Gigi Jikia has been a part of the Bassiani story since its earliest beginnings. Following his breakthrough as half of double-act Okinawa Lifestyle, he took his own turn as HVL in 2013 and has more than proved his mettle over the last decade with a sound that is inseparable from his Tbilisi roots. Every set and release adding a little more to the mythos surrounding the Georgian capital and his adoptive club. He often works outside strict genre confines though frequently opting for more percussive fare, which makes this pivot from his more dance focused tendencies a welcome riff on his body of work. Zenaari mix 007 is a meditation on HVL’s slower and more introspective influences, a deeply emotional collection of ambient echoes and phantom frequencies, muffled sampling and groaning melodies: food for thought, if not the heartstrings.

@hvl

1. Steve Hauschildt - Edgewater Prelude
2. Alchemulator - Lumière dans les Ténèbres X7000
3. Polygonia - Fungi Monster pt. 2
4. HVL - screen ver2
5. HVL - Nom Zen
6. Burial - Subtemple
7. 平沢進 - BEHELIT
8. Erik Luebs - Parched (Distant Mix)
9. Aleksi Perälä - FI3AC2271060
10. Lemna - Marine Snow Nocturne
11. Kuf - 4
12. Alchemulator - Come Feel The Mighty Castle
13. Area - Everything Thrown Away
14. HVL - Doli
15. Kaiji - A09modt22
16. Smackos - Do You Own Your Own Island
17. ovuca - FI3AC2147060

ZENAARI MIX SERIES

Zenaari Mix 007 - HVL

Simone Baratta and Nicolò Chenet’s Orion is back on podcast duties, this time for experimental series Zenaari. The tandem’s dancier inclinations are a little more explored, but here they’re given space to investigate another raft of musical leanings. This one’s quite special, and a good example for what the Zenaari concept is at heart: a cross-genre exploration in sound that pushes the limits of established taste and composition, and above all provokes thought. Loaded with ideas, this foray spans a breadth of references, from Hasselian drones, to creaking melodies, to downtempo Italian crooning, and leaves out hi-tech mixing and glitzy effects in favour of a more raw and bluntly sequential approach to mix building. In truth, the pair have rifled through an eclectic archive of music from their native land and created an extraordinary emotional collage that’s heavy on nostalgia without tipping the scales too far into sentimentality. Affecting, but with the occasional flutter of a bassline as a reminder that this polymath duo’s there pulling the levers. Zenaari Mix 008 is a nonpareil mix from this enigmatic Milanese duo, one that’s sure to leave a mark.

@technosbnc

1. Daniela Pes - Ca Mira 
2. Franco Battiato - No U Turn 
3. Roberto Musci - Rack Railway To
4. Anna Caragnano & Donato Dozzy - Festa (A Mottola)
5. Franco Battiato - I Cancelli Della Memoria 
6. Santo Niente - Maria Callas 
7. Franco Battiato - E’ Stato Molto Bello 
8. Delta V - Se Telefonando 
9. Alice e Franco Battiato - Una Notte Speciale 
10. Fabrizio De Andrè - La cattiva strada 
11. Roberto Music - Nexus On The Beach 
12. Giuseppe Ungaretti - Sonetto dell’amore totale
13. Picchio dal pozzo - Merta 
14. Franco Battiato - Shakleton 
15. CSI - Noi Non Ci Saremo 
16. CCCP - Annarella 
17. Lucio Battisti - Separazione Naturale 
18. La Licorice - Ripefruits

Zenaari Mix 008 - Orion

The story of Tbilisi’s seminal techno movement couldn’t have been written without at least a wink and a nod in Nebbieri’s direction. She’s a homegrown and integral part of Bassiani whose musical references include Kate Bush, Psychic TV, Brian Eno, Autechre and Venetian Snares. From this you might be able to infer an ambient and math-heavy streak in her output and during her more purist techno and breakbeat outings that could be up for debate. Not here though: for experimental mix series Zenaari, Nebbieri’s been given carte blanche to really delve into her most profound influences, and they include not only music, but a fascination with sci-fi that really fleshes out her creative vision (picture neon-lit cityscapes and dramatic blood-red skies). There’s something strange and healing at work for Zenaari Mix 009, nostalgic and familiar yet fresh and visceral. Through her glitchy and evocative patchwork of tracks, Nebbieri finds soul in the machine and develops her own parlance with it: dial up clicks, ritualistic echoes and sentimental meditations, this is an hour of incongruent beats and humanoid synths for a coming age.

