On Oct 6th 2021, about 2 years after my last set in London, I played from open to close (11pm to 5am) at Village Underground in Shoreditch. Here's a recording of the whole night with a bit of the crowd noise. 

Perhaps a full tracklist at some point... some unreleased stuff in here. 

Even though it had been a while, we had all night so no use in rushing things! I came across a lot of lovely music this year, but it mostly lived in my rekordbox or in a radio mix. I actually record a lot of my sets but it always feels like they're in a constant state of iteration, making it hard to pick just one "version" to release. Over the years I feel like this has led me to only very sparingly drop live-recorded sets. A "party" doesn't often lend itself to the archivable realm, maybe the memories are best suited to the ephemeral. 

Anyway, eternal gratitude crystals to those who came and those who danced, and to those listening now.

-av

Avalon Emerson Live in London (6 hour dj set) Oct 2021

Four Tet invited us to stream the second stage of the massive party he threw May 4th & 5th under the Kosciuszko Bridge in NYC.

The first day was curated by Incienso and the second one by 9000 Dreams.

Four Tet & Friends x 9000 Dreams with Avalon Emerson

Laurent Garnier’s UK bass-focused mix, Into The Low-End, pays tribute to fabric’s passionate bass community featuring tracks from Skrillex, MC GQ, Sami Virji, and Martin Badder.

Four exclusive tracks grace Garnier’s 12” EP that was vinyl-only on its release at the end of 2024 and accompanied his very special 25th anniversary mix comp release with fabric. Now ‘Playing With The Low-End’ follows on from the dreamy ‘On The Way Home’ available across all platforms, while the techno belter ‘Resonances From The D’ and house cut ‘Odyssée Maison’ head our way in May and July respectively.

Into The Low-End

Laurent Garnier - Playing With The Low-End [fabric Records]

"I'm ready to bring back gatekeeping." The New Yorker staff writer discusses how to protect the underground, experimenting with drugs and her new book, Health and Safety.

Can drugs help us find meaning in music and nightlife? This is a question that today's Exchange guest, New Yorker staff writer Emily Witt, asks in earnest in her new book Health and Safety: A Breakdown. Just released in hardcover in the UK and Europe, the memoir traces Witt's life in her early-to-mid 30s. A journalist living and working in Brooklyn, she began experimenting with psychedelics and club drugs after years of living what she describes as a conservative, straight-and-narrow, middle-class life. She became enamoured with the borough's underground raves, frequenting events like the festival Sustain-Release, the party Unter and sets at Bushwick haunt Bossa Nova Civic Club, all while falling in love with an aspiring DJ and producer she calls Andrew.

As the book progresses, Witt documents the growing MAGA movement in America, gun rights rallies and mass shootings. As the country falls apart, she watches her romantic relationship fall apart, too. Drugs and Brooklyn nightlife, she writes, became both an escape and a way to rearrange a world that she starts to feel no longer makes sense. 

Witt shares critical opinions about the underground scene's capacity to be a utopia and place of belonging in an increasingly hostile world, arguing that there should be more gatekeeping in place to protect a scene that's threatened by capitalism and the mainstream. She also interrogates what she calls "woke identity politics" in Brooklyn, the lack of change that came from the Black Lives Matter movement, empty calls for political protest that dominated the early days of the pandemic and why, despite everything, she's chosen to stay in Brooklyn for good. Listen to the episode in full. -Chloe Lula

EX.769 Emily Witt

Four Tet at Dark Skies, Horst Arts & Music 2025

Roman Flugel - 19 July 2025

Roman Flügel - 16 August 2025

2THEFLOOR

PerkTup

Our debut podcast comes from Berlin resident Troy Pierce.


RA.001 Troy Pierce

Eris Drew is one of those artists who seemed to blow up over night, but who had actually been hard at work for decades. A long-time residency at Chicago's Smart Bar brought her to international attention, and her own Motherbeat parties at various places around Europe furthered that reputation. It is there that she manages to cook up pure, unadulterated dance floor love and euphoria with hi-energy selections and a unifying sense of oneness that is put together with her own so called “orchestration” mixing techniques. An inquisitive musician and innovative recording artist, she has also just put out her debut solo EP on Interdimensional Transmissions and runs T4T LUV NRG with partner Octo Octa. 

This week's mix is all of the above and more: a throbbing, impulsive and full bodied experience that serves up the most bumping house grooves but run through with the warm ambient glow of a post-rave comedown. The music feels at classic but also thoroughly contemporary: it will make you pump your fist in sheer joy, but also sends warm waves of euphoria through your body. This is the sound of the Motherbeat.

Eris on her mix:
"In a recent interview for DJ Mag I talk about my connection to the song “Secrets of Mediation” by Dutch producers Alex Dijksterhuis (Jamez) & Gaston Steenkist (Dobre). At Chicago raves in 1994 and 1995, this track revealed to me that modern dance music contains archaic ritual elements such as trance-inducing resonances, penetrating sacred drums, and language transformed into glossolalia. My DJ mix for Dekmantel is inspired by my formative dance experiences and by the intense extended sets I play at psychedelic raves such as Motherbeat and No Way Back. The mix includes bass music, progressive, breaks, house, techno, and minimal, all of which I collage, drop and scratch to put us into a tunneling trance."

Full tracklist here: dkmn.tl/270-ErisDrew