LABEL

Order: 
digital https://radiantlove.bandcamp.com/album/maara-goddess-within
physical https://one-eye-witness.com/release/1645096604/Maara-Goddess-Within

@maara

There is a culturally and perhaps spiritually bonded link between electronic dance music and what could be called most generally ‘the feminine divine’. In subgenres more oriented to trance and EDM, the vocal sample or progression is almost always uttered by a woman, unlike the variously-sexed divas of house; if divinity is invoked, it is less often a biblical God than some Gaia-derivative. Radiant Love’s fifth release, Goddess Within by the Montreal-based producer Maara, steps into this lineage stretching from Magna Mater to disco queen – Maara’s articulation of the feminine divine, however, is often off-hand, ringing at once sincere and deeply cheeky.
 
The double-side is summed up by the first track’s title, 'Goddess Within (Give It To Me Daddy)', which starts right off with a pumping bassline, carbonated synths, and a repeating sample speaking ‘goddess’ – what trance dreams are made of. What places these tracks especially in the realm of dream are Maara’s washes of delay, reverb and pan, drawing out melodies and textures into trails, clouds, blurs. The sonic fields are decentered, but driving and floor-ready regardless. 'Mommy’s In Trouble' follows up with a set of cleverly phased hi-hats and a swung kick drum. It’s a buildup we’re hearing, although one wouldn’t know until a sample asks us matter of factly, ‘Notice what you’re feeling. Are you calm?’ and the bass swings back in.
 
The B-side begins softer, with the wide pads of 'Plum Plum Paradise' eventually dropping into a downtempo break. The percussion is muted, and what gives the track its body is a shifting terrain of sample (‘Allow yourself inside, the time and space right now’), gurgling synth note, windchime and whisper. Goddess Within’s final track, 'Lezzies In A Jacuzzi' picks up the pace again, with a porny bass-throb, insistent hi-hats and a vocal fragment looping the word ‘amor’. This is exactly the kind of sound that would have me thinking on the dancefloor, Is she actually saying ‘amor’? Quickly I would reach the decision that it didn’t matter – the whole terrain of the actual, the explicit and undreamed is best left to masculinity anyways.

MAARA
Title: GODDESS WITHIN
Cat: RADIANTLOVE004
Format: 12”
Distributed: ONE EYE WITNESS
Mixed by: Priori
Artwork: YENNY JRANT
Text: NAT MARCUS

MAARA - GODDESS WITHIN

PREORDER: https://one-eye-witness.com/release/1651667515/Byron-Yeates-Sweat-Ur-Prayers

A1. Sweat Ur Prayers
A2. Waves

B1. Dreaming Is Essential -  Byron Yeates, Eoin DJ & Ruin
B2. Sweat Ur Prayers (Lawrence Lee Remix)


@byronyeates @eoindj @ruinxxx @lawrencelee

Sweat Ur Prayers, the next wavy addition to Radiant Love’s catalogue, is the first solo-EP of Byron Yeates. In their messaging, their timbres and grooves, the 4 tracks speak faithfully to Yeates’ inclinations as a DJ and label-head: the playfulness and buoyancy, a constant nod to the roots of rave, and a faith in dance music’s transformative power.

Opening the release is the title track, a bubbling and breakbeat-laden 8 minutes. Mantric repetition is a running theme throughout the EP, and we hear “Raindrops falling all around, freeing me from other sounds; trickling down my weary eyes, bringing me back, I’m ready to fly” as an opening salvo. Yeates’ is known for his vast, enduring DJ sets, inducing sheens of sweat from all involved – with these tracks, it’s clear he’s unafraid to take his time to build tension as a producer as well. The percussive conversation between hi-hat and snare complexifies until a clap enters near the 2 minute mark and suddenly we’re in the main, driving groove.

“Waves” is a dial-back to downtempo, floatation and introspection. The dancer and writer Gabrielle Roth is sampled, speaking on her 5 Rhythms movement meditation technique – the term “sweat your prayers” comes from her texts on ecstatic physicality. The track shimmers and sways in bright pads and delayed-out drum breaks, setting the reflective tone for “Dreaming is Essential”, co-produced by Eoin DJ. Opening with Radiant Love co-founder Ruin, her candid vocals are perfectly aligned for the dancefloor’s vulnerability: “What am I avoiding? I wish I could hold myself, like the dance holds me.” The track unfolds through layers of percussion and shadowy texture, taking a pivot to optimism halfway through, as a warm synth-line accompanies Ruin’s repetition: “Dreaming is essential.”

Lawrence Lee’s remix of “Sweat Ur Prayers” adapts the bounce of the original’s bassline to a classic, stabby rave synth. Again there is a percussive focus, but force and warmth are foregrounded, rather than polyrhythm – a shot, rather than a spritz. We hear again the opening mantra, and although “I’m ready to fly” may seem in opposition to Ruin’s “Let the dance hold me”, Sweat Ur Prayers seems to say they are one in the same movement.

