for the feature chooses to record in one take, offering a summation of the kind of set typical at DSNT events.

With several parties upcoming to mark the birthday celebrations, the next few weeks seems to be heralding an extra push on all frontiers of the project, as Oisin explains. “After DSNT004 we have an all Irish EP featuring tracks from Sunil Sharpe, AnD, Eomac & Fran Hartnett and to coincide with it we’re collaborating with Irish visual artist Danleo who does pretty sick illustrations. We’re going to release a line of four t-shirts to coincide with the release (one for each artist) and we’re planning to develop a new visual show to coincide with the release and do a little mini-tour with our visual show & artists. I’m also working on a bunch of other visual shows for various events, namely our upcoming show for Culture Night - Altered State.”

The word Acharné comes from the French word for ‘fierce’, ‘obstinate’ or ‘intense’. Speaking with the anonymous artist who has adopted the word as his moniker, it becomes clear rather quickly the tag fits; interviewing Acharné sees more questions asked than answered.
”If ‘Berlin techno’ is reduced to white-noise washes and 40Hkz drones, where does that leave the story of the GDR? If hip-hop producers en mass are emulating Timbaland’s sampling of tabla-loops, where does that place the roll of Sufi music in our collective imagination? If half the top-selling ‘house’ tracks on beatport are marked by an ‘afro-Americanised’ male voice talking about ‘back in the day’ and ‘real Detroit techno’, where does that place the Detroit of today in our imaginations? What does that say about our relationship to gender, authority and the Black Male body?”

Although currently based in Berlin, Acharné travels extensively, and he explains his views on the idea of a ‘home city’ with a degree of scepticism. ”I’ve always felt ‘disconnected from any ‘dirt space’ in a fundamental way. This isn’t necessarily something I view as ‘negative’, but rather an inevitable part of a de-centralised work environment, and something I find really valuable to explore and embrace. Ultimately, its the human condition we all share - the challenge of forming identity and purpose beyond boundaries, which I guess are all ultimately just imagined.”

Sonically, Acharné is equally unwilling to settle, flitting between ambient, sound design, and techno with ease, as evident from his latest release on Seppku. Explaining how the EP came about, it becomes evident the chosen home for his productions was decided on with care. “I’ve been friends with the label-manager, Dan for some time. For both of us, I think, Seppuku is a tenuous ‘mark in the cultural sand’. Experiments – or rather ‘survival strategies’ for navigating through life in Berlin, through clubland, through the rise of EDM and the “meme-ification” of social media, short-form attention-deficit journalism. Both of us work in music and media, and these projects are counter-balances to the strange acid-seas we sometimes swim within – stuff I’d call “Big Pharma Techno”. So much once so-called “underground” music has been subsumed by high-commerce – which is totally fine, in once sense… but also polarising and utterly creatively stymieing for many producers who insist on identifying as ‘old school’ or ‘originators’ or whatever. 
My EP “Rooms Without Walls”was something of an allusion to this tension between transicence and settlment, which continues to fascinate me. Many of us here in Berlin are here are transient workers, migrant workers, sound and light and text workers – here for a certain time.

Berlin is traditionally the model city of temporality, becoming, yet never ‘arriving’.”

Coming hot on the heels of his Seppku release, Acharné’s contribution to our podcast series comes in the form of a recording of one of his live sets. When pressed further on the origin of the performance, Acharné reflects on the circumstances of the recording. “The live-set was recorded in an bunker space in Berlin, which I’m only going to refer to as “Quarantine”, as I was incredibly ill and feverish during the recording. Much of the base-material was actually generated in the preceding 48 hours – again, largely due to a sort of delerium I find myself in when I get ill – which seems to be more frequently in recent years. In situations of panic, melancholy, illness, I revert to a kind of primal insomniac mode – and tend to completely isolate myself. Hence, the genesis of this recording.”

