Copy of CCL

Purelink have been described more than once as an "ambient boy band." (They themselves say "jam band.") It's not meant dismissively—the American trio purposefully mean to function as a band, even if their main instruments are laptops. Ambient might not quite cut it as a descriptor, though. The group's music crosses eras and scenes, touching on the late '90s clicks & cuts boom as well as the billowy ambient techno put out by labels like 3XL, West Mineral Ltd. and NAFF. 

Their most recent LP, Signs, released on enigmatic imprint Peak Oil (and one of our favourite albums of 2023), is especially impressive, made of stuttering rhythms and glassy textures. In other words, it's ambient-not-ambient. While members Concave Reflection, kindtree and Millia have all made excellent music on their own, something special happens when they come together.

Purelink's RA Podcast is another stellar contribution to our post-New Year's tradition, where we highlight a more laid-back sound to soothe weary minds and frazzled brain cells after the heavy holiday celebrations. This is 90-plus minutes of intricately textured downtempo, dub techno and even UK garage, all cut through with a floaty, almost drowsy quality, with plenty of exclusives and unreleased cuts from the likes of Nick León, James K, Downstairs J and more. It highlights Purelink's position as a bridger of worlds, sounds and tempos.

Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/917

RA podcast

RA.917 Purelink

Recorded for @Refugeworldwide. Inspired by how water interacts with solid structures. 

Image by CCL

𝙡𝙞𝙦𝙪𝙞𝙙𝙩𝙞𝙢𝙚 w CCL #11 Rock Pools @refugeworldwide

Juanita's Mix 100 with Ciel @ciel_dj

Q. How would you describe yourself?
A. a music maker with too much sincerity and a passion for sampling, film, and leftist politics

Q. What drew you to the music scene in the beginning and where do you hope to see it in the future?
A. Looking back at my life, I think everything from my birth led me on this path towards music. It was my first love. But as an only child, my experience with music growing up was always very solitary. I yearned to be part of a community radio station with Iikeminded music nerds, and it was working for a radio station eventually during my undergraduate that brought me toward DJing and rave culture. Back then I never thought I could do this full time, but once I got the chance to make a living doing this, I realized the scene was far from perfect, in fact it's very exploitative. I hope in the future we can find a way to fairly compensate music makers for the incredible gift of music they bestow upon the world, without becoming beholden to corrupt corporate & military interests. Artists can be hyper individualistic and self-interested, and I hope we can get better at looking out for each other instead of just our own paycheques.

Q. Tell us a little bit about this mix.
A. I wanted to present a different side of myself to international audiences on such a wonderful mix platform. Perhaps people outside of my home city of Toronto are less familiar with my downtempo sets, but it's been a significant part of my wheelhouse for years, and have gained even wider affection from me since I started doing a downtempo party in Toronto last year. Like I always say, 80-100bpm is the most natural tempo for extended human body movements. I also liked the idea of doing a mix that doesn't build in a predictable way, instead it waxes and wanes like the natural rhythm of life. So many of my favourite mixes build and release tension in a way that's very satisfying to listen to, the sounds intensify to a frenzy before disintegrating into nothingness. I wanted to play with that rise and fall and mix downtempo and dub with double time d&b in a non-linear way that is evocative of our most precious memories and tells stories we've only seen in dreams. Downtempo and dub also seemed like the perfect genres to play in the 100th mix for Juanita's, and in the lead up to my fav April holiday. :) I hope the listeners enjoy it.

Juanita's Mix 100: Ciel

In very loose terms, James K's (@jamesk_1) music operates at the fringes of the pop world. It is experimental and industrial, packed with hooks and riddled with dreamy textures that show off her mastery of synths. She has released it in album form with Dial and Incenso, dropped EPs on AD 93 and collaborated with the likes of Drew McDowall and Stefan Maie, and always manages to imbue her adventurous arrangements with real-world emotions and anxieties. This year she will join us at Dekmantel Festival but not before serving up this week's podcast.