BYRON YEATES
Title: SWEAT UR PRAYERS
Cat: RADIANTLOVE005
Format: 12”
Distributed: ONE EYE WITNESS
Mixed and Mastered: MARCO PELLEGRINO
Artwork: BYRON YEATES
Text: NAT MARCUS

BYRON YEATES - SWEAT UR PRAYERS

@fiofahhh
@d-tiffany

The Berlin-based collective Radiant Love is responsible for a luminous bimonthly rave roaming throughout the city for the past year or so. Naturally, its first release as a label, the 3-track EP You Think by Fio Fa, represents not just the sound of this party but its infectious mood, a flammable affect.

Fio Fa’s productions are brisk, incredibly playful surfaces: they are structured by continuity more than dramatic builds and drops, and the tracks themselves are composed from a few honed elements – a sculpted kick, a bright and chiming synth-line, some chopped and processed vocal debris. The title cut begins and builds upon a cheeky melodic line, picking up punch in the first 3 minutes. At that point, however, the song gives way to a hurtling depth, as a swirling pad joins the mix, and “You Think” begins to sound like the hottest party in a wind tunnel you’ve ever attended. 

The EP’s B-side kicks off with with “Kayaki”, a contagious shuffle of cowbell and triangle, stutter clap and a splinter of MC vocal. Again, an airy synth merges into the rhythm (steam, this time). It’s not until a line of jazzy 303 keys enters the fray, more than halfway through the 8-minute track, that the groove is felt in its fullness – testament to this producer’s patience and verve. To even bring up “verve” begs the question of D. Tiffany, whose remix of “You Think” rounds out the EP. Given the D. Tiffany treatment, Fio Fa’s bright and sweeping loop becomes a series of omens barely resting on a wobbling bassline. The drum programming possesses her signature swing; simply, it hits. And despite or in light of the track’s hard edge, it still might make you smile – the snatches of melody are loopy and impish, and the whole production is animated by an immensely well-tuned playfulness (which may be the patron spirit, if not the sound, of Radiant Love).

FIO FA
Title: YOU THINK
Cat: RADIANTLOVE000
Format: 12”
Distributed: RUBADUB
Artwork: JOHN MICHAEL
Text: NAT MARCUS
Release date: 14.11.19

FIO FA - YOU THINK

@pillow-queen
@d-tiffany 
@vani_t
@ex-terrestrial

For its second release, Radiant Love sticks to family values. Paying homage to the party and label’s co-director and resident Byron Yeates, Byron’s Theme comes from the likes of Vani-T (one half of Berlin’s forceful, femme party Climax) and D. Tiffany (who threw down a ruthless remix on the label’s first release by Fio Fa). Together, they take the name of Pillow Queen – a semi-pejorative term for the kind of sub who expects to receive pleasure like a well catches rainwater. No reciprocation, just a reign of sexual passivity.



Their tracks, however, give plenty. “Byron’s Theme” presents a rich palette in its 2-minute buildup: a dry trance hook, high-end synths buzzing and wavering, pitch-shifted voice samples and a pan-flute ran through with tremolo. Throbbing, the 303 bassline picks up after a breakdown at the 4-minute mark, and only then does one realise the song’s still building. There’s still room in the last 40 seconds for some percussion modeled on a breakbeat loop – which is to say, the track is incredibly cheeky and hard-hitting – all that I would hope for in any lover.



While the EP’s first track feels wide, rangy, “Estrel Nights” opens the EP’s B-side in a much closer, tighter space. The build is percussive: bongo taps, claps, cowbell; then a hi-hat snaps things into shape, and in lopes the kick drum. And rhythm remains the central player here. It’s not until 3 minutes in that the percussion finds a melodic backdrop – a dreamy, detuned pad, choral, like a moan.



Ex-Terrestrial’s remix of “Byron’s Theme” repositions some of the elements and ratchets up the tempo of the original, but maintains its respiration: the energy and erotics flow into a different structure, closer to traditional trance, with sharp hi-hats and loopy arpeggios that phase in and out of syncopation, measure to measure. Diagonal, we incline to a climax that dizzily plateaus at 6 minutes, de-escalates and breaks down over the next 2, glows until it’s just a kick drum, slower, slower still; we’re catching our breath.

PILLOW QUEEN
Title: BYRON'S THEME
Cat: RADIANTLOVE001
Format: 12”
Distributed: RUBADUB
Artwork: YENNY JRANT 
Text: NAT MARCUS
Release date: 16.03.20

PILLOW QUEEN - BYRON'S THEME

ORDER:
https://www.rubadub.co.uk/records/hacking-the-planet-ep
https://radiantlove.bandcamp.com/album/bliss-inc-hacking-the-planet

@bliss_inc
@sunnysibar

There is not much information to be found online about Bliss Inc., whose Hacking the Planet EP comes out on Radiant Love this summer. Beyond the fact they’re named Alexander and hail from Saint Petersburg, the project is cryptic – somehow this is fitting for a set of songs that could’ve fallen out of an obscure 1994 catalogue. This is the year of Robert Leiner’s Visions of the Past, Opus III’s Guru Mother, and Paul Oakenfold’s BBC-1 Essential Mix: an aesthetic region in which tech and new age spirituality braid together, a time before this synthesis reached Silicon Valley; while it still lingered in the rave, incredibly sincere, everything sounded kind of wet, and the efficiency of spirit was means to no end but a state of bliss.