Chookiessss is the name of a Youtube broadcasting platform that is, in the owner’s own words, “celebrat[ing] shit that’s different and worth listening to”. This is perhaps something of an overly modest manifesto, as Chookiessss has an achingly meticulous style carved out for itself, each upload grasping at an indescribable mood and exacted aesthetic. One way in which Chookiessss has established itself in this way is the careful attention paid to the accompanying artwork – snippets of obscure films, distorted digital art and fuzzy visuals all colour and actualize the message of the music. “I think the experience of listening to music is made so much more powerful and immersive by the accompaniment of visuals, and vice versa”, the channel’s owner muses, noting one particular example used from Gasper Noe’s ‘Enter the Void’, “I love that movie. It’s rare to watch something that leaves you feeling so hollowed out, or at least affects you to that extent (particularly so with Irreversible)”. The channel’s owner is also an established producer in his own right, with an EP release on the horizon, “The EP is called Closed Mouths. I’m really proud of it, so I hope people can hear it at some stage. In terms of what people can expect to hear, it’s quite cinematic, and pretty abstract, but it has an arc, at least in my mind.”

Despite the unmistakably niche quality that the channel holds, the selections cover a wide range of techno, noise, ambient, industrial and dub. This is reflected in the latest installment of our podcast series, which snakes around the many disparate influences of the channel, all the way from Grindcore Occultists NAILS to the pensive hymns of John Cohen. “I love heavy stuff, like techno and metal, but ambient music has always resonated with me the most, right since when I was little, so the later half of the mix is quite reflective”, he explains. “I’ve grown to love noise, so a lot of that mix is quite abrasive and people might find it hard to listen to. But to me music should be challenging, even if it’s not amazing. Good production goes so far beyond mixing and mastering. It’s about taking risks, and it becomes pretty apparent when you produce who is taking risks and who is playing it safe. The bitter irony is that invariably the people who aren’t taking risks get recognised, and the ones who are making genuinely interesting music largely get overlooked.”

He’s absolutely right, of course. The majority of the artists featured on the site will likely never get the day in the sun that they deserve. All we can do is be thankful channels like Chookies take the time to champion the dark corners of the Internet, and value the courage it takes to be original.

Oubys’s latest release is not for those who scare easily, or for those who don’t like to be placed far outside their comfort zone. Created by Wannes Kolf, stage name Oubys, SQM LP Part II is set for release 14th November under Belgium’s Testtoon Records.

There’s actually nothing “pleasurable” about SQM LP Part II. Just like Part I, Part II doesn’t offer a thick and fast release of serotonin. Instead, the thirty three and a half-minute LP forces you into a corner. Opening song Resurrection is relentless in its attack on your senses, and by its end, you’ve lost the battle. Kolf has subjected you masterfully to an oppressive industrial soundscape and he isn’t going to let you go until he’s rinsed your mind free of joy – a process that takes just over thirty minutes…

This isn’t music for people without patience, either. Instead, this is deadly serious food for thought that promises – right up front – to corrupt the happy places in your head and fill them in with a disease sent from the furthest, darkest recesses of space.

At times, it squelches and lurches towards you, bleeping at you with ever-increasing ferocity, screaming at you to take off your headphones and hide in a corner until everything is over. At other times, the music appears almost featureless, a carefully constructed drone of sub bass, reverb and affected synth tones – until it comes at you chaotically with cuts of sharp noise that penetrate through the droning mist like a knife penetrating your auditory system.

Although the opening track of LP, Resurrection, is an aggressive attack on your mind, Restless, the following piece, is Oubys’s way of presenting the listener some amount of respite from sonic bombardment. All the way through to SQM Expanded, the record’s final piece, Kolf plays with your expectations, toying with a dichotomy of aggressive versus suppressive textures that always keeps you guessing. With eerie soundscapes that leave you wondering when the next slice of noise will come from, SQM LP Part II is something like the sonic equivalent of Ridley Scott’s Alien.

That’s what gripped me most about this collection of songs: the unknowing of it all. You fear for the harsh industrial sounds that puncture the deep, dark undercurrent of the music, but you also need them. When they arrive, they stir anxiety in you as you pray for their release. It’s like a form of terrible Stockholm syndrome where Oubys is puppet master and the strings are pure noise.

Finally, as the music faded out into nothingness, Oubys freed me from his suffocating grasp. What sticks with me most about my experience with SQM LP Part II is that although I can’t admit to having fun listening to the music he has created here, I was enraptured by it, needing the next bar, then the next; then the next. If you’re ready to be disturbed and challenged, it comes recommended.

