"These records changed my emotional perspective on music." Recorded live at Dekmantel, the Italian techno artist dissects the records that shaped his approach to DJing and production.

There are few artists as widely respected as Donato Dozzy, who is known for his unique approach to building hypnotic, acid-infused atmospheres as a solo artist and as one half of Voices From The Lake. He is also a singular curator at the head of Spazio Disponibile alongside Neel, and a DJ with a reputation for building sophisticated and slowly unwinding sets at festivals like Labyrinth, Terraforma and Horst, as well as in public spaces and museums.

In this Exchange live from Dekmantel 2023, Resident Advisor's editor-in-chief, Whitney Wei, asks Dozzy about the songs that shaped his craft in our Playing Favourites flagship series. He takes us back to his childhood, playing the first track that introduced him to electronic music before moving chronologically through his life and the pieces that acted as lynchpins in his creative development. He discusses how he grew up in a musical household, listening to classical orchestrations with his parents before finding Italo disco and the stylings of Giorgio Moroder, Lory D and The Future Sound of London. These albums, he says, influenced how he builds his sets, leaning into slowly unfolding narratives as he moves from one track to another. "When I started releasing albums, I decided that I wanted to create stories," he says. Listen to the episode in full.

Tracklist:
Franco Battiato - Summer on a Solitary Beach
Giorgio Moroder - The Chase
Lory D - Abrupt Interruption
The Future Sound of London - Cascade
Kruder & Dorfmeister - DJ Kicks 1996
Mike Parker - Dispatches
Die Woodys - Fitchtl's Lied
Verde Prato - Nina Sonando
Donato Dozzy - Valentina

EX.675 Donato Dozzy

KVN - WATCH YO MOUTH (ICED OUT)

KVN - Voice To The Sky

Accept And Allow

On The Final Nights Of Paradise, Levan is immortalised as sonic commander in chief. The mix compilation doubles as a sketchbook of a canon that remains largely embedded in dance music today. Garage classics like MFSB's old-school vogue theme "Love Is the Message" and First Choice's effusive disco hit "Doctor Love" promenade alongside jacking Chicago-born staples like Adonis' 303 masterpiece "No Way Back." If you wanted to give a brief history of club classics to someone just out of a 50-year coma, this set could serve as a terrific crash course.

Levan's messy mixing aesthetic is on full display here, but there are stretches in which the mix advances without a hitch—particularly a disco-heavy section on vinyl #3, where Levan bumps things along with a series of quick, well-timed cuts. But his scrappier mixing style yields an unexpected reward, even now, almost 40 years in the future.

The Final Nights Of Paradise abounds with the kinds of shocks that DePino rhapsodised. "I'm happy and I'm gay," a voice calls out as HMJ's "Hyped" bounces energetically along and then, wham! an explosion of glitter as the outro of Carl Bean’s early Pride anthem "I Was Born This Way" takes over. The mix takes an abrupt left from Loleatta Holloway's laid-back "Dreamin'" to Serious Intention's dubby proto-house "You Don't Know," rendering a wobbly but determined bridge between eras.

Sometimes you can hear Levan correct his overzealousness. When Man Friday's "Real Love" comes in sloppily on top of Diana Ross' slow-burning "Once in the Morning," he quickly fades out to resolve the clatter. Elsewhere, he seems content to ride out a shaky transition—for a good two minutes, the arpeggiated synths of Chantal Curtis' "Hit Man" wiggle in and out of step with the preceding track, Harvey Mason's "Groovin' You." A rambunctious hand drum solo adds to the glorious cacophony.

Levan famously wove a narrative into his song selection; it was why he was said to prefer vocal tracks to their instrumental counterparts. There's a sense of finality on songs like Adonis' "No Way Back," in which the baritone vocal whispers, "Too far gone, ain't no way back." But there's also a starburst of hope for the future.

"That night, Larry played beautifully, like it wasn't the end," recalled Garage staple Michele Saunders in a retrospective piece on the Garage's closing weekend for Document. "The only difference was that it had been going for three days non-stop. People were strolling in a daze. They did not leave. Later, everyone met at Washington Square Park after the club."

In the interim, Larry played other spots in New York such as the Choice, Mars and the Palladium. He toured Japan, where he was idolised, and applied his touch to Nami Shimada's sparkling "Sun Shower." Even as a remixer, that quintessential Larry brusqueness was on show. Struggling to get the mix right, he thundered a message through producer Soichi Terada's answering machine: "Mr. Levan calling Mr. Terada. Mr. Terada, I need to know the key of your fucking song!"

Levan's life ended on a bittersweet and unresolved note. In Maestro, Knuckles recalled spinning at Sound Factory and having Levan visit him in the booth after the Garage shut. "He said if he had a choice of things happening for him now as opposed to ten years before, he would have chosen now, because he would've been able to appreciate it a whole lot better," he said.

Levan's presence is still keenly felt in New York nightlife, both in the careers that he spawned and the songs he catapulted to ubiquity. "He's the reason why this job is what it is, why it's a career," Knuckles once said. And he's right: The Final Nights of Paradise sounds radically contemporary nearly 40 years after on. So many of these tracks continue to regularly fire up the dance floor as if days, not decades, have passed since their initial release.


Larry Levan - The Final Night of Paradise Garage / 26.09.1987 ++ best sound quality320kbit/s3:16:36

The Final Night at 84th King Street

Larry Levan- The Final Night of Paradise // 26.09.1987// Best Sound Quality

313 Connection Live Series 0004 Kairogen B2B Undercurrent At La Cheetah Club 313 Day Special

1. Wedlock - I'm the Fuck You Man (M. Steenbergen Remix) [00:00:00]
2. Lockjaw - The Final Point [00:03:33]
3. Lockjaw - In My Brain [00:07:21]
4. Keng - Infiltrator [00:11:25]
5. Predator - I Won't Die [00:14:11]
6. KnightVision - The Realm [00:17:13]
7. Keng - Low Motherfucker [00:20:33]
8. Lockjaw - Smoke Diz One [00:24:00]
9. Phoenix - Keep It Going Now [00:27:15]
10. Lockjaw - Smoke Diz One [00:27:53]
11. Trickster - Reality [00:30:44]
12. Dark Syndicate - The Unknown [00:34:01]
13. Dark Syndicate - Escape from Reality [00:37:04]
14. Vanugenth The 5th - Wonderfull Music [00:40:37]
15. Juggernaut - Don't Fuck With a Ruffneck (Anthem) [00:44:51]
16. Paradox - The Guillotine [00:47:23]
17. Cybernators - No Out of Here [00:50:28]
18. KnightVision - My Salvation [00:54:54]
19. Ruffneck & Dj Ruffneck - 20 Bullits to Comply [00:59:05]
20. Ruffneck & Dj Ruffneck - Beyond Infinity (I Shall Find Me) [01:04:09]


Rezerection mix vol 26 (Ruffneck records 5/6/25)

Mushroom Jazz 12 - Mixtape - 08/1995

Dj Vibes & MC Livelee @ Hardcore Heaven 'The Phenomenon' on Saturday the 10th of May 1997.

Dj Vibes @ Hardcore Heaven - The Phenomenon - 1997

Kaotic justice

Strobe

Liam Cassidy, Electronic Artist and Music Technology Lecturer.

This is the home for the artistic output of Liam James, Terra Incognita, Perihpheral One, Lycea and other related projects.

Experiments in Electronic music and art.

Maintaining a connection with the divine through sound, rhythm and texture.

Contact - pollentails@googlemail.com

Accept And Allow

Liam James Cassidy

Related tracks