this is now one of my fave mixes prob ever. thank you 🫡🤍

Available on Audio Cassette and digital download directly from the label’s Bandcamp: https://cclurl.bandcamp.com/album/a-night-in-the-skull-discotheque

Side A: Bass is Eternal
Side B: 2-step Mutual Dream

A Night in the Skull Discotheque by the beloved underground selector CCL is the latest offering in the T4T LUV NRG label’s highly limited DJ mix series of cassettes. This immersive journey through a wonderland of proto-dubstep sounds from the late 1970s through the year 2000 is a sonic sibling to CCL’s acclaimed 2018 mix Ode to Queer Steppas.

Inspired in part by Eris Drew’s use of “old records to create new styles out of fragments” on her Raving Disco Breaks Vol. 1 mixtape (T4T LUV NRG, 2019), CCL approached this recording with a parallel frame of mind. Created with 3 CDJs, one Turntable, and a Boss Digital Delay 200, the tracks included in the mix are deconstructed from their whole, and constituent parts are intertwined, sampled, and dubbed out while being further stretched beyond their physical limits. CCL mixed many tracks at the 'wrong speed', pitched beyond their original recognizable tone; others are recontextualized through imaginative layering.

With a solid nod to seminal mixtapes of the early 90s, CCL references the namesake for Side A, Bass Is Eternal, an unreleased 1992 mixtape by influential Bristolian producers Smith & Mighty, an important sonic fulcrum amongst the musical tributaries of the hardcore continuum that continues to reverberate to this day. CCL experienced the after-effects of this ‘proto’ sound genesis in 2008, while living in Bristol, by which point its emergent whispers had coalesced into what became known as dubstep. Tracing a rich history of reference through the samples, basslines, moods, and drum patterns emanating from Bass Is Eternal while looking for connections that predate it became a long-term fascination for CCL. The result is a DJ mix that connects the oft-forgotten dots between proto eras and modern developments in bass and dubstep.

For the resulting sonic ride on A Night in the Skull Discotheque, CCL leads us to a fantastical place of timeless surreality – a majestic haunted dancehall soundtracked by a giddy rush of steppers and dubbed-out delights. Subs rattle through syncopated percs, and moody synths glisten in macabre glory. Fantastical dancers wriggle in wispy eternity, liberated from their corporeal forms in all their greatest spiritual wonder. Both extravagant and dusky, A Night in the Skull Discotheque is a world of seductive in-betweens, a place caught between the moodiest depths and the highest exuberance – A love letter to one of the most impactful formative sounds of the last decades.


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A portion for the proceeds from this release will go to fundraiser "SUPPORT PALESTINIAN SOLIDARITY IN EUROPE!". You can also directly donate via:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-palestinian-solidarity-in-europe
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Tape design: Nina Muro
Mastering: TJ Hertz
Additional tape mastering: Eris Drew
Photography: CCL 
Linear notes: Nevan Jio

A Night in the Skull Discotheque [T4T015]

CCL - A Night in the Skull Discotheque

My set closing out Room 2 on the Saturday night of Freerotation 2024.

Pariah @ Freerotation 2024, Baskerville Hall, UK (06/07/24)

@d-tiffany

Announcing our MARICAS residents with this beautiful mix series - starting off by non other than the icon D.Tiffany

Enjoy this lesbian ride <3

MARICAS In Residency - D.Tiffany - #1

TRACKLIST

Syclops - New Bro's In NYC
Koreless - Seven (Drumhell)
Kreggo - Pheeroan
Rhyw - Calippo
Unknown Untitled - uu011 - a1
Marcel Dettmann - Cycling Bits
DJ Patrick R ft. MC KVN & DJ Pikeno MPC - Vai no Chão
Deft - It's Made of Shine
Andy Martin - Electric Blue
Pump Media Unlimited - Bobo 500
Identified Patient - My Way (Hilton Mix)
Harmon Eyes - Tension
DJ Doomscroll - Doomscroll
STEYA - Fast Life
Cirkle - Lunar Orbit
Dead Man’s Chest x King Kutlass - Ananda Tandava
Boris Noiz - Inceptive Point
E-Unity - E-Ternity
DE GRANDI - I Can Relate
Aulic Veil - A-V_001.2 (Bonus Track)
G Jones - Help! I Can't Find My Way Out
Meat Beat Manifesto - Into The Sun (Pts 1 / 2)
Dom & Roland - Interstellar Subs
CCL & Ciel - Spiral Drive (Objekt edit)
gyrofield - Occam's Razor
Shxcxchcxsh - DO 3
Uneak - Bless Dem
DJ Trace & HLZ - Raptor
DJ Phiene - Bass Fanactiks
Marco Maldarella - Buio Omega
solar-x - bionic man
Carrier - FATHOM
Stingray313 - Sentiment
Otto - Hazer
AceMo - Jungle Storm
Objekt - Ganzfeld (Djrum Remix - short edit)
CCL - Strange Attractor
Sonic - Taxi Driver
Instra:mental - Photograph

Objekt at Draaimolen Festival 2024

Three hours of high-intensity heaters from the trio lighting up US club music.

