FRIDAY’S MUST-SEE MARATHON RAVE FOR MUSIC CONNOISSEURS, HEDONISTS AND SYNTH FETISHISTS

Friday, November 6, is mandatory for Copenhagen’s music enthusiasts. Detroit techno legends Octave One are landing their infamous Mothership at Den Anden Side, bringing a small warehouse of synthesizers, drum machines and sequencers to a city increasingly accustomed to DJs armed with little more than Instagram followers and USB sticks loaded with the latest playlist shit du jour — or premixes synced to visuals, or a bag of retro-conservative, scratchy vinyl.

Whether you’re a hedonist, a live music buff, a Detroit techno scholar, a music producer — or the kind of gear pervert who gets sexually aroused by the mere twiddling of a filter knob on a vintage analogue synthesizer — consider your Friday night sorted.

Octave One’s live set at Den Anden Side offers a rare opportunity to experience their hardware-driven live set in a legendary intimate club setting. The duo usually perform at major festivals such as Movement Detroit, Time Warp, Dekmantel, ADE, Awakenings and DGTL, having also played Copenhagen’s excellent Strøm Festival back in 2012.

Add local heroes Denis Horvat, Prom Night, Sakena Ali, Gabriella Vergilov and Morten Vammen across two floors of Copenhagen’s hedonistic underground sanctuary, and you have a rather compelling reason to cancel your existing weekend plans.OCTAVE ONE: DETROIT’S NEXT GENERATION

Detroit has given the world several rather significant inventions: Motown, the moving assembly line and, depending on whom you ask, techno.

A generation of young Black musicians began constructing sonic science fiction, with Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson emerging as the founding fathers of Detroit techno. They inspired the next generation: enter Underground Resistance, Carl Craig and the Burden brothers.

Lawrence played saxophone. Lenny learned brass instruments and drums. Their younger brothers eventually introduced hip-hop and newer forms of R&B into the family’s increasingly eclectic musical universe.

The brothers started collecting equipment, buying records, DJing and organising parties. They even operated a small mobile disco business, complete with turntables, lighting and effects. When Detroit’s legendary Music Institute needed equipment, the brothers were able to rent some of theirs to the club.

RIP: Juan Atkins – He Heard the Future Before the Rest of Us

Meanwhile, they gained access to Juan Atkins’ Metroplex studio, with Anthony Shakir engineering the sessions. One of the resulting recordings was I Believe. It eventually appeared on Derrick May’s Transmat label as part of the influential and accurately titled Techno 2: The Next Generation compilation.

In 1990, they established 430 West Records, followed later by Direct Beat, an imprint that helped develop Detroit’s distinctive electro tradition. More than three decades later, 430 West remains an active part of their independent operation.

THE HIT: BLACKWATER

Built around an irresistible combination of muscular Detroit rhythms, warm synthesizer harmonies and the gospel-tinged voice of Ann Saunderson, Blackwater became an anthem without abandoning the core Octave One sound.

The record could function as a peak-time techno weapon, a soulful house classic or an emotional finale to an exceptionally long night. Its appeal crossed musical generations and genre boundaries.

Blackwater has reportedly sold more than a million copies worldwide — remarkable for music emerging from a small, independent Detroit operation.

TICKETS: GET AHEAD OF THE LINE – THE CHEAPEST TRILL IN TOWN

LIVE: THE MOTHERSHIP

Technology has made it possible to recreate an entire symphony orchestra, a 1970s recording studio and a warehouse full of synthesizers on a laptop costing less than a decent hardware synth.

Yet Octave One continues to travel the world with an enormous collection of physical electronic instruments.

Their live setup, affectionately known as The Mothership, has included approximately 60 pieces of equipment, all wired into a large mixing console. They effectively assemble their studio onstage and perform with it — much as Kraftwerk once did.

But where Kraftwerk cultivated the aesthetics of cool robotics, Octave One celebrates the physicality of a messier, more animated performance, echoing gospel, funk, soul, jazz and house — the accumulated musical history of Black America.

WHY THE OLD MACHINES STILL MATTER

The contemporary synthesizer market is full of instruments purchased primarily because they look magnificent in social media posts. A collection of vintage equipment can easily become a substitute for musical imagination, just as vinyl records have become Pokémon cards.

The laptop is arguably the ultimate sound-production tool. But its lack of a tactile interface leaves many producers sitting motionless in their studios like architects, composing through an endless sequence of binary decisions made with a mouse.

A curious paradox, considering that techno is music for both body and mind.

