Bleu Ciel

Waldmeister (MOLØ Remix)

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

The dance floor as devotional is a trope as old as the club itself. But, with her new album, Jesus Was An Alien, Perel subverts the stakes of our collective communion: Who are our arms raised to? Who are we seeking salvation from?

“Jesus Was An Alien is a discourse about whether Jesus was an actual alien,” she explains, “but also a social debate about what is and implies religion today.” She offers up her provocative second record – her first on Kompakt – as a soundtrack for the listener’s own journey through the intricacies and ironies of modern belief.

Picking up on the themes she brought to her debut, the 2018’s LP Hermetica on DFA, Perel has created ten tracks rich with spirit and allusion. Her influences are myriad, from the indie dance hitmakers of the early 2000s – Hot Chip, Simian Mobile Disco, Justice – to rave compilations that predate her ascent to the DJ booth, to more abstract inputs. Living with synesthesia, she says, “I feel emotions and colors piling up inside me, then there’s a triggering sound or event that opens a valve. My tracks are color streams that tell a story.”

Jesus Was An Alien is not just multicolored – it’s multi-lingual too, slipping in and out of tongues in a single track, sometimes dispensing with words altogether (the ecstatic breakdown of “The Principle of Vibration”). The album features Perel’s voice almost entirely but for her special collaboration with Canadian songwriter Marie Davidson on the title track.

“Jesus Was An Alien” stirs like a late-night revelation, a heady discovery awakened in the dark. Perel lays out a fiercely disciplined electro pulse, with Davidson’s proclamations growing more fervent over the song’s sensual stride. “I already said everything with my synthesizers and the melodies I created,” Perel explains of the collaboration, but “somehow she gave the song a voice I couldn’t.”

Perel drives further not only spiritually but sonically across the ten tracks, taking thrilling production risks: standouts include her breathy vocals atop a melodic piano strut on “Matrix;” the delirious blur of ghostly chimes and disembodied voices of “Religion;” and the retro radiance of “The Principle of Vibration,” in which Perel exhorts us to “come on and vibe” over an athletic riff and shuffling percussion.

“Kill The System,” meanwhile, hits the listener with tense acid pulses, building to only an imagined release and calls out the end of patriarchy. Album closer “Am Kanal” starts as a pensive cloud of a track, finally breaking into a rich textural rain of synths and stabs.

The variety throughout Jesus Was An Alien underlines Perel’s purpose in this latest project; she’s experimenting her way to answers – or maybe just more questions. After all, she says, “questions are the beginning of something new.”

Perel - Am Kanal

Perel / Marie Davidson - Jesus Was An Alien

Watergate 28 EP #1

Across the Universe

Shubostar - Tiempo Y Lugar Feat. Galera

Jozef K debuts on Maeve 26 with his Loved and Lost EP. This 5-tracker touches on rave, breaks and straight dancefloor fire, complemented with a killer remix from our boy Kev Sheridan.

Loved and Lost

A1. Krystal Klear - Essentia

Part 5 of the various artists series is at it again with 5 tracks by 5 different producers and a mixture of feel good party time music and contemplative music. You will hear familiar Running Back names like Storken (this time together with JStaaf) refining their comic tropes (or imagine Foreigner doing house music) next to newcomers like Archie Ward. His Pizza Girl puts musical toppings on a pounding underbelly that wouldn’t be out of place in any warehouse, while Moritz and Amount dial it back a bit. Their respective tracks are gleaming with a special kind of elegant end-of-night euphoria that is hard to come by – and all the nicer if it happens. Remember: trance is a state of mind! Last but not least, Australia’s Jonus Eric delivers an IDM-leaning piece of outsider dance. Hot soup, hot swallow!

B1. Storken & JStaaf - Tunghugg

Stare

Follow // https://soundcloud.com/amutton3

Interview between Arteq & Amutton: www.arteqproductions.com.au/post/atqpod062amutton

62 podcasts in and we are joined by long-life Arteq friend Amutton, who previously joined us for a special set at our 2020 Bushfire Fundraiser, and now returns with a stellar mix for the Arteq community.

For sixty-four glorious minutes, Adam lays down some exotic nu-disco, tech-house, and ethereal techno. We absolutely loved listening to this at Arteq, and we know you will too.

Adam, thank you. We will see you at an Arteq event soon, in control of the dancefloor once again. Enjoy the beats fam!

ATQPOD062 || Amutton

Label, booking agency & online record shop

Demo submission: 
We receive a lot of demos every day. Please understand that we are unable to listen to everything. Send your private soundcloud link to: label@kompakt.fm.

Perel - Am Kanal

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