54TH SELECTION – A new one every Monday.
Want to stay up to date with the most recent music, for instance for your DJing? Each Monday, we list and comment on our favourite releases of the moment. This week:
MYSTERY RELEASE
FULL REVIEW
Today, our “Mystery release” is a legendary hypnotic techno album from the past decade, out when our blog did not exist. As it is recently re-issued, we jump on the opportunity to review it. Immense, classic, the album is particularly significant for our dear webmaster Richard, so we gave him the floor for his very first write-up here.
Klara – Equinox [Lāsya, 2023-03-21]
Her previous EP in comparison, featuring Solarythm:
ATMOSPHERIC TECHNO
If Klara made herself a name in our scene thanks to a discography that is not very big yet particularly subtle, organic and ritualistic, she shows a new facet in “Equinox” released on her label: an ability to reinvent herself by bringing a sound already considered as “deep” into “even deeper” territories. Klara is a very sensitive person by nature, using art as a tool of expression, so the quiet musical mood is either a sign that she has found a certain inner peace over the years, or that she creates what she needs to listen to, to release the tension.
“Sacred Creativity” is obviously tattooed within herself, but not only: with flawless mastering, which she also took good care of on “Equinox”, she honours her technical perseverance and gives value to her mastering studio.
Melifera Records – Whispers of the Valley Part.1 [Melifera Records, 2023-03-25]
VARIOUS ARTISTS
The “label of the bee”, hyperactive in the scene as a record imprint, media, podcast and an event series including a festival, is back with more delicious honey. Release after release, Melifera delights us with its enchanting music, evoking peaceful feelings with luminous sounds and colours. In the making of the present VA, talented bees are at work: the label spoils us with both promising newcomers and veterans, that you will smile seeing in the track IDs. Have a good time tasting the yummy honey pastries…
Dyl – Nothing As It Seems [re:st, 2023-03-20]
ATMOSPHERIC TECHNO
Like its watches, Switzerland is known for its cutting-edge underground electronic music, diffusing mainly fresh percussive broken beats, well-represented in projects such as re:st (“Relation Reset”). Dyl is a “label resident” and is back with an album half drum’n’bass, half grey area. In 2000, Pearl Jam released the track “Nothing as It Seems” to evoke how a seemingly innocent farmer could convey darkness in his soul. Not sure if Dyl got inspired by this tale, but his impactful polyrhythmic beats are painted with melancholic drones, evasive and personal, either full of hope or hopeless, breathtaking for any sensitive listener.
Neel and PRG/M – Mirabilis [Camera Magmatica, 2023-03-20]
ATMOSPHERIC TECHNO
Rome meets Naples in this very interesting collaboration with, on one side, Neel’s expertise in sound dosage and tension design, and on the other side, PRG/M’s experimental playfulness, intriguing and challenging. With these two sound explorers, we may expect a high technical level of production and for each track, a cursor set between dope dancefloor-oriented routines and “mad scientist” repetitions. Well, that’s exactly what we’ve got, with one surprise: Neel opening the grey area door on A3 and killing it!
Dj Datch – Passengers [Circular Limited, 2023-03-23]
The walls, the sunglasses…
DEEP TECHNO
While also coming from Sardinia like Ness and Claudio PRC, Dj Datch spent a whole decade under our radars for having privileged dark, raw, tunnelling four-to-the-floor productions, well-adapted for the club yet, for us, lacking a certain meaning.
In the image of his iconic sunglasses, we were sensing impenetrable walls in most of his music, until his creations for No Way Records a few years ago when – for us – he started to open up through subtle atmospheric integration.
“Passengers” is the EP that we’ve been waiting for from him, because we finally have deep meaningful tracks (the titular one in particular), while taking advantage of his decade of experience in dark techno to design dope electrifying basslines.
Cafe de la Jungle – Blind Forest [Qeone, 2023-03-20]
A dope mix by him, accompanied by an interview:
TRIBAL TECHNO
In the Yoga system, the human mechanism is made of five dimensions: “the physical body”, also called “the body of food”, the “mental body”, considering that intelligence is in every cell, the “energetic body”, with its numerous channels, “the knowledge”, inherited from the experience, and the “causal body”, which belongs to the non-physical dimension, indescribable yet focus of mysticism.
We believe here that the deeper, the most harmonious and the most “connected to nature” a soundwave is, the better it weaves a link between these five dimensions.
“Dancing with Cicadas“, “Tuvan Spirits” and “Blind Forest”, the three releases by Cafe de la Jungle up to date, have convinced us that a Yogi is living inside of him…
SPECIAL GUEST
Talking about mysticism, our guest today, with his numerous tribal instruments and his iconic look, has built some obvious connections with the sacred world, that he expresses on quality labels such as Affin, Informa, Circular Limited, Edit Select and many more. Coming from Lviv in Ukraine, it is certain that the concept of “music seen as a refuge” takes a higher meaning for him. He’s also known as an extremely talented DJ: we still remember his epic 2022 Drum’n’bass mix among other insane performances available to watch on his dope Youtube channel. In private, he’s humble and very kind, and honours us with his participation.
SVAROG PRESENTS
DJ AND PRODUCER
Absis – With Eyes Closed LP [Secuencias Temporales, 2023-03-20]
ATMOSPHERIC TECHNO
Svarog: Digging is the DJ’s lower part of the iceberg yet one of my favourite activities. I can spend hours going from one release to another, but when “With Eyes Closed” came to my attention, I stopped the process to only focus on it. I listened to it track by track, in full until the end.
My mind instantly resonates with these sounds. There are held by a mysterious atmosphere and a certain melancholy that deeply touches me. There was drama in the first few tracks while tenderness emerged in the following ones.
In the EP, the maturity of the author can be sensed through the sophistication of the work.
The various pieces, deep and mesmerising, somehow musically wake up the fascination that I have for the greatness of nature’s creation, the indivisibility and limitlessness of the universe; I enjoyed very much the artistic connection.
* Page’s cover picture: Oye Kreuzkoelln in Berlin, a record shop from a member of our community.