@nebbieri

1. Silent Servant - A path eternal 
2. Chantal Michelle - Opening 
3. Göcke - ACGTU
4. Hype Williams - Break4love
5. Dream Artifact - Cinnamon Eyes
6. SSIEGE - Virgo Oscura
7. Fatima Al Qadiri - Aftermath 
8. Ancestral Landscapes - Old timer
9. Kode9 - Third Ear Transmission
10. Van der Meer - Essem 
11. Purelink - Stadium Drive
12. SkyTwoHigh - 賭、女とタバコ
13. Porter Robinson - Wind Tempos
14. Kessel & Kerqus - Roraima
15. Autechre - Altibzz
16. Toxe - Be by the sea
17. .at/on - untitled 02

Zenaari Mix 009 - Nebbieri

Experimental Podcast and event series Zenaari continues to break new ground with this next instalment from Nikolaj Jakobsen (Sugar) and Emil Aastrup’s new alias Flutek. This one’s highly conceptual from start to finish: a collection of in situ recordings from the recent past including test setups from aleatory sessions, tracks that got lost in the never-ending process of tinkering and other bristling frequencies from the misc folder. In sending each other patches for the past few years, they’ve also tweaked them, sent them back and forth, and expanded and reinterpreted them into entirely new sounds. Along the way, they’ve learned from each other and their hardware too, investigating the fringes of these experiments and harvesting what they could in return. Zenaari Mix 011 is the result of this ongoing alliance: shimmering atmospherics, a spray of irregular notes and warped drones that resonate and pioneer a strange new language between man and machine. A left to right hemisphere idiom and bold new direction for this budding collaborative project.

Zenaari Mix 011 - Flutek

Next up comes a long-time torchbearer of the Naples techno scene. Gaetano Parisio first came to attention under the pseudonym Gaetek, and released a string of records on labels like Planet Rhythm and Primate Recordings that quickly found their way into the collections of esteemed selectors like Dave Clarke and Jeff Mills. That was the 90s, and as the new millennium broke he donned his own name and funnelled his creative energies into releasing record upon record under several (of his own) manifestations of imprint: CONFORM the first, followed by ART (Advanced Techno Research), SOUTHSOUL and ADAGIO. With his trusty three/four-turntable, two-mixer set-up he kept up a regular touring schedule and authored many memorable nights, pushing a syncretic brand of Techno that took influence from the wealth of peers around him. Ultimately, the pace of output and the demands of DJ life were anything but light, and so it was that 2007 put a pause to his activity. But after a ten year break he moved to Barcelona, set up a new studio and has been cooking up his usual frenzied productions since. Much as before, his gritty, unfettered loops wear the unmistakable guise of his earlier CONFORM releases, and carry a sheer momentum that’s a surefire bet til the end of the night, if not much longer. Bassiani Podcast 207 is a window onto Gaetano’s vision; circling basslines that charge headlong with no hesitation, pure, driving techno, recorded live at Kvanchi’s Curated by Resident night on the Bassiani floor back in January.

@gaetano-parisio

BASSIANI PODCAST SERIES

Bassiani invites Gaetano Parisio / Podcast #207

Tbilisi native Beka Wu has been a past guest of the mainstay podcast in fuller Bassiani capacity, and here he is again for this latest Zenaari instalment, a format that likely couldn’t find a better sound to promulgate its truest essence. Spending his time between the worlds of music and light design, it’s inevitable one should bleed into the other. There’s a distinct ambient feel that permeates his sound, something acutely aware of the space it inhabits, feels its way around the empty hollow, and fills it with grain-textured, reverberating notes, with the listener sitting at its very centre. Less about engaging the body in a physical sense, more about reconnecting with the long abandoned reaches of the mind, a seemingly dormant but fundamental nature we share in the subconscious self. For Zenaari Mix 012 he gets experimental, and draws his focus to building a story that’s riven with emotion. A sequentially ordered selection of tracks that gently rises and falls like the breath, builds a mood and pays no heed to the diversity of its constituent parts (perhaps cult Japanese music-maker Susumu Yokota and Erik Satie had some common ground). Mellow and directed within, an hour long waltz through the stars, an invitation to pause and take stock, to feel peace among the turbulent waves of the world around us.