It's the sort of rhythmically thrilling workout that has always stood James apart: jittery drum patterns and kinetic grooves that unfold at 100 miles an hour as a barrage of caustic motifs, hypnagogic melodies and hyper-real colours all bounce about the mix. There is an ever-present sense of tension in the way things are assembled - it's as if they might implode or explode at any minute, and it all sounds fantastically futuristic.

Dekmantel Podcast 460 - James K

Here's the recording of my set at Nowadays Nonstop on Feb 12th, 3-6am

endless gratitude to DJ Voices https://soundcloud.com/latenitesbookclub for the opportunity to do my thing in total freedom

Piezo @ Nowadays Nonstop NYC 17/02/24

ROOM 2 - SATURDAY 20 til 22 🐊🐊🐊

Thanks to Suzybee & Steevio, the volunteers, the dancers, the musicians, Théo & Ugo, the Friends of Fictions, Alex & very special thanks to @iambruce for mastering the recording :)

Hug to @r4r_luz who sadly couldn't make it this year and was supposed to play before me.

Shorter context: https://www.instagram.com/p/C9NI2bwMVcu/

Longer context: https://nonogigsta.substack.com/p/1ec95196-66ba-45d9-91d0-3b1031fc5c42

Freerotation 2024 : The House Of Crocodiles Part 2 (Live Recording)

Interview:  https://truantsblog.com/2024/truancy-volume-340-jon-k/

Soundcloud: @jon_k_mcr

Access the download and full tracklist (Confirmed, added) on our Patreon (patreon.com/truants). However if you need anything leave us a nice comment here with @jon_k_mcr tagged and either of us will get back to you with an ID! Your support helps cover all our costs allows Truants to continue running as a non-profit and ad-free platform.

https://truantsblog.com/

Jon K

Truancy Volume 340: Jon K

A special liquidtime set from one of my Favs @napmusick live and direct from liquidtime kwia :) 

𝙡𝙞𝙦𝙪𝙞𝙙𝙩𝙞𝙢𝙚 #13 ft NAP: lava mística @refugeworldwide (LIVE)

@richard-akingbehin

Q&A ------> https://pipipi.life/mix/richardakingbehin/ <----------

Richard Akingbehin - 8˚C

Bristol-based @k_means operates at the fringes of electronic music. It's not tempo and genre that unites their sound, but more an exploration of mood and texture underpinned by bass-heavy low ends and hypnotic rhythms. The Noods, Rinse FM and Kiosk Radio regular is also resident at Bristol's Psychotherapy Sessions and will debut at Dekmantel Festival where you should fully expect to be taken into plenty of unknown musical territory.

It is the same with their mix for us this week - a wild trip into futuristic drum patterns and interplanetary sounds that melt the mind and contort the body. There is a constant push and pull between the organic and the synthetic with tribal percussion and warped vocals brushing up with bleeping synth modulations and experimental minimalism. It's a magnetic selection that's as much an imaginary movie soundtrack as it is a dance floor escape.

Dekmantel Mix 487 - k means

A rare club mix from the ever-evolving artist, with 90 minutes of shadowy, atmospheric pressure.

Music's therapeutic value is often linked to relaxation—gongs, singing bowls and the like. Dense passages of foggy droning and eerie static aren't traditionally considered restorative, but Laurel Halo makes a pretty good case for it.

The Detroit-born, Los Angeles-based musician's abstract, often improvised productions are heavy on sound design and emotional climax. Driven by atmosphere rather than rhythm, they push listeners to grapple with their innermost insecurities, fears and dreams. "I'm lucky my music has helped people through crises," Halo once told Discwoman. It's easy to see why.

Since her 2010 debut King Felix, Halo has built a stunningly diverse catalogue of classically-informed records. A multi-instrumentalist—piano, violin, guitar, keys—her sharpest instrument is arrangement. Inspired by the surrealism of Italo Calvino and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, her releases, from Atlas to Behind The Green Door, unfold with slow-burning narrative and dense emotional weight. Her soundworlds are layered and labyrinthine—an architectonic space where self-reflection happens almost by force.

