TECHNO  (old)

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Sector II: Acid

Arrival

The Sustain-Release co-founder steps up to the Phonica mix just ahead of the acclaimed festival’s 11th year. 
New York has an iconic history when it comes to club music, and over the years has seen many great names emerge from its underground scene. In modern times, Aurora Halal is undoubtedly one of those names. 
Aurora has become a staple at forward-thinking institutions like Berghain, De School, and her home base, Nowadays, where she holds a residency. Alongside her international touring, she’s carved out her own vital space through the long-running Mutual Dreaming parties and Sustain-Release, the DIY-rooted festival she co-founded, which continues to push boundaries as it enters its second decade.
Her Phonica mix offers a vivid snapshot of her deep, intuitive approach to DJing—captured live at Mansions, a cozy NYC wine bar turned house party haven. Known for her genre-fluid sets that blend hypnotic techno, house, acid and experimental textures this is the perfect calling card to showcase why she can hold it down with a range of greats like DJ Nobu, Vladimir Ivkovic and more.
We had a chat about the mix with Aurora as well as touching off Sustain and some of her favorite moments at the festival.

Phonica Mix Series 134: Aurora Halal

@MattiasElMansouri
Wildeburg Festival
July 12, 2025 - Bud x Kas
Kraggenburg, Netherlands
www.wildeburg.nl

Mattias El Mansouri - Wildeburg 2025

Marie Montexier is known for her timeless artistry and dedication to vinyl-only DJing, weaving house, techno, rave classics, and experimental sounds into captivating journeys. Her reputation has taken her from Berghain, Blitz, and Fabric to festivals like DGTL, Love International, and Awakenings. Expanding her vision, she founded the label Paryìa, championing bold, genre-defying sounds. With elegance, precision, and deep reverence for the craft, she continues to shape the possibilities of sound on and off the dancefloor.

Paryìa w/ Marie Montexier @ Kiosk Radio 23.08.2025

With great joy, we present the live recording of @massimilianopagliara, captured during 4 YEARS of PAX-ROMANA.

A true craftsman of sound and emotion, Massimiliano’s performance was the perfect soundtrack for sweaty upstairs vibes! We welcomed 'techno massi' already twice at PAX-ROMANA, however this time he showed also being a true master of blending house. A radiant journey through dance music at its finest.

Set time: 02:00 – 05:00

Enjoy listening! <3

Massimiliano Pagliara @PAX-ROMANA | RADION AMSTERDAM 2025.07.05

The German minimal DJ returns to the spotlight with two hours of artfully subtle house and techno.

There's an old German proverb that goes "Der stete Tropfen höhlt den Stein." Literally, it means a constant dripping wears away the stone, but the point isn't about force but patience: slow, steady repetition can leave the deepest mark. It's an apt metaphor for the career of Kosta Athanassiadis, better known as XDB.

Active since the early '90s, first as a DJ and then producer by the decade's end, Athanassiadis has built a career less on hype than persistence. His catalogue spans labels like Dial, Metrolux and Echocord, alongside a steady trickle of EPs and remixes that have quietly cemented his reputation as one of minimal house and techno's undersung heroes.

That patience carries into his sound and production ethos. Where many of his peers embraced software upgrades and new workflows, Athanassiadis has long stuck to Cubase, a handful of trusty instruments and 30-year-old speakers he claims to have run "hundreds of thousands of tunes" through. He also still prefers to use inexpensive, straightforward gear—what matters, he insists, is not the tools but the feel. The result is a sound that’s stripped back, direct and enduring.

Lately, Athanassiadis has found himself back in focus. With minimal enjoying fresh attention, his calendar has filled, and with it a run of back-to-back sets—most often alongside PLO Man, a regular sparring partner this year. True to form, though, you won't find that his style has changed much. Over 30 years after his first gig, you can rest assured you'll still find him playing with patience, carving out long arcs rather than sharp peaks.

His RA Mix captures him in a reflective mood. Running just over two hours, RA.1003 is a hushed yet absorbing affair, moving seamlessly from the delicate atmospherics of Valentino Mora and Caldera to the machine funk of Robert Hood, Solid Gold Playaz and Marcellus Pittman. There are left turns folded into XDB's patient narrative arc, too: John Carpenter's brooding scores here, DJ Sprinkles' melancholic work with Will Long on "Acid Trax N (Acid Dog)" there.

It's the sound of a DJ who has been quietly chiseling away for three decades, and who understands the value of persistence as much as restraint.

