Vakant Sets, Sziget Festival

VA Podcast 12.3 - Sziget Festival 2011 - Dario Zenker LIVE by vakant
VA Podcast 12.2 - Sziget Festival 2011 - DeWalta LIVE by vakant VA Podcast 12.1 - Sziget Festival 2011 - Nico Purman DJ by vakant

As the euphoria of the summer and the festival season winds down, I've begun digging out the best bootlegs, live sets and DJ mixes that have inevitably begun to crop up across the net - there's a couple of great ones from Stop Making Sense, unsurprisingly - and these three from the Sziget festival make for interesting listening.

Unsurprisingly R_Co has also got a heck of a lot of the summer's finest archived.

Vakant - Family Values LP

Vakant Records - fucking awesome Berlin-based label who have been making occaisonal dints in the mainstream with a steady output of 12"s, digital releases and a Watergate residency. This latest compilation, entitled Family Values, is one of their strongest releases to date, bringing decidedly different acts together under the unifying banner of minimalism. We get reductionist house music from Tolga Fidan, peppered with fractured vocals, wildly decaying dub-funk from Mathias Kaden, and swooping, rock-influenced techno from Anthony Collins. All of the above are DJ tools any digital beat-maker ought to own, with breakdowns and build-ups that, when deployed correctly, will enliven any techno set. Nico Perman's contribution is a personal favourite, developing a hedonistic disco groove through a warm, shifting synth line. Perman's love of disco is evident from previous releases, and Xpress Yourself channels the flair and camp of Moroder or Bobby O, whilst trimming away the excess to and uncovering a track's basic drive. Binding the live instrumentation tightly and rarely allowing it to spin out of it's delicately EQed confines, Perman proves that minimalism doesn't equate to chin-stroking clickery, but can be as fluid and sexy as any hi-energy number.
If the Vakant staple are a family, then the reigning patriach has to be Robag Wruhme, who's beeng chocking out techno and microhouse for years as part of the Wighmony Brothers and under his own name. His contribution, Kuttenrolch 1996, is a deep, 303-driven number with shuffling hi-hats and a lush synthline to show the kids how it's done.
Awesome compilation.

Dario Zenker - Insirer

Dario Zenker - Insirer / Peter Van Hooesen remix
Because no-one was making banging techno anymore.... Minimal mainstay Dario Zenker turns out a brilliant slice of minimal, dub-inflected techno, with melodic synth stabs rubbing up against deep clanky goodness - It's not a world conqueror, but a deep and polished DJ tool that'll be making it's way into my sets regularly, alongside the Norman Nodge and Levon Vincent. The Peter Van Hoesen remix on the flip proves why he's a name to watch out for, taking the polished futurism of Zenker's techno, and pushing it through a retro filter, pitting a rattly breakbeat against the minimal kicks, and speckling it with rave dirtiness. The melody's similarly fractured, with the lush chords of the original drowned in reverb, straining against the full on percussive battery, whilst a serpentine sub-bass weaves its way through the mix. It's hard-as-nails, and manages to unite both the intellectualism of techno with the Cro-Magnon simplicity of rave. Past and future united in the current zeitgeist; pretty much awesome.

Peter Van Hoeson on Boomkat
Dario Zenker Myspace