Hardware forces a more physical approach. It invites improvisation, happy accidents and real-time interaction with the music.

The Roland TR-909, for instance, is not simply a fashionable piece of retro equipment. Its timing, sound, controls and peculiarities have helped define Octave One’s musical vocabulary. An instrument that once provided the original sonic building blocks of their tracks has become an old, trusted collaborator.

STILL TRANSMITTING

Their recent releases include Gallium, issued in May as part of the Flights to Earth project, and a deluxe edition of The Collective, bringing together material from their formative years.

And after more than three decades, the brothers are still hauling their electronic spaceship from city to city.

Which brings us to this Friday in cosy Copenhagen.

TICKETS: GET AHEAD OF THE LINE – THE CHEAPEST TRILL IN TOWN

DAS: THE OTHER SIDE OF COPENHAGEN

Copenhagen has never suffered from a shortage of nightclubs. But finding a place genuinely dedicated to underground music — rather than expensive cocktails, bottle service and the endless pimping of fashionable customers, C-listers, “VIPs” and douchebags. Den Anden Side — literally The Other Side — is the antidote. 

Opened in November 2022, the club is the latest incarnation of a project that began with intimate warehouse parties, continued through the labyrinthine basement of Ved Siden Af (now Module), and eventually found a considerably larger home beneath Copenhagen’s historic Palads cinema.

The space once housed Daddy’s Dancehall, which hosted everyone from Iggy Pop and Patti Smith to the Sex Pistols.

Today, the emphasis is on underground electronic music, queer culture, artistic freedom and a distinctly hedonistic interpretation of community — complete with two contrasting dance floors, a darkroom, secluded spaces, an underground garden and a formidable quadraphonic Funktion-One sound system capable of shaking even the stiffest arses into motion.

Photography is prohibited. The emphasis is on participation rather than posing and documentation.A welcome oasis in an era when nightlife increasingly seems designed to generate social media content, trapping the crowd in a self-conscious panopticon of perpetual self-surveillance.

The result is something increasingly rare: a nightclub that aspires to build a community through culture, rather than merely operating as a bar with an entrance fee and some additional speakers.

And on November 6 from 23.30, it provides the landing strip for Octave One’s Mothership.

COME EARLY. SKIP THE QUEUE. STAY LATE.

THE SUPPORTING CASTDENIS HORVAT

Born in Frederiksværk to Croatian parents, Denis Horvat grew up listening to Depeche Mode, Blondie, Billy Idol and Kiss before discovering The Prodigy at the age of ten.

Originally a drummer, he taught himself electronic music production and developed a distinctive style of melodic, analogue-driven techno, which he calls synthesizer techno.

Releases on Innervisions, Afterlife and Diynamic helped establish him internationally, while his remix of WhoMadeWho’s Dynasty became a dance-floor favourite.

He also runs his own label, Vokabularium, and records under the alias Tlak.

Horvat closes the main floor with a marathon session of hypnotic, progressive and deeply textured electronic music.PROM NIGHT

Behind Prom Night is Copenhagen-based Shaquille Beck McGosh, who grew up in Aarhus with South African parents who had fled apartheid in the late 1970s.

DJing since his early teens, Shaquille eventually established Prom Night Records and became a fixture of Copenhagen’s underground club circuit.

His energetic sets move freely between disco, Italo house, acid, Afro-house and techno, combining old-school musicality with contemporary dance-floor instincts.

Having recently played Berlin’s legendary Panorama Bar, he takes over immediately after Octave One.SAKENA ALI

Sakena Ali has been playing records since 2002. She has also organised parties, served on the board of Copenhagen’s Culture Box, contributed to the city’s independent radio culture through Radio Panini and managed Danish electronic music icon Bjørn Svin.

Her selections move between disco, house, deep house and more unexpected musical territories.

Sakena opens the main floor with an all-vinyl set.

GABRIELLA VERGILOV

Born in Bulgaria, Gabriella Vergilov grew up surrounded by music. Her father established one of the country’s early recording studios, introducing her to everything from classical music to Vangelis and Jean-Michel Jarre.

Classically trained in piano and dance, she eventually developed a distinctive combination of techno, electro, house, cinematic textures and her own vocals.

Her productions have received support from Ben Klock, DVS1 and Ben Sims, while her music has appeared on respected underground labels and in DVS1’s Fabric 96 mix.

She also founded the independent GAMA label and became the first Bulgarian female artist to perform for Boiler Room.

