RELEASES

Dazion - Grooveboxxx - Dekmantel - DKMNTL093

https://dekmantel.com/shop/records/dazion-grooveboxxx
https://daziondekmantel.bandcamp.com/album/grooveboxxx

1. Welcome To Grooveboxxx (Ft. MC Paul T)
2. Meet Me At The Mecca
3. Jetlag
4. La DS
5. Eau Membership
6. Marathon (Rap Version)
7. Kimberly & Nance Backstage Rehearsal
8. Secretly Silly
9. Sound Of The Dune Town
10. Asta Grand Closing
11. Exposure
12. Sandokan (U-nite In Peace)
13. The Temple

Welcome to Dazion’s Grooveboxxx – a maxi-sized love letter to The Hague’s 80s and 90s club scene crafted with minimal tools and loaded with vibe. It’s no coincidence it arrives on Dekmantel, a label with its own roots in the same Dutch city’s electronic music culture.

Dazion is The Hague’s Cris Kuhlen, previously spotted releasing on Second Circle, Safe Trip and Animals Dancing. He cut his teeth clubbing and working at long-since closed clubs like Eau, described in Kuhlen’s own words as, “clubs with blocks to dance on, lazers, decorations, crazy extravert [sic] parties.”

In capturing the spirit of Eau and the other formative parties of his youth, Kuhlen limited himself to just one machine to make his longest work to date – the Roland MC-303 Groovebox. While these entry level units from the mid-90s had stripped down functionality in the wider spectrum of studio gear, they contained all the iconic Roland sounds in a Rompler style, giving the user access to everything necessary to make raw, immediate club tracks without requiring an entire studio’s worth of hardware.

The brash gear of choice set the tone for a record of rough, ready and playful jams which end up more sophisticated than you’d expect from such limited means. ‘La DS’ jacks with a freaky, bleep techno intensity, while ‘Kimberly & Nance Backstage Rehearsal’ rides an angular groove tooled to inspire the weirdest dance moves of the night. Every track is named in reference to a particular nightspot, a hazy memory or moment from Kuhlen’s formative raving years.

This is the sound of Dazion having the time of his life. You might well hear a nod to the odd rock totem being given a re-version in irreverent new beat style or some gnarly US acid breaks vibes riding underneath helium rap licks. But for all the cheekiness, the tracks stand up both as nods to halcyon days and relevant workouts for the sweatiest parties in the here and now. As MC Paul T says in dramatic style heralding the intro of Grooveboxxx, “This movement will live on forever.”

DKMNTL093 // Dazion - Grooveboxxx

Fresh parcel from the Northern European nebula, here. Sombrero Galaxy is Red Light Radio's Tako Reyenga and London artist Jonny Nash. Tako and Jonny run spiritually fraternal labels: the former, Music From Memory; and the latter, Melody as Truth - both ultra-distinctive imprints born out of improvised jams with Suzanne Kraft, Young Marco, and Gigi Masin alongside retrospectives from the likes of Joel Graham and Michael Turtle.

"The Edge of Space" is (as title suggests) an endless flight into the ether: all bubbling arpeggiators, kosmische synths and wide-eyed wonder. Cut from a weekend of sprawling space-jams in Jonny's North London home in 2012, it now finds a home on Second Circle - a sub-imprint of Music From Memory.

Stay tuned for details on its release.

Sombrero Galaxy "The Edge of Space" - Boiler Room Debuts

Tornado Wallace "Falling Sun" - Boiler Room Debuts

B2 - Dazion - Dancing In The Future (Instrumental)(excerpt) SC006

Resident Advisor podcast

RA.588 Jamie Tiller

From Kaifeng via Vancouver here comes Second Circle friend and artist Yu Su (@yu_su) with her contribution titled Freedom Is Nothing Left To Lose. Q&A (excerpt) here below.

www.musicfrommemory.com

MFM: Hi Yu Su, thanks for joining the mix series. So, could you please first tell us a bit about your background and how you got into making and playing music?

YS: I was born in Kaifeng, China, where it was Chinese pop like Jay Chow and Faye Wong that I listened to the most. I have been living in Vancouver, Canada, since 2013 and got into electronic music just shortly after the move.

