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New album: 'Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities' out 31/03/23 via Border Community. www.bordercommunity.com

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S:alt Records [suitably:alternative]. UK independent label/platform for electronic and alternative music.
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What is techno? Scientists and philosophers have long since pondered the concept of its musical definition since it burst out of Detroit in the mid-‘80s. Is it that notion of the “ghost in the machine”, of soul from electronics that its inventors elicited? Or is it more the repetitive throb and thump of 4/4 beats and slow-burning momentum that the Berghain generation are proponents of? Croatian producer Petar Dundov’s stunning music manages to marry both ideals in the most explosive of fashions.

To Dundov, “techno is music that precedes movement. It is dance music, solid enough to carry emotions through the dance floor and abstract enough to be a template for ever”. And indeed his breathtaking productions embody this ethos, serving the inherent function of making your body pulse spontaneously while also challenging your brain with its complex melodies and slow-burning, hypnotic progressions. It’s the antidote for anyone who thinks that techno is about senseless, dull looping.

Although maybe the word “techno” doesn’t give enough detail about his style, it’s probably the nearest ballpark to whose principles his music adheres – and he is keen to expand the horizons of what people know and expect of the genre. But it’s that sense of his tracks being alive, forever evolving and expanding and increasing in intensity, which gives his music its unique sound and has seen his work crossover into a myriad of different areas of the global electronic music scene. The last two years have seen his mind-bending single Oasis (played by everyone from Dubfire to Sasha to Ben Klock to Prins Thomas to Timo Maas) take the scene by storm with its intricate, ever-changing melodies, John Digweed snap him up for an epic rework of Alan Fitzpatrick’s Reflections, and Gregor Tresher squeeze a deep, mesmerising remix of his track The Life Wire out of him.

His music shows you that he’s a producer with more than churning out mindless, functional and dispensable drivel on his mind. There’s a philosophy entrenched in his productions that breathes the very spirit of life and dynamism into them: “My ultimate goal as a producer and musician is to bridge the world of inspiration and physical world to the extent where the listener wouldn't be able to distinguish between the two. Music has this unique property to communicate deep emotions that are inherently in all of us. We just forgot how to use them, and my search is an attempt to revive those emotions where we all resonate as one.”

Born in Zagreb in the early ‘70s, his career in dance music stretches back the best part of 20 years, but it’s only in the new millennium that he’s been using his own name for his productions. Over the years he’s graced many of the world’s most prestigious and best-loved techno institutions – including mega-festivals I Love Techno, EXIT, Awakenings and Wire, and cutting-edge clubs like Berghain, Matter (RIP), Womb, Air, Fuse and Space. He counts a longstanding relationship with Belgium’s legendary Music Man label amongst his achievements, an imprint that has also played host to releases by everyone from Jeff Mills (for whose label Tomorrow he created the Sculptures mini-LP) to Green Velvet to Robert Hood, and after completing his acclaimed debut album Escapements in 2008, he’s got the follow-up in the works (for completion by the end 2010).

Petar Dundov makes intelligent electronic music that breaks boundaries, moves feet and twists minds. He is without a doubt one of the most inspiring, original and daring producers in electronica, and with the likes of Sven Väth, Francois K, Laurent Garnier, Adam Beyer, Josh Wink, Guy J, Glimpse, Hernan Cattaneo, Brendan Moeller, and Danny Tenaglia amongst his fans, it would be hard to disagree.


www.mute.com

Mute was founded by Daniel Miller in 1978, and since then has signed and developed some of the world’s most influential recording artists – including Goldfrapp, Liars, Moby, M83, Erasure, Depeche Mode, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Laibach, Yeasayer and Richard Hawley – and become home to a crop of emerging talent and recent signings such as Cold Specks, Polly Scattergood, Big Deal, Beth Jeans Houghton, Josh T. Pearson and Apparat.

Whilst maintaining a firmly eclectic roster, from the earliest days of The Normal, Fad Gadget and DAF through to the techno era with artists such as Plastikman / Richie Hawtin and Speedy J, and to the present day with electronic artists such as Diamond Version and Maps, the label has always been a champion of electronic music.

Mute is also home to the catalogue of a host of seminal artists such as Can and Cabaret Voltaire.

At midnight, on March 13th 1991, a basement door opened at Leipziger Strasse 126, Berlin. Through this door, many passed, on their way to defining new terrains in electronic music. There they found a dance floor in the vaults of a closed-down department store, with a unique sound bound to dense fog, building night after night a history that was also a vision of the future. 

This history has seen in Jeff Mills’ first sets on three turntables, Underground Resistance's first live appearances in Europe, grandiose Tresor Park parties, to various chapters of the Loveparade with Sven Väth in the 90s and since then countless generation-spanning parties. These moments represent the highlights of infinite personal clubbing experiences. It is the manifestation of the Berlin spirit, emerging from its considerable strife. This history is not without its complications - from temporary closure by the authorities and several raids in the early years to closure and demolition of the old location in 2005. What followed was years of wandering in exile and, finally, resurrection in the new home in Kraftwerk Berlin.

These stories, conversations and shared experiences within our walls forge a resilience that drives towards a shared ideal, the Tresor sound: community, resistance, and the world to come. This was observed in the newly re-unified German youth, who danced and celebrated together from the club’s inception, and into the present day through ongoing community work in Detroit. 

Tresor Records was founded in the same year and began to serve as a platform for exporting the new sounds associated with Tresor all around the world. Emergent musicians from Michigan, such as Juan Atkins, Underground Resistance and Drexciya, were pivotal in shaping these early years. Their visits to Berlin would kick-start dialogue between the youth movement in Europe and these musicians. This story is one of friendship and community-building, inextricably linked with cities like Detroit, Birmingham or Edinburgh, where like-minded friends built something truly special, where revelatory rhythms soundtrack decaying industry in corrupted metropoles. 

Tresor Records has been the fertile soil for dozens upon dozens of creative minds, from the very luminaries of the scene who developed electronic music over the last three decades through to contemporary protagonists who are currently defining the sound of the future -  A more than 300 strong catalogue displays an unmistakable identity - the Tresor spirit.

To those that have danced before, and to those that will dance in the future: the light at the end of the long Tresor tunnel is a signal. A flicker amidst the fog. This is our future. This is our place.

Alex Wolfenden is following