MORTEN VAMMEN

Morten Vammen began DJing during Copenhagen’s anarchic post-punk 1980s before disappearing into recording studios, releasing music under the aliases AUM and AAA from the early 1990s onwards. 

Vammen has appeared on lineups alongside Juan Atkins, Derrick May, Robert Hood, Moodymann, Thomas Fehlmann, Monolake, Luke Slater, Dave Clarke, DJ Hell, Roman Flügel, Electric Indigo, Bjørn Torske, Bjørn Svin, Rune RK, Mixmaster Morris and LTJ Bukem.

His work also encompasses soundtracks, art, documentary films — including the legendary Eye in the Night and State of the Art — and two novels, The Afterparty and Tilt, both set in Copenhagen’s nightlife.

Vammen produces and releases music through his SOFARAVE imprint and runs the online magazine Blazar.

He opens the cosy second room with a playful mixture of classic gems and his own productions – but anything could happen.

CONCLUSION

Nine hours. One live electronic act. Two dance floors. Six distinctive artists. Several generations of electronic music.

No phones. No photographs. No VIP bullshit or Instagram juggling. No dress code. No obligation to explain what happened afterwards.

Just music, machines and people — creating new mental spaces, unexpected encounters and social connections.

The original raison d’être of techno.

COME EARLY. SKIP THE QUEUE & STAY LATE.

TICKETS: GET AHEAD OF THE LINE – THE CHEAPEST TRILL IN TOWN

COPENHAGENS SECRET SOUNDTRACK

RIP: Juan Atkins – He Heard the Future Before the Rest of Us

The post DON’T MISS THIS: OCTAVE ONE / 6 NOVEMBER / COPENHAGEN appeared first on BLAZAR.

On October 31, Juan Atkins died in Mexico City. He was techno’s visionary chill big brother, the man who fused Kraftwerk’s machine music with George Clinton’s cosmic funk and created an entirely new, ever-shifting musical language – a sonic blueprint for the future. It makes me sad.I once spent hours dancing to a DJ whose identity I couldn’t make out through the thick smoke at a legendary Copenhagen rave in the mid 1990s.

The music was unlike the fast minimal being played at the time. Fluid, alien, strangely emotional. I couldn’t leave the dancefloor. When the smoke finally cleared, I realised it was Juan Atkins. Behind him stood Derrick May and Robert Hood. Taking notes. 

“ It was about proposing another reality, another way of perceiving the world, and another way of existing within it.” Jeff Mills

Morten Vammen here. I’m a sound snob. An occupational hazard after decades of making records and listening to records, a lot of records – but every time Juan Atkins released something new, I had to listen several times. Not necessarily because I liked it immediately, but because I needed to work out what the hell he was doing – and what new emotional territory he was mapping out.  His tracks were often slow burners. Strange machines, peculiar swing, unfamiliar emotions – There was always something to learn from.More Than Breakdance Tools My first encounter with Juan Atkins was through a record: Cybotron’s Clear, released in 1983. At the time, electro was the soundtrack to the breakdancing craze, with drum machines, vocoders and synthetic basslines serving primarily as dance tools for young people spinning around on pieces of cardboard in tracksuits. Addictive as Pac-Man, built from breakbeats and Kraftwerk quotes.

Juan’s Clear was something else entirely: sophisticated electro, sonic fiction from the funky future. There was a cool elegance and a more sinister tone, making it perfect for my post-industrial funk DJ sets. 

More than two decades later, Clear would provide the foundation for Missy Elliott’s enormous 2005 hit Lose Control, demonstrating just how far Atkins’ sonic inventions could travel beyond the Detroit underground. And how remarkably little they had aged.

The Belleville 3 Early Detroit techno began with three school friends from the suburb of Belleville: Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson.

Derrick May was the supreme DJ, the charismatic ambassador and interview prophet who could discuss techno as if it were an almost philosophical or spiritual movement. His music could be dramatic, romantic, and overwhelming, and his famous description of techno as George Clinton and Kraftwerk stuck in an elevator became one of the genre’s most quoted lines.

Kevin Saunderson was the hit machine, with his more house-oriented Roland TR-909 on cruise control. With Inner City and tracks such as Big Fun and Good Life, he introduced Detroit’s music to a much wider audience.

But Juan Atkins was the visionary big brother, the man who didn’t simply produce tracks within a genre but helped invent the genre itself, before continuing to twist, stretch and challenge its sound and parameters – he was the futurist and inventor.