@bekawu

1. Djrum - Crature pt.1
2. Bibio - Phantom Brickworks III
3. Ryuichi Sakamoto - Life, Life
4. 2muchachos - Thaw
5. Robert Myers - Embrace (Live version, NYC 1987)
6. Susumu Yokota - I Imagine
7. The KLF - Baltimore To Fair Play
8. Carl Stone - Banteay Srey 1991
9. Lonnie Holley - Looking For All 
10. Dito - We All Have Our Dream Of Happiness
11. Tomohiro Nakamura - Winter Is Yours
12. Erik Satie - Gnossienne 1
13. Beka Wu - Mom

Zenaari Mix 012 - Beka Wu

Zenaari's Podcast is back with a very special number, and this one’s from German juggernaut Efdemin. Phillip Sollmann’s nefarious allonym claims a well-deserved space on many a record cover and many a flyer. So large is his footprint that now, years since he first picked up a piece of hardware, or even started building his own, he’s largely liberated from the real world constraints many younger artists face. With nothing left to prove, and all this newfound freedom comes the space to truly probe the possibilities of sound in all its dimensions. This method is tried and tested (think 2019’s New Atlantis), but with each passing year the road travelled gets longer and no less full of surprises. It’s all down to his highly personal and off-centre approach - to be sure, he’s just as comfortable with feel-good techno (and his unconventional treatments make an appearance there too), but the real magic happens without preconceived ideas about genre or format, and the result is both organic and capable of opening doors no-one ever knew existed. Zenaari Mix 013 is a mind-maze in sound, from gentle piano and theremin allusions, to spoken narratives and dialogues that anticipate the world to come, and of course, there are Sollmann’s beloved bells. This is fresh ground trodden, Efdemin bravely charging into the unknown, a strange and spiritual palette of sounds from one of electronic music’s most iconoclastic figures.

@efdemin

Rain tree crow - I drink to forget
Nuno Canavarro - Bruma
Hiver - 83-84
Luigi Nono - Das atmende Klarsein
Luigi Ceccarelli - Birds
Jonty Harrison - Klang
Brunhild Ferrari & Jim O'Rourke - Tranquilles Impatiences
Nika Son - Drift
Cergio Prudencio - Otra Ciudad II
Ash Ra Tempel -Le Sourire Volé
Blue Gene Tyranny - Remembering, from Mary Ashley's "My Song"
Dolde - Hitokoi
Reckno - Fallacy
Will Guthrie - Catlike
Jeff Mills - future speech
Holzt - Mimei
Monolake - Cyan
Efdemin - Oh, lovely appearance of death
François Bayle - Grande Polyphonie
David Behrman - Leapday night
Endurance - Crest
Anna Caragnano & Donato Dozzy - Love without sound
Mike Parker - Voiceprint
Men with secrets - 4th Dimension Signal
Batu - Don´t
Konrad Sprenger - Unreleased
Cleric and Setaoc Mass featuring John C. Lilly - Altered States
Evan Parker - Pulse and circulation of blood
Jeroen Search - Unstruck Sound
Popol Buh - Im Reich der Schatten
Bobby Brown - My Hawaiian Home
Modular Organ System (live in Nürnberg - unreleased)
Terre Theamlitz - Liberation model
Gregg Kowalsky - Pulse Wave and Mouth Harp for Anton Bruhin
Michel Redolfi - Deep Blue Silence
Nuno Canavarro - Untitled
Michel Redolfi - Blue Horizon
Joe Jones - Fluxus Meditation
El Mal - Path
Maryanne Amacher - Synaptic Island
Terre Thaemlitz - chng yourlove
Sensorama - Aspirin

Zenaari Mix 013 - Efdemin

It’s a tale often told: Sweden’s restrictive politics vis-à-vis raves have inadvertently created a fertile world on the fringes where many of the country’s talents have pushed their craft in an act of punkish rebellion. Having spent her teenage years collecting music (a habit inherited from a dad whose love of jazz, blues and folk left a lasting mark), Philippa Pacho discovered this hidden world of illegal gatherings, before trying her hand at spinning records and landing a residency at Stockholm’s storied Under Bron back in 2012. Berlin was soon in her sights, and it’s there she found a more recent base, her career heated up, and her (and Blue Hour’s) positivesource project came to light. From Bassiani to De School to Berghain, Philippa’s still going strong a decade in; and she does more than mix tracks, she crafts stories that drive a vision of music that gets both crowds and feelings off the ground. With her ballooning raft of rave-ready bookings past and present her name is a synonym for tripped-out full-tilt techno, if you’re already a fan you know the score. Zenaari Mix 014 presents another facet of her world, it’s a dreamlike 87 minute studio mix, a trip through ambient cityscapes and appraisal of a slower, stranger side of sound, kaleidoscopic bleeps from one of techno’s leading lights.

