Dettmann / Max_M / Lucy
For cyclists, Berlin’s roads are a dangerous paradox. On the one hand, irrespective of congestion, weather and absent traffic lights, one feels safe. No one wears a helmet. Bikes creak as the rust grates discordantly. People career up cycle paths, hurdling the mini-jumps offered by rooting trees and scything their wheels around the many offerings of dog defecation. On the other, ne’e have I experienced such incompetence from drivers. No signalling. Pulling out without looking. Random speeding up. Pathetic fallacy also plays a serious role in the thirst of vans to run lights, and squeeze bikes. Obviously I am now hoping that fate has not been tempted, as my silver girl’s bike runs along the Damm in eight hours’ time, but at least I’ll have these morsels with which to jink past the huge Turkish lorries and half asleep cabbies.
Marcel Dettmann recently uploaded this epochal slice of 2006 Berlin techno to soundcloud, and its pops, clicks and uplifting morbidity will perfectly soundtrack the trek west tomorrow morning. For Ostgut, the beat starts off relatively serenely -like beads of sweat ambling down rapaciously happy morning faces - but once the jolting synth has given way to a crude bleep, the hi-hats urge in a more unsettling tempo. Listening to this in your room is good enough; but to hear this on a big soundsystem, with the thundering tones underfoot, would be simply awesome.
Marcel Dettmann & Ben Klock - Dawning by MARCEL DETTMANN
Then we have a slice from Max_M, who ushers in a tempo even Mo Farah would be proud of. It starts with housey-vibes, unnerving synths running amok, but it’s truly of the dark and hermetic stuff, tight, close, lost in the moment. Expect ‘The Kidnapper Bell’ to be running around your ears soon, as the calls of approval whistle through the squalid air.
Max_M - The Kidnapper Bell (Original) by M_REC LTD
Finally, we have a new track from Lucy, as part of a four-track EP called ‘Monad X’ out tomorrow on Stroboscopic Artefacts. With the release of Wordplay earlier this year, it’s been a pretty great year for Lucy, and he is touring the Asian continent and beyond over the next month. But this release, with its low, brooding, natural ambiences and chilling rushes of noise quaking in horror, builds Lucy’s challenging aesthetics to new levels. Of the four tracks, led by the irrepressible ‘Triad’, ‘Decad’ is my pick. Just don’t listen before you go to sleep.
Now where’s that Bombay Bicycle Club record…