Model 500 – Techno Finds Its Identity

In 1985, Atkins founded the Metroplex record label and began releasing music as Model 500. With records like No UFO’s, Night Drive (Thru-Babylon), The Chase, and later Starlight, he developed a distinctive, fluid musical aesthetic: these weren’t novelty DJ tools or rave fodder. The music could be cool without being emotionless, and emotional without becoming sentimental.

Today, anyone with a laptop can produce a reasonably convincing techno track using AI or loops in an afternoon. Juan Atkins had to invent much of the musical vocabulary before there was a manual, a preset pack or a YouTube tutorial explaining how to sound like a Juan Atkins clone.

The early machines were limited, often primitive and unpredictable. The challenge was to discover what these strange electronic boxes could do that nobody had imagined before, opening new mental landscapes. Atkins didn’t regard synthesizers and drum machines as expensive lifestyle accessories, museum pieces, or status symbols. They were tools for mental exploration and space travel.

The Future in a Dying City

It is difficult to imagine a more appropriate birthplace for techno than Detroit in the early 1980s.

The once-prosperous city that had invented modern industrial mass production was slowly falling apart. Even Motown had moved its headquarters to Los Angeles back in 1972. Car factories were closing, jobs were disappearing, and the American Dream was turning into a nightmare of crime, drugs and poverty, leaving behind enormous abandoned factories and decaying neighbourhoods.

The economic security of Detroit’s Black middle class was eroding as the American car industry struggled with Japanese competition, automation, corporate restructuring and the relocation of manufacturing.

For a young Black man growing up in and around the city, the present was hardly an inspiring advertisement for the American Dream. And the past was not necessarily a more comforting destination.

The past offered a magnificent musical heritage, but a brutal political one. Behind him lay slavery, segregation, racism, and generations of struggle. Ahead lay unemployment, urban decay, and diminishing prospects. Outside the door crack, your neighbours turned into zombies with guns.  So Juan stayed in the small studio; the future was the only place where everything could still be possible. Later, Detroit went bankrupt, but techno gave it a new sense of pride.Afrofuturism and Berlin on Ecstasy: Instead of romanticising the past or accepting or describing the miserable possibilities of the present, a generation of Black American futurists turned towards science fiction, technology and outer space – not as escapism, but as positive action.

Atkins read futurists such as Alvin Toffler, whose books explored the social consequences of the coming information age, while listening to a remarkable collision of European synth music and funk broadcast across Detroit by the legendary radio DJ The Electrifying Mojo. It could be Yellow Magic Orchestra and the futuristic Black pop of Prince, side by side. In most other places at the time, these records belonged to different musical worlds. In Detroit, they were all part of the same inspiring transmission from the future. And Atkins connected the dots.

This was Afrofuturism in action: taking a rich but painful historical inheritance and transforming it into an alternative technological future, where Black identity was no longer defined by the limitations imposed by the past or present.

Atkins could imagine a future in which Black Americans were not merely participants but architects.  And then something extraordinary happened.

Before the internet, when fax machines, hardware sequencers and vinyl still ruled, his rare music travelled across the Atlantic and found its spiritual home in a city undergoing an equally dramatic transformation: Berlin.

After the fall of the Wall in 1989, the city was full of abandoned industrial buildings, empty warehouses, underground bunkers, cheap space and an entire generation looking for a new identity. Just like the Detroit guys.

The young Germans had inherited the ruins of a failed political experiment. The young Black Americans had inherited the ruins of a failed industrial dream. And the young Berliners, dancing through reunification on ecstasy, needed a soundtrack. 

Young Black Americans, whose own city had been devastated by industrial decline, provided the musical blueprint for a new generation of largely white Europeans celebrating freedom among the ruins of another failed industrial and political system.

The connection would become one of the most important cultural alliances in electronic music, with labels, clubs and record shops such as Tresor and Hard Wax helping to establish a direct musical axis between the two cities.

And it was in this world that Atkins developed a particularly fruitful creative relationship with the German producer Moritz von Oswald.

With his post-punk background, aristocratic von Oswald was a master of dub, space and sonic understatement, a sophisticated Berlin musical adventurer whose work with Basic Channel, Rhythm & Sound and other projects had transformed Jamaican dub techniques into a uniquely European form of electronic stoner minimalism.

Their association stretched back to the early 1990s, including collaborations around the 3MB project with Thomas Fehlmann, long before they formally joined forces as Borderland.

The beautiful Borderland albums, Borderland (2013) and Transport (2016), brought their shared sensibilities into focus.