MFM: You are a trained piano player, does it help you writing your music these days?

YS: Yes, since I was three until high school, in Kaifeng :) It for sure does, I take influences from Debussy a lot of the time, it feels rewarding something I invested so much time and money into when I was little can contribute so much to my current work.

MFM: Hailing from Kaifeng, can you maybe help us try to understand a bit more how is it for an ambitious person in China to dream and develop creatively while being surrounded by the Great Firewall?

YS: I can only speak for myself since I haven't lived there for a little bit, but I think no matter what you can always find your way around the “Great Firewall” to access this world of endless music database, of course not everyone will have the privilege to travel to the west for better infrastructure, though I believe if you just keep doing what you do, the rest of the world will see it.

MFM: And for those who're not able to travel, does it make them even more eager to learn from each other in a certain way? Like, does the limitation result in a stronger collective feeling of sharing and collaborating?

YS: I think so, perhaps not necessarily this collective feeling but people definitely have to make extra effort to try to make things happen, honestly having lived in the West for so long, sometimes even I take things for granted and I do reflect on that a lot.

MFM: Can you maybe walk us a bit through your process of creating music?

YS: It is probably more or less the same with many other producers and musicians, you start from one sound and develop into something you don’t expect. The only thing specific I would say, is that I prefer to finish my pieces in one sitting, I can be extremely focused for let’s say 8 hrs at once and if a project is going well, it will be done in 8 hrs, I’ll leave the mixing for someone else after.

MFM: When on tour you're mostly DJing, right? As a trained musician and producer, what actually made you decide to DJ instead of performing live?

YS: Yes, mostly DJing. I see producing music and playing records/files as two completely different sides of myself since I’m in a very different mental state of mind when doing both. I wanted to DJ after experiencing this whole new world of music and I love discovering and sharing music made by other people for other people, and I enjoy the role of introducing others to things they have not heard. And at the same time for me DJing on stage is almost like another way of expressing live music, there is a lot to consider with the musical and structural elements of all the tracks and in order for me to form a good narrative, I have to think as if every track is a single channel in a project I work on at home. On the other hand, I have been exploring many mediums of presenting “live music” and I would like to continue exploring more in the area of sound installation and soundscape studies, if you count those as “performing live” also.  

MFM: What's up next, got any exciting things coming up that you'd like to share?

YS: Lots more touring to exciting and new places (thanks to my lovely agent); me and my partner who I also collaborate with will be doing a sound meditation and food/wine pop up at giant steps mid July in partner with Stamp The Wax, I am very much looking forward to that.

MFM Mix 005: Yu Su

Melbourne imprint Animals Dancing & Dutch producer, Dazion present a little surprise during these dystopian days we find ourselves in. A fast-tracked, straight to digital pre-release for all of humanity to dance in the apocalypse in self-isolated pleasure (before the vinyl is released).

On Animals Dancing’s eighth disc, Dazion aka Cris Kuhlen lets rip with three psychoactive, percussion-laden mind benders for all good dance floors.

A tweaked vocoder mantra speaks in tongues across interlaced layers of live percussion on ‘Yu Go Bah’ before sirens ring in the distant chants.

Blood Moon takes the marching band down to the basement, fusing more twisted percussion with electro squelch to soundtrack the sweat rain down from the heavens.

’The Chant Of Celebrational Beings’ beckons in a sunrise as the last inklings of serotonin jerk a tear to your eye.
credits
released March 20, 2020

Music By Dazion, Produced and recorded in. the Hague, Holland. Photography by P. Kouwenhoven.

Dazion - Yu Go Bah

Dazion - The Chant Of Celebrational Beings

Dazion - Blood Moon

@thedazion

Purchase on Bandcamp >> https://traumgarten.bandcamp.com/track/dazion-im-proud-of-you

🌐 www.traumgarten.world 🧚‍♂️

Dazion — I'm Proud Of You

Webstore: www.musicfrommemory.com
BC: www.music-from-memory.bandcamp.com
Sublabel: @music-from-memory

PLEASE DON'T SEND US DEMOS, thanks.

B2 - Dazion - Dancing In The Future (Instrumental)(excerpt) SC006

Second Circle

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