Dekmantel - Best of 2024

Genesis Domain

Saturn to Home

No Trouble In Paradise (feat. Paul St. Hilaire)

Brujas EP

Acuyuye

Dekmantel Ten: A Decade of Dekmantel Festival

How Does It Make You Feel

1 And 3

Estimulus Sonido

Buy/stream: https://kompakt.fm/releases/the_floor_is_lava_2xlp_dl

Michael Mayer albums don’t come round too often, which is one of many reasons why his fourth collection, The Floor Is Lava, is a genuine event. It’s been eight years since his last one, the collaborative & released on !K7; its predecessors, Mantasy (2012) and Touch (2004), took their sweet time, too. It’s no real surprise, given the many hats Mayer wears – globetrotting DJ, revered remixer, inveterate collaborator, and boss of both Kompakt and Imara – that his solo productions are relatively sparing. But this also speaks to their quality: Mayer’s name on a record sleeve is a sign of quality, of music that’s both looking to the future and calling back to the past, that balances the imperatives of the dancefloor and the loungeroom, that’s as exploratory as it is functional.

On The Floor Is Lava, Mayer seems to be taking the temperature of both the music that surrounds him (past and present), and the ideas of the industry he works within. There’s that iconic album title, for a start. “The album’s mindset,” he says, reflecting on those four words together. For Mayer, it’s partly a critique of the way the industry boxes in both producer and listener, focuses them on genre, on market, on the next new thing: “Being a free minded spirit that transcends genres has become an uphill battle.” A battle worth fighting, though, and with The Floor Is Lava, the result is an album that’s varied, quixotic, idiosyncratic, charming, and deeply, addictively listenable.

Throughout, Mayer finds thrills in exploration and juxtaposition, allowing unexpected things to blossom and giving them their life, their platform, throwing the listener exciting curveballs: “It’s a DJ album by a DJ that’s easily bored.” Either easily bored, or endlessly curious, The Floor Is Lava is rich with ideas. It opens with “The Problem”, which looks back to look forward, embracing the rickety way early house productions threw samples together with gleeful abandon. Mayer mentions Pal Joey, and the scene around Rockers Hi-Fi and their Different Drummer imprint, as reference points, and you can hear that freewheeling spirit throughout.

That’s The Floor Is Lava: then and now, brainwaves and nerve structures, problems and solutions, genres on fire; the real, the unreal, and the surreal. An album for the easily bored and the endlessly curious. Mayer has the last word, telling us all you need to know about the album’s spirit: “Burning for the cause, being zealous, being addicted to the heat of the night, the exuberant powers of music.”

The Floor Is Lava

Feuerstuhl

Michael Mayer - Feuerstuhl

Futuro Remixes

Isla (Satoshi Fumi Remix)

Buy/stream: https://kompakt.fm/releases/meine_unterkunft_ist_die_unvernunft_remixed_ep

At the end of last year, we celebrated the release of Jo “Schlammpeitziger” Zimmermann's brand new album “Meine Unterkunft ist die Unvernunft” on his 60th birthday at Kompakt Recordstore. Now we are delighted to present the accompanying remixes. An illustrious group of long-time companions has come together to pay tribute to the master of electronic eccentricity with remixes. Schlammpeitziger says thank you in his own way by immortalizing all the contributors with finely selected photos, hand-decorated on the cover.

Meine Unterkunft ist die Unvernunft Remixed

Loch ohne Licht (Ada Remix)

Schlammpeitziger - Loch ohne Licht (Ada Remix)

Taken from the new DJ Koze Album “MUSIC CAN HEAR US” , out on PAMPA RECORDS: djkoze.lnk.to/MusicCanHearUs

Unbelievable, the new single from DJ Koze’s upcoming album Music Can Hear Us (out April 4, 2025), sees DJ Koze and Ada deliver an otherworldly piece of music, drifting like a feverish dream sequence somewhere between beauty and unease.

In just 4 minutes and 30 seconds, DJ Koze and his “mental muse,” as he affectionately calls her, create an infinite space where familiar logic no longer applies, where nothing is as it seems, and where the uncanny lurks just beneath the surface. Hovering over this detached, dreamlike scenario is Ada’s angelic voice: a sound from another dimension, a plumb line cutting through the alienation.

With Unbelievable, DJ Koze has once again crafted an original piece of music—nostalgically familiar yet boldly futuristic—powerfully shredding through the boundaries of anything heard before.

He delivers, and delivers again. You can’t quite grasp how.

Music Can Hear Us

Unbelievable

Buy/stream: kompakt.fm/releases/germina_speeder

Sascha Funke is creating a long overdue monument to an almost forgotten cultural artefact of the GDR: the ‘Germina Speeder’ was the only skateboard made in East Germany before reunification and was launched in 1986. It was produced by VEB Schokoladen-Verarbeitungsmaschinen (a state-owned chocolate processing machine factory) in Wernigerode and was therefore affectionately known as the ‘chocolate board’. However, it was hardly suitable for actual skateboarding due to technical inadequacies. It is not known whether Sascha himself owned such a board, but the tracks on the ‘Germina Speeder’ EP definitely roll better than the original. The opener ‘Blaupunkt’ breathes the euphoric spirit of the legendary Berlin club ‘E-Werk’, while the title track would have been more at home at the ‘Dubmission’ parties in the Turbine. Sascha leaves the 90s behind with radiant positivism; ‘Bo Knows’ sounds more like a 2000s open air at Café Schönbrunn. The EP closes with ‘Mastermind’, a high-octane psy-proghouse banger that, like all four tracks, quotes the past but still has both feet on today’s dance floors. Or rather, is dancing. 4:1 for love!

Germina Speeder

Sascha Funke - Germina Speeder

Mirror

10 Years of Keep Thinking: Futurespect

Stick with This (Original Mix)

BTTL STPPN Rx

Dark, hypnotic techno sculpted with global percussion, tidal sub-bass, and immersive cinematic atmosphere. Each track unfolds like an evolving dreamscape — relentless 4/4 kicks echo through vast, cathedral-like chambers, while ancestral log drum patterns pulse in layered polyrhythms. Metallic claps and rimshots strike like sparks off stone, their sharp accents reverberating through haze and shadow.

This series fuses deep Amapiano swing, the raw weight of Durban Gqom, and the forward drive of modern techno. Whistles drift like spectral signals above the mix, tribal shakers flicker like firelight, and the bass breathes with the force of an air hangar shifting air. Minimal melodies bleed in as fractured chords, eerie drones, and evolving arpeggios that dissolve into silence before reemerging with greater force. Pads bloom like rising fog, pulling listeners into a suspended state between tension and release.

These aren’t just tracks — they are rituals of movement and memory. A fusion of industrial rhythm and ancestral resonance, rendered with cosmic weight and surreal emotional gravity. RONU signature: cinematic depth, global textures, hypnotic percussion, and a soundscape designed for late-night festivals, underground basements, and endless ascension.

GREENROOM

Brumal EP

Moonset

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

No Trouble In Paradise (feat. Paul St. Hilaire)

dekmantel

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