These were not nostalgic exercises by ageing techno legends attempting to recreate their glory days. They were spacious, deeply musical explorations of rhythm, texture and atmosphere,  existing somewhere between the fading echoes of a nightclub at four in the morning and a spacecraft drifting through the universe.

Maybe Juan’s studio sessions didn’t end with space travel, but he escaped dystopian Detroit and traveled the world.

A Night at Pakhus 11: I truly experienced Juan Atkins’ genius live on a dancefloor in Copenhagen during the 1990s.

I had been playing a live set (under the AUM alias) at the legendary, chaotic Sound and Vision festival at Pakhus 11 for a trippy crowd, and at some point I found myself on the dancefloor, completely hypnotised by the music. I stayed there for hours.It wasn’t the fast, industrial, hard-edged or trance-influenced minimal techno that dominated large parts of the European scene at the time.

This was something far more sophisticated. The music had a peculiar fluid, almost weightless quality, with rhythms and poetic, alien melodies constantly shifting and opening up new spaces.

It was intelligent and deeply physical at the same time. You could lose yourself in the details while remaining completely unable to stop dancing. I had no idea who was playing. Only when the smoke machine was switched off, and I could finally see the DJ booth, did I realise it was Juan Atkins.

Standing behind him were Derrick May and Robert Hood, among others, watching intently. Taking notes.A Perfect Day in Ørstedsparken

On another occasion, I experienced Juan Atkins play at Tripping (founded by legend Henrik Møll RIP) on Sunshine in Ørstedsparken, one of Copenhagen’s most beautiful and distinctive settings for electronic music events. I opened at noon, playing a humble W30 sampler and a 303 under the Nature alias.

The park, also well known as one of the city’s gay cruising areas, was packed with ravers, many of whom had arrived directly from the previous night’s parties without a minute of sleep.

This was a time when electronic music was still a relatively small subculture. There were no VIP enclosures, no gigantic LED screens, no influencer campaigns, and no multimillion-dollar production budgets. Or iPhones.

In a hot skunk-drenched tent, I remember smoking with Mixmaster, Sun Electric, and Juan Atkins, who was dressed entirely in white cowboy gear. I interviewed Juan Atkins later, and what struck me most was how humble and down-to-earth he was. He had every possible reason to behave like a legend. He had helped create a musical revolution that had already transformed club culture around the world. Yet there was no self-importance, no grandstanding, no groupies, coke, or big label deals. He seemed more like a curious, thoughtful man fascinated by music and technology than someone who needed to remind everybody of his historical significance. It was almost as if he hadn’t fully grasped the extent of his own influence. I recorded the interview on DV tapes. Hopefully, they are still somewhere in my archive. By the time an unannounced Juan took over the music, the day had already been perfect.

While many of his Detroit contemporaries embraced major labels, high-profile pop remixes and lucrative commercial collaborations, Atkins stayed outside the mainstream music industry he had helped inspire. Having founded Metroplex in 1985 after major labels showed little interest in his music, he maintained an independent course for four decades, releasing records on his own terms rather than chasing mainstream success. Ironically, his 1983 Cybotron classic Clear became the foundation of Missy Elliott’s 2005 smash Lose Control – but Juan remained firmly underground.

When Everyone Thought He Was High

The last time I met Juan Atkins was at Culture Box in Copenhagen. It was a very different experience. The man I remembered from the 1990s now seemed terribly exhausted. He was practically falling asleep over the mixer.

Over the years, rumours had circulated within the scene that he had developed a serious drug problem. Some even claimed he was using crack cocaine. I asked him about it myself. He told me that, yes, he smoked weed, but he dismissed the stories about crack. Instead, he told me something far more disturbing. He had spent years living with undiagnosed diabetes.

Severe disturbances in blood sugar levels can cause extreme fatigue, confusion and behaviour that may resemble intoxication. I couldn’t know how much of Juan’s condition diabetes explained or whether he had suffered permanent damage.

But I remember thinking how easily illness can become gossip (even among ravers) when nobody bothers to ask what is actually wrong.

The story also raises questions about the difference between the American and Danish healthcare systems. In Denmark, we can see a doctor without paying for the consultation and have serious illnesses investigated and treated within a publicly funded healthcare system. In the United States, money, insurance coverage and access to medical treatment can present far greater obstacles.

It is difficult not to reflect on the tragedy of someone who gave so much to the world, yet spent years struggling with a serious disease that modern medicine can often manage effectively.(His official cause of death has not been established, and I have no reason to assume diabetes caused it.)