@xdb

Find the tracklist and interview at ra.co/podcast/1021

RA.1003 XDB

1. Takuya Morita - Tamaoto
2. Mike Sharon - I Wonder
3. Djalo - Onwards
4. DP-6 - Terracotta
5. Janeret - Echoes
6. Mielafon - Get Warm
7. Okain - Resist
8. Cocktail Cool - Just Listen
9. Ohm - Flickering Lights
10. Badeo - Facade (Thor Remix)
11. Interstate - Dancer ate my Bird
12. Burnski - Green Room
13. Renato Ratier - Atacama (Ney Faustini Remix)
14. Nicolas Barnes - Blind Habit (Eric Louis Remix)
15. Ohrwert - Lyft
16. Skudge - Tryptic
17. Arcarsenal - The Vessel
18. G-Prod - One Trice
19. Doctor DUB - Reach For The Sky (Vocal Version)

Givi Gelashvili - HÖR @ Trust Festival Tbilisi  (4th July 2025)

One half of the mind behind our festival’s curation, Kasper (@kaspermarott) delivered on a signature mix of ethereal, deep, and progressive techno to swirl under the morning sun. Rolling rhythmically for the whole 3 hours and splashing moments of ecstatic humanism throughout, this is Vessel in perhaps its truest form; sunrise, fog, and a collective, concrete-shaking movement.

photo by Simon Englyst

Kune Festival 2025: Kasper Marott @ Vessel Stage

A series of recorded live mixes from Bar Temp. 

As Heard At Bar Temp. #001: nd_baumecker

Part of Aaron Blau's sexy early morning set in the Sauna at Kreuzwerk back in August 2025

PDC Live - Aaron Blau at PDC @ Kreuzwerk August '25

Multisexual Dance Music by @d-tiffany
Live Recording of the closing set at Multisex United, October 2025

Multisexual Mix #31 D.Tiffany

From Media In The Service Of Terror due June 10 via Hospital Productions

Vatican Shadow - 'More Of The Same'

Adam Beyer’s Drumcode juggernaut attracts more fans and critical plaudits with each passing year. Holding firm on its future facing ethos, techno’s number one label presents a new volume in its acclaimed A-Sides series with 20 prime tracks to signify its 20th anniversary. 

Such is the volume of quality music Adam Beyer receives throughout the course of the year, releasing all of it would be impossible. Enter the blue chip A-Sides series: a chance for the quality-obsessive label head to issue a collection of outstanding tracks that couldn’t fit in their regular EP release schedule. 

With an eye on future talent, as much as the label’s established roster of heavy-hitters, the compilation showcases the full breadth of Drumcode’s multifaceted techno sound, equal parts inspiring and functional. 

Led by the stealth techno funk of ‘Nine of You’, Beyer’s deft collaboration with Mark Reeve, the compilation takes in exciting highlights from big guns such as Alan Fitzpatrick, Dustin Zahn, Bart Skils, Pleasurekraft, Luca Agnelli, Jay Lumen, Kaiserdisco and Gary Beck. 

The rich vein of form displayed by emerging techno talent is similarly given prime position. Rising DJ/producer Boxia makes his Drumcode debut, fresh from a well-received warm up set for the crew at the hugely successful Junction 2 festival in London, while the likes of Enrico Sangiuliano, Juan Sanchez, Ian O’Donovan and Timmo also drop fire, establishing their credentials as some of the most promising talent breaking through the ranks in 2016. 

Reinforcing the global scope of the label, artists such as The Junkies from Toronto and Layton Giordani from New York, prove techno is winning a place in the heart of the new generation of artists coming out of North America. 

Kevin de Vries - Eternity - Drumcode - DC159

Follow Chloé on socials - www.listentochloe.com/
FB - www.facebook.com/listentochloe
TWITTER - twitter.com/ChloeDjProducer
INSTAGRAM - www.instagram.com/listentochloe/

Photo By Noémié Goudal - noemiegoudal.com/
Artwork by Dune Lunel - www.dunelunel.com/

(uk)Sounding the promise of long days ahead and late nights to follow with its opening salvos, Chloé’s The Dawn heralds the return of the Paris-based DJ and producer, and a new dawn in her ever-evolving career.

Indeed, The Dawn is her inaugural release on her own label Lumière Noire, which she recently set up as a separate entity – after using the name for a collection of releases over the last few months, and of course for her infamous Rex Club night, which has since 2014 become a bit of a club house for Parisian electronic music fans.  Operating Lumière Noire as a fully-fledged label will enable Chloé to release a new full-length album (of which The Dawn is the lead single) sometime in the next few months.

Over the ten-plus minutes of The Dawn, a spoken-word track languishes over melodic washes in a dramatic progression that evokes a novel, or noir-ish cinema – a method that the producer has taken a shine to since Take Care. This cultivation of the strange and the beautiful has become her calling card, putting her in a league with likeminded producers, who take the basic tenets of techno and inject them with their own singular poetic visions. A visual-arts analogue could be found in Noémie Goudal’s photographs which grace the EP’s cover as they will Chloé’s upcoming releases.

This stirring aesthetic gives The Dawn a slightly cerebral dimension, which is taken to new depths by Dixon’s stubbornly technoid remix. The Berlin-based whiz kid, who has over the last few years risen to the top of the international electronic music scene, inverts Chloé’s light-drenched, full-bodied production into a tense, captivating chiaroscuro.

The Dawn can also be explored via the “Chloé * IRCAM V2: The Dawn Interactive Mix” installation, which embodies Chloé’s music as an intimate interactive experience. It is one of the first offshoots of a constantly mutating collaboration between Chloé and the IRCAM Institution (www.ircam.fr/) that began in 2015.

Chloé - The Dawn (Dixon Remix)

Detroit Beatdown Remixes 1: 2

Falling Up (Carl Craig Remix)

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

Infrared Vision

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