"If the baby boomer generation had the three from Belleville, millennials can say…we have Black Rave Culture." Lofty praise from Spain's WOS Festival, and yet the undeniable buzz surrounding the Washington, D.C. trio of Amal, James Bangura and Nativesun makes it feel merited.

The Black Rave Culture experience is physical from start to finish. The trio's glide through the rich canon of Black dance music is, naturally, a huge chunk of the appeal. You can hear them slamming ghettotech into gqom, threading UK garage through East Coast club, stitching antic juke and swung techno, and landing the odd Mad Mike all-timer with flair.

Their productions mine a similar store of energy, and you'll find plenty of those on RA.974 too. Perhaps most importantly, their tangible chemistry and sincere, undimmed enthusiasm for tunes are what makes this group so magnetic. 

While their RA Podcast is split threeways, it could just as easily be a round-robin session behind the decks. RA.974 is an exhilarating exercise in creating serious dance floor pressure while having a ball in the process.

@black-rave-culture @jamesbangura @dj-nativesun @ama_l

Read more at ra.co/podcast/974

RA.974 Black Rave Culture

Another Barker masterclass.

Sam Barker asks more from techno. The artist known simply as Barker is one of electronic music's most consistently conscientious and curious producers, challenging listeners to question the norms we accept about our shared culture—whether it's the music that fills the room, the process behind it, or the purpose of the space itself.

British-born yet based in Berlin since 2007, Barker forged a connection to many of the city's leading institutions, including Ostgut Ton, and over the course of a long and fruitful relationship, he carved out one of the more singular paths on the club and label's roster.

Not one for orthodoxy, Barker challenged four-to-the-floor techno framework in favor of melodic experimentation. By decentering or completely stripping away the typical trappings of kick drums and claps, his productions are both light and immersive, buoyant in low-end presence and shimmering in weightless space.

Six years after Utility, his sophomore album Stochastic Drift arrives this month. Shaped by pandemic-driven reinvention, it burrows deeper into harmonic twists and freeform drift. "At some point I became conscious of the process," he wrote of his latest album. "The only thing you can do is embrace the uncertainty and see every change as a potential positive.”

Consider his RA Podcast another sequel. Like his much-beloved 2019 mix for FACT, it's a collage of live recordings and a fitting expression of the artist's own internal spring. RA.982 radiates wide-eyed optimism: percussion cloaked in foggy, swirling pads and trance-like chords, neatly synched in synthetic glimmers. 

All in all, it's an hour of music crafted for contemplation, collective euphoria, or heads-down epiphany—or for that matter, any moment, really, its emotive depth seemingly endless.

@voltek

Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/982

RA.982 Barker

recorded this in 2016 for a colourful storm when it was still a mix series. hopefully it still sounds okay! also reminds me of nervously walking into hard wax (where torsten was behind the counter) with the first a colourful storm records, hoping to get them in stock. lol

mix of productions by torsten pröfrock who is probably best known as t++. also includes tracks and remixes under his aliases just for one day, traktor, various artists and dynamo

pic taken from an old viva tv berlin clip i found online

Decay Product: A Torsten Pröfrock Mix

Relentless rhythms and Latin dance history from one of TraTraTrax's finest.

Percussion is, at the root, a conversation. It's about different instruments meeting each other, and interacting to form something bigger than the sum of its parts. 

Few engage in this dialogue as boldly as Pablo De Vargas, AKA Uruguayan experimentalist Lechuga Zafiro, who draws from tradition, to make sounds like candombe and clave feel, well, completely new.

De Vargas' music reaches outward, building bridges between Montevideo and Bogotá, Tijuana, Berlin and beyond. He's a key figure in the hybridisation of Latin American club music, with releases on labels like NAAFI and an album on TraTraTrax.

His RA Podcast plays like a manifesto in motion. RA.985 opens with a recording of Jorginho Gularte, a Uruguayan composer, playing a jazz rhythm, from there, it expands: cuban guaguancó, Venezuelan drums, batida, tribal, techno—it's all here, stitched together with precision and intention.

De Vargas is also, crucially, reckoning with these roots. His 2018 EP Testigo confronted the colonial violence embedded in the history of the Río de la Plata. His sets are similarly alive with memory—asking, without nostalgia: what does it mean to inherit rhythm? Who gets to carry it forward?

He's also just a killer DJ, one of those rare artists who uses CDJs like an instrument. His sets are full of hot cues, delay FX and left turns. It's technical, but never cold. It’s, in a word, funky.

@lechugazafiro
Find the interview and tracklist at ra.co/podcast/985

RA.985 Lechuga Zafiro

Teab

Untitled 04a

Get this compilation here https://www.beatport.com/release/selected-50/4947950

Label owner @florian-meindl selected 50 tracks throughout the history of the label to form a contemporary selection, enjoy the ride!

All tracks mastered by Riemann Mastering Berlin

RA.985 Lechuga Zafiro

Resident Advisor

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