Even in the club, the sought-after composer excels in immersion. Her sets extend the expressionist palette of her records, trading traditional rhythm for tension, space and surprise. It’s no wonder she takes a genre-agnostic approach to the dance floor—her deep roots in freeform radio began at WCBN-FM in Michigan, followed by Berlin Community Radio, Rinse FM, and now a regular show on NTS.

RA.992 stitches foggy ambient loops, propulsive techno, mutant percussion and heady left turns with care. Tracks from DJ Rush, Octave One and Eddie Fowlkes nod to her Midwestern heritage, balanced out by deeper, psychedelic fare from the likes of Polygonia and Cousin. It's the mark of an artist revealing both deep curiosity and a precise hand as a selector. Rare, indeed.

@laurelhalo

Find the full interview at ra.co/podcast/992

RA.992 Laurel Halo

It is not easy to find Saphira, and it is even harder to leave. If it so chooses, the city will appear first as a quivering mirage on the horizon, second as a blinding stone mirror, and third as a sprawling maze whose sounds and sensations embrace the traveler in a slow and languid frenzy. Quite famously, it is home to countless locked eyes and spellbound hearts. It is a place whose deep currents of longing, like the sound of its ocean shore, seem to rumble and hiss under the surface of every word and gesture, in every bead of sweat that blooms from the glimmering skin of its people.

Saphira is at all times caught between a low-lying sun to the west and a glowing moon to the east. They hang above the skyline with an eerie stillness, watching the city’s tireless creatures writhe together in tenderness and sin, casting upon them a pale, silvery gold light that hangs heavy in the humid air. It is in the tension of this peculiar light and its slender, tangled shadows that Saphira’s longing grows dense and time thickens within its walls. Traveler and resident alike are suspended in an endless eros, caught tightly between pain and pleasure, between the sting of saltwater in one’s eyes and the sticky sweetness of ripe fruit on one’s lips. 

Perhaps this is why Saphira’s radios and televisions stutter with phrases and images so ghostly yet so intimately familiar, why its dusty buildings seem always to crumble so gloriously yet never collapse, why around every corner there is a street that so closely resembles one of a distant and loving memory, and why the curling flakes of paint on its walls and facades will reach out against the heat without fading or falling. It is a city inside of want and outside of time.

Text by Devon Hansen, Photo by CCL

Invisible Cities Ⅰ: 𝓼𝓪𝓹𝓱𝓲𝓻𝓪

Bengi + Coki - Night x Kettama - Rok Da House

ROK DA NIGHT!

The Pattern Sound - Spare (Samay Records)

Some old records I like and a couple of new things from the web...
1 Mike Henk ~ Untitled ~ B1 Pulsar Recordings DOX-003
2 Corrado ~ Trust (Pink Mix)~ Savannah Records
3 Robin Ball ~ A1 Untitled ~Getting High  EP ~ Magus Records
4 Roberto Q. Ingram & Stephan Riedel ~ Transend ~ Exun
5 Thotful Spot III ~ Trans-Sylvania ~ Basic Energy
6 Friction & Spice ~ Journees ~ Space Recods
7 Rainbow Bridge ~ Used ~ Rainbow Bridge
8 Dj Whatt ~ Remember ~ Break R Us
9 R-Fresh & Kyng ~ Devastating ~ Fresh Records
10 Cignol ~ Chorus Envy ~ Seagrave
11 Lust For Youth ~ Limerance (Anthony Linell Remix)~ Kafkaesque Records
12 Inner City / Global Method ~ Good Life ~ Orbital Remix ~ Sons Of the Eclipse EP ~ Ninety Two Retro
....
Thanks for listening those who did and I hope you enjoyed, its a bit all over the place but I'm excited to make more mixes and share jams w y'all <3

Summer Mix Number TWo

CCL - sit on my interface (part 1/2)

Amsterdam based DJs, events company and record label. - support@dekmantel.com for all your webshop and label enquiries.

Dekmantel Podcast 460 - James K

dekmantel

Recent comments

Caroune

compos_mentis

~elastical

Unknown Mobile

Related tracks