This was so difficult to do and it could be a different five tracks if you had asked me next week and another 5 tracks if you had asked the following month. I know I’m supposed to do a small description of each track but I’d really just be repeating myself five times over. This is what techno is to me, science fiction for the ears, music from the future and outer space. I’d love for someone to make a really weird, fucked up Sci-Fi movie and only use the music of Drexciya for the soundtrack. Instead of descriptions, just find a quiet space, put ur headphones on, turn up the volume, shut your eyes and enter into the world of Drexciya! – Domenic Cappello
Jan Schulte is a man of many faces/talents/pseudonyms and arrived as a refreshing force to be reckoned with over the last few years. Mixing break beats, house mentalities, live instruments, synths and weird FX means he’s creating a lot of fresh stand out records. Here are five that get regular plays.
Don’t have much to say about this label apart from it’s pushing the boundaries of interesting ‘dance’ music into all the right territories. Covering many of the sounds I like and putting the fakers to shame. Hats off to them!
I’ve fallen in love with the Swedish imprint Born Free, as it’s releases are unique and fresh sounding. Their club ready output in particular is just what I look for in modern dance music, hypnotic grooves built around a few key elements that sound huge on a decent soundsystem. I also love the broad range of styles they release across, meaning you never really know quite what to expect. Here are five personal favs from their back cat.
For a decade they reigned supreme in my mind. Going back on these records now they still sound amazing. As a label they managed to salute the past without being a pastiche, which is incredibly hard to do.
Below are 5 that still have people asking ‘what is that record?’
Tomorrow we play a cheeky little gig at one of our favourite rave caves, the Menagerie. We kick off proceedings at Mount Palomar’s own party from 9-11 before MP launches his spaceship & top selector ND_Baumecker closes out proceedings. Set to be a cracker!!!
I have loved a lot of this Austrian man’s output over the years, mainly because he confidently hops between modern jazz, funk, panel beating techno and slow mo electronics and as executed in such a timeless fashion, a lot of his releases (esp from the nineties) still make perfect sense today. He seems to have slowed down a touch in more recent years (haven’t we all) but here are five from Patrick Pulsinger’s extensive back catalogue that in my opinion are still good to go.
HiNRG doesn’t get the love or recognition that disco or italo does, but for me it should. At the heart of it was Bobby ‘O’ – an incredibly strange man — a complete contradiction on a lot of levels. He’s a hyper-macho homophobic ex-boxer who made gay disco. He once backed out of a lease because he found out the previous tenant was gay, yet he produced legendary drag queen Divine, and worked with the Pet Shop Boys. Most of his songs are brazen odes to sex and partying, and yet he’s a fundamentalist Christian who penned a (still unpublished) book on creationism. Make of that what you will.
There is a definite art to using the correct amount of ingredients and not spoiling the dish by adding a touch too much. Mathew Jonson has this approach down to a fine art on his musical compositions and various side projects. In DJ sets Dump Truck by Cobblestone Jazz in particular is a track that I always seem to return to, every time sounding fresher than the last outing with a hypnotic build that connects with the dancefloor every single time!
Dark Entries is a label that is hard to keep track of. They have released and re-issued over two hundred records in a relatively short period of time. Their sounds range from primitive house to post punk and all that lies in between the darker recesses of the dance floor. Basically all the good stuff.
Below are five must have classics picked from their extensive re-issue back cat.