To celebrate the launch of the LP, Oubys has also crafted a live mix that you can listen to below. It gives a flavor of what Oubys does so well; sculpting together a parasite of noise that will burrow into your brain and stay there for days.

SØS Gunver Ryberg is lady of many talents. Working on an impressively broad spectrum of sound art - from installation and performance pieces to film & video game music, she views the differences between her contrasting approaches in a surprisingly simple fashion. “I don’t necessarily distinguish between my various outputs” she begins when asked about her varied projects. “Working in connection with other media is just another way for me to express myself. People ask me to collaborate with them because they know my sound and music and connect to it” she explains. “I often get commissioned to make a piece for a specific site or setting. Then I’ll typically work with various multi-channel configurations. I enjoy integrating spatial elements whether it is an installation or a performance.”

Whilst adhering to the guidelines set by commissioned work, Ryberg still manages to keep a firm grasp on her notably experimental signature - a sound which her home city of Copenhagen has been rather receptive to. “A lot has been happening in the last few years in the experimental music scene both in Copenhagen, and the rest of Denmark. There is a strong curiosity and openness towards experimental music whether it’s sound art, electronic, new classical music etc. It inspires me and make me feel free.”

With a live performance at Atonal Festival imminent, Ryberg’s podcast for us gives us a taster of what can be expected; comprised of twenty-two minutes of abrasive, droning atmospheres and clamourous percussion. “I’m very excited to be part of the Atonal festival - I’m looking forward to experiencing the unique acoustic space, the whole vibe and ambience in that setting. I’ve worked on a mix that represents my expression, ranging from one earlier composition SIVA to a new one Cirro_Stratus which is recorded live in my studio. My set for Atonal is a continued dive into the transformative physical power of sound. It will be a mix between insistent rhythms and a meticulous exploration of textures and timbres.”

Occupying a territory not-quite-techno, yet not wholly unfamiliar to the dancefloor, the productions of Berlin based ‘rkss’ have a highly distinct feel to them; perhaps ode to his unique approach to sampling. “I focus a lot on textures when I listen to music” he states when asked about his production process. “Though I do think some machine made music is great, we currently live in era where we can take any sound and turn it into something completely different. My friend showed me this essay John Cage wrote in the 1930s, which discusses how in the future people “will be faced with the entire field of sound”, among other things. Pretty much everything in that essay blew my mind and I still find very inspiring. As for more musical or aesthetically sources, I suppose anything I’m listening to at the time funnels into the music. Not consciously, but it ends up in there.”

His latest offering, the Reject & Fade released ‘Tunnel’ EP is testament to this, using randomly generated source material throughout the EP. “For my first EP, ‘Basement’, my sound source was all from one film - all micro samples. Similarly I used this technique for ‘Tunnel’, except this time I used Youtube samples. To be more specific I used this amazing website, which simply generated random youtube videos. As one would make field recordings of ambient sounds or real life, I did the same thing in this digital domain, of listening and cutting up random content people were putting on Youtube. All I can say is there are a lot of bodybuilders on Youtube.”

Having sent over a selection of material to Reject & Fade curator Michael Hann, it wasn’t long before plans for a fully-formed release began to take shape. “I really respected his taste and wanted to get his opinion on some stuff I had been working on” he says of their initial discussions. “He asked me to create a release for the label he was starting up. I was getting really into just sampling random things I was finding on Youtube and the internet in general - I wanted to explore this aesthetic further, so I set myself the aforementioned parameters. For me it was a success because you really can make something interesting out of anything, if you choose to. And I think the overall music has a certain and specific aesthetic, related to its sound origins, which is what I was hoping.”

Covering a range of the material he was listening to during the record’s inception, rkss’ mix for us charts an hour and twenty minutes of tripped out House, Techno and Electronica.”I feel that the album itself is a little bit all over the place” he explains. “At least relative to traditional techno or dance record, with high and low BPMs and some non-traditional rhythms, but its interesting to see a little bit of all of these elements were present in the mix. Which is to say I can see in hindsight how this music effected my music at the time.”