From Revolution to Billion-Dollar Industry

Music that began as futuristic experiments by a handful of young Black Americans using relatively inexpensive electronic instruments in a struggling industrial city has become one of the world’s most widespread forms of dance music.

Today, techno is a global industry built around superstar DJs, enormous festivals, luxury clubs, brand partnerships and gigantic production budgets.

Sometimes I barely recognise the techno world I helped build:  what began as an experimental underground culture populated by outsiders, sonic obsessives and beautiful freaks has become a global lifestyle industry of Boiler Room exhibitionists, ketamine casualties, Instagram aerobics instructors posing as DJs, promoter-vampires and corporate money.

Techno increasingly resembles everything it originally offered an escape from. Even Juan made a Vuitton show set.

And there is something deeply paradoxical about the fact that music originally concerned with imagining the future and breaking away from established conventions and the cult of ego has so often become an exercise in repeating the same tried-and-tested formulas in new emperors’ clothes, exploiting people’s need for social scenes and fake escapism.

Juan Atkins belonged to the time before the formulas. Before the algorithms.

Before techno became a lifestyle boring people can buy your way into.

He was there before any of it existed, creating a blueprint for play, sensuality and experimentation. Not formulaic mass excess. He imagined a musical world that did not yet exist, and then built it himself.

He’s dead now – and somewhere up there, I imagine Juan laughing with Miles Davis, Prince, Vangelis, Peter Christopherson, Florian Schneider and Sakamoto.

God knows who’s producing, who’s playing bass and who’s arguing about the mix.

But I’d love to hear what they’re working on. It probably sounds like the future. P.S. If this rant has sparked your curiosity and left you craving for Detroit techno, Octave One will be playing live alongside Morten Vammen, Dennis HorvatSakena and Prom Night this Friday, November 6, at Copenhagen’s hedonistic oasis DAS (Den Anden Side), Axeltorv 9. Highly recommended!

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COPENHAGENS SECRET SOUNDTRACK

The post RIP: Juan Atkins – He Heard the Future Before the Rest of Us appeared first on BLAZAR.

LISTEN ON MOST PLATFORMS HERE

On Touch Grass, Danish electronic music veteran Morten Vammen revisits the lost art of the long-form dance track. Four interconnected versions move between ambient, dub, disco, house, and techno. An alternative to the relentless intensity and instant gratification of contemporary club culture, the EP proposes something different: a sensual, utopian dancefloor with room to breathe.

Establishing a sonic utopian social space “When I’m out DJing, I often need a long track that works as a slow, soft, airy, luxurious intro. Something I can put on while I wander around the room checking the acoustics, but which gradually accelerates to a tempo where I can start mixing in disco, house and techno. The Touch Grass (intro accelerator) mix can do all that – it sets a mood – and take it to the next level.”

The whole production process was completely old-school, jamming with no AI or pre-made loops. The vibe and aesthetic are slightly retro-futuristic, opening up a space somewhere between Detroit, Chicago and Berlin on one side, and The Loft and Mediterranean dub on the other.

I ended up making several dubs, some harder and faster, allowing me to return to the track later in a set. Then I tried listening to all four versions back to back, which reminded me of Manuel Göttsching’s classic E2-E4, only with a bit more low-end. Perfect as a kind of energetic ambient backdrop that can just as easily work loud and danced to.“I’ve grown tired of the relentless ketamine techno currently dominating festivals and basement clubs. To my ears, it lacks sensuality, arrangements and nuance. It reminds me of gabber, only without the humour and anger. It’s music designed for clowning around to drops on Boiler Room. Which is fine, and probably a reaction to all the real-world alarmism and inequality, but just like punk, the form eventually becomes as formulaic and predictable as the blues.“

“I was already tired of playing terror sets back in the early ’90s – but its hot again. Maybe that’s what happens when you’re a young producer with ADHD who’s more preoccupied with Instagram than studio sessions. Or maybe people strive for monotony – maybe its an advantage when you’re completely fucked at 7 a.m.?  Speed and noise are great spices, but they’re not my main course.”

Touch Grass attempts to reclaim the dancefloor as a sensual, utopian, organic social space. Not another soundtrack to the pending apocalypse, but a tool to open new utopian spaces.

No grass was used in the recordings.

Touch Grass is out now – LISTEN ON MOST PLATFORMS HERE

The post Sonic utopia? Morten Vammen / Touch Grass E.P. appeared first on BLAZAR.