@philippapacho

All Outta Angst - A24
Clotur - Lost Apollo Tape
Struktur - Mycelium II
Vera Logdanidi - Water Bubble Floating In Space
Doltz - Mikge 
Boudhicca - Labyrinth
Forset On Stasys - Sideral
CHANTSSSS - (swan)
2030 - Intermission
X/319 - Stimmung_02
Pariah - Seed bank
Cut - Off (Chill Out)
Hania Rani - The Boat
nthng - Worldless Mass
Andy Stott - Faith In Strangers 
VC-118A / Mohlao - Endless
Simone Bauer - Luna Sativa 
The Persuader - Sjalvilan

Zenaari Mix 014 - Philippa Pacho

Irakli Kiziria is a much lauded cultural force in his chosen home Berlin. For over a decade, the Georgian transplant has been crafting a space somewhere between belligerent rhythm and ambient dreamscape with a growing number of influential projects to his name. His 10am-10pm STAUB parties offering legendary daytime gathering soundtracked by an incognito list of techno’s finest, and earlier collaboration in the form of I/Y also setting forth a voice and imprint to publish the work of consonant peers. More recently, his home-listening outlet Intergalactic Research Institute For Sound has funeled his energies towards a “dreamy, more abstract, 'intergalactic' music”. And it’s from this realm that this next Zenaari instalment emerges: a tripped-out reverie that walks his more delicate line. Zenaari Mix 016 weaves together gently waltzing piano interludes with the chiming of bells, lullaby warps with the analogue crackle of a vintage speaker and the confident strumming of a lute. Irakli given free-hand to explore his space in heavens and this is the result, an intimate augur for a promising future and 80-minute (all vinyl) podcast hued with the longing and strange.

@irakli

1. Ssiege - Cg104
2. Lucy Gosch - Stalagmites & Helicitites 
3. Hiroshi Yoshimura – Sheep
4. sTia - Out Of My System
5. Panoram - Cyclo
6. Launaea - Del Mar
7. Ken Karter - Kript 432HZ - Sequence 03
8. Saba Alizadeh - Fluid
9. Hannu Karjalainen - Love, Unconditional
10. Tuomo Väänänen - Garden
11. Ryuichi Sakamoto - Dance (Ambient version)
12. Jabu - Lay You Down
13. Niecy Blues - Cascade
14. Sunfear - Daycare 
15. Demen - Morgon
16. Tropic of Cancer - Stop Suffering
17. Above & Beyond - Strength From Inside
18. Tangerine Dream - Portico 
19. Nordvest - Sleepless one
20. Sufjan Stevens - Visions of Gideon

Zenaari Mix 016 - Irakli

Viennese DJ/Producer Alpha Tracks is best-known as a fleet-footed champion for contemporary neo-trance. Where others to the north of the genre’s beginnings are breathing new life into the musical style, Felix Benedikt holds down the fort in the east, deriving his intrinsic link to its forms from the early millennium record-digging. With releases on imprints like Blue Hour, Ute.Rec., his very own Morbid and newly pressed <AIR WAYS> bristling with scrappy basslines, the shape of his mission is sharp in focus, a revival and reconfiguration of those 90s sounds into something modern and loaded with relevance. Striking parallels with the speed of data in our modern landscape could be made with trance’s newfound acceptance, but for Felix it’s something inherently felt. Logic demands respite, and his palette has changed to suit an equal need for interiority, a slower pace and the psychic realm. Enter Zenaari Mix 017: this latest episode turns down the tempo and strips away the kick of his bellicose basslines for a pure and surrealist patchwork of prophetic sounds. Rapid eye melodies that conjure up a dark side to Alpha Tracks’ moon. Weird and beautiful frequencies from Vienna’s veteran artist.

@alpha-tracks-official

1. The Future Sound of London – Cascade
2. Subdub - Monuments On Earth
3. Donato Dozzy - Personal Rock
4. Robert Rich & B. Lustmord - Delusion Fields
5. Biosphere & Deathprod - Journey To The Centre Of The First, Pt.2 
6. Alpha Tracks - December (Nino Stelzl Remix)
7. Richie Hawtin - Concept 1 96 :12 24:00
8. A Strange Wedding - Wormhole Breaker (Patrick Russell Remix) 
9. David Sylvian – Epiphany
10. Biosphere - Ancient Campfire
11. Terre Thaemlitz - Subjective Loss, Day 83
12. MLO - Birds & Flutes
13. Silence - While Angels Sleep
14. Datacide - Data Haiku
15. Aphex Twin - #20
16. Terre Thaemlitz - 2AM on a Silo
17. Labradford - Air Lubricated Free Axis Trainer
18. Biosphere – Shade
19. Plastikman - Cor Ten
20. Plastikman – Consumed
21. nthng - Monk Teknois
22. Eternal Basement - Switch The Things
23. Om - Human Love
24. Biosphere – Hyperborea
25. Carl Craig – Sandstorms
26. nthng - Two People
27. Tetsu Inoue - Magnetic Field
28. Philipp Pettauer - Coming Full Spiral
29. Europa - V

New tracks tagged #zenaari