What keeps Hacking the Planet from falling into pure nostalgia is its tuning – the palette of 1994 has been lifted and run through a delicate sensibility. The title track is a piece of buoyant, airy trance, with orbiting filters and a set of loopy, very vocal synths. It bumps along at 130 BPM, but feels slower because of the ease and clarity with which the track progresses. “Infinite” has got the aquatic motifs and soft, panning cymbals of a set-opener, or a comedown jam. The break that swings in after a minute-thirty feels less like a punctuation than another stream of sonics joining the flow. Picking up the pace a little, “Transitions” opens with a whir that could issue from a field of crickets or a stack of hardware. The entrance of the bassline was the first moment in this EP one could call nasty. But its drive and weight is also tempered, played against by a clever drum break, a run of piano keys, and the ethereal reverb-washed vocal sample we expect in a piece of classic mid-90’s trance – absent, however, is any kind of signalling to Goa, “exoticism” or indigenous aesthetics. (1994 was also the year of Jean Paul Gaultier’s Les Tatouages collection, which, for all its romantic nomadism and deft tailoring and syncretic spirit, has no need of a 2020 update).

Bliss Inc.’s songs stream, rather than track – one gets a sense that the elements flow in and out rather than ride a structure. Sansibar, who provides a remix of “Hacking the Planet” to round out the EP, is solidly a producer of tracks: often electro-derived ass-shaking material that hits, and hits in recognisable sections that progress serially. His version of the title cut brings in a hefty acid baseline, jungle-style stretched vocals, and kicks out of the 4/4 grid. But let there be no mistake, this is a producer also quite capable of coaxing delicacy out of hardware. The chimes of the lullaby-like breakdown halfway through the remix sound like nothing but a ghost in the machine.

BLISS INC.
Title: HACKING THE PLANET
Cat: RADIANTLOVE002
Format: 12”
Distributed: RUBADUB
Artwork: BYRON YEATES
Text: NAT MARCUS
Release date: 24.08.20

BLISS INC. - HACKING THE PLANET

PREORDER:
https://www.rubadub.co.uk/records/catalog/product/view/id/13051/s/peace-tranquility/

DIGITAL:
https://radiantlove.bandcamp.com/album/e00-peace-tranquility


@eva00

Two years ago, the Paris-based producer and DJ E00 released an EP called Do Not Visit The Club. It’s a cheeky title for this artist’s output of dreamy, driving, floor-stirring work—however, in 2020, it bears an entirely different reading.
 
Today, we simply and definitively do not visit the club—the ethics of sharing sweat, spit and space have radically shifted. We miss it for the social effervescence, for the bullshit, most of all for the dancing—which begs the question: what does it mean to release dance music in this moment? To listen to tracks and dance in one’s kitchen is an act of memorial, and although a bit mournful, is also a kind of spiritual respiration: we need it. Rightfully so, E00’s drop on Radiant Love, coming out on the tail-end of this nightmarish year, is titled Peace & Tranquility. 
 
The title track, which opens the release, starts off not with a bang but some kind of thrust: a low note felt in the gut, echoing and loopy chimes, and right away a drum pattern driving us forward. Over the next 8-plus minutes, some horizon-wide pads come into the mix, as well as a shuffling bass-line that speaks directly to the ass. Balancing the A-side is “Flexible Ground”—a downtempo ride awash in white noise and distended vocal samples that give a nod to Deep Forest. It’s a textured, complex sonic surface, with some particularly gorgeous processing of the drums—characteristic of E00, the hi-hat loop becomes a kind of expressive instrument that gets turned, tweaked, and filtered as the rest of the track rolls on.
 
“Biosphere” sets the B-side in motion with canopy birdcall and some ruminating pads; we get one bar of straight 4/4 kicks, and then the structure begins to play, evolve. Starting with those distinctive phase-shifted hi-hats, we work our way into a terrain of barking dogs, delicate piano lines, and even a clever drum-break so tastefully cloaked in reverb. Closing the EP is “Parade”, whose first minute and a half has all the makings of a low-tempo trance track: a punchy kick-drum marching along at 134 BPM, a dry clap and a hi-hat marking the off-beats. Before long, E00 pulls us back into the lush and syncopated world built up through the past three tracks. It’s hard to find a better word than ‘dreamy’—although we won’t simply be jolting awake from the terror of 2020, Peace & Tranquility is a welcome instance of lightness in this year. And I imagine it will be stirring up the dance floors when we visit them once again.

E00.
Title: PEACE & TRANQUILITY
Cat: RADIANTLOVE003
Format: 12”
Distributed: RUBADUB
Artwork: BYRON YEATES
Text: NAT MARCUS
Release date: ~soon~

E00 - PEACE & TRANQUILITY

rave, label, art & performance collective.

label by @byronyeates cassettes by @ruinxxx

residents: @byronyeates @caitfa @thc_thc

LABEL

RADIANT LOVE