"It was only going to be a matter of time before I tried my hand at it so it was just part of the natural process" Airsilk responds when asked about his first forays into production. Whilst he doesn’t pinpoint exactly when he began toying with production software, his compositions are more telling; carefully constructed webs of noise and found sounds come together in a way which suggest he has been working on the project for some time. "I used to DJ under a different name but I’ve never put any tracks out before" he expands. "The Airsilk project has only come about in the past few months - I figured it was about time I started getting myself out there and see what people thought."

The timing of the project is likely not incidental either, having moved down to the capital from his hometown of Leicester in the last few years, his studies have drawn him further into the world of sound-design.

"I’m really keen on using elements from sound design and noise music because I think using those kind of techniques create a unique, organic quality that’s difficult to replicate" he speaks of the writing processes used on the project. "I’m always looking to record or find interesting field recordings, especially as you can discover weird artefacts in the recordings to use too. I find it rewarding to create sounds in my tracks from odd, non-descript sources."

His mix for us is not for the faint hearted, distorted, full-throttle techno is maintained across its duration, including tracks from the likes of Metrist, Ontal and Catch, alongside several unreleased Airsilk productions.

“Honestly I’m not so much into this Berlin thing even though I definitely understand how nice it is to live in a city that’s a big meeting point for Techno producers” Sylvain Le Goff, better known as Octave divulges when asked about the pull of the city, which appears to draw in techno producers from around the world with gravitational force. “You can see techno ‘colleagues’ all the time, have good fun making music, try new gear or just hang out with guys that have the same passion and meet a lot of people. I don’t know - I’m just not interested I guess. It feels like too much hype, and the city is overpopulated with DJs which is not something I’m looking for.”

Having been born and raised a Parisian, it’s refreshing to hear the producer talk about his home city with such enthusiasm. “I love the city, I have my family and friends here and have never thought about leaving. Even more since it’s very easy to travel from Paris, by train or plane which is cool for touring.”

First entering the world of production in 2007, it wasn’t long before the Octave project began to gather momentum - Richie Hawtin featuring ‘Past Flash’ on his 2008 released ‘Sounds From Can Elles’ CD for DJ Magazine. However arguably the most pivotal point in Le Goff’s career came with the establishment of his own label, Silent Steps. “I love techno and I love working with other people from the scene, but something I really need to work with people is the feeling” Le Goff says of the family oriented vibe to the label. “All my collaborations are based on the music of course, but the feeling you have with the person is something really important to me as well. I need both and I think that rules the way I work with the agency/label.”

Whatever the reasons behind Le Goff’s approach to running the label, its release history is testament to its success, having put out music from the likes of Audio Injection, Yan Cook and Impact Unit. The label has also seen several high profile artists take up remixes for the label, including London based Ali Wells aka Perc. “He did a remix for Silent Steps two years ago which was actually the first reason why we were in touch. It was a true honour for me and the label, this remix is still one of the tracks I like most on Silent Steps” Le Goff explains of his relationship with the Perc Trax founder. “After that I booked him three times at label nights in Germany so those were good opportunities to meet and get to know each other. He’s a true guy; easy and very nice. We have a nice, friendly relationship but I think I’m still, foremost, a big fan.”

With 2014 christened by the release of an EP Analogue Series remixes from the likes of Milton Bradley, Bas Mooy, Giorgio Gigli and Yan Cook, the rest of the year is set to be a busy one for the label. “I have a busy schedule of releases, all on vinyl, featuring amazing tracks and remixes from Impact Unit (Material Object + Luis Flores), The Noisemaker, Paul Birken, Subjected, DJ Hyperactive, Yan Cook, Mike Parker and many others, so you can expect a lot of music to come out in the next months. The agency ‘Silent Steps Booking’ will take up a lot of time this year as I really want to grow it and promote all six artists with me on the roster. It’s very important to me and I will dedicate time to it.”

Le Goff’s offering to our podcast series consists of a live mix recorded at Crucifix Lane towards the end of last year. “My live sets are always thought out and worked on a lot at the studio, but I also always leave room to jam and go on unplanned paths to keep it live and have more fun.”