Release: Tessela - Up
Up is a track that I heard kind of sporadically throughout the summer in 2016, with the likes of Ben UFO and Jackmaster both dropping it throughout June and July. There’s something about many Tessela tunes that gets my heart pumping, his beats have this inherent rolling sound that make the songs seem like they’re building up, even when I’m sure barely nothing has changed. After a couple of bars of this I guarantee you’ll be fired up. Combine this beat with melodic chimes and a surging baseline and you’ve basically got a track that needs to be banned on school nights…
Mix: Ben UFO b2b Helena Hauff @ Sónar 2016
The Ben UFO/Helena Hauff combination is something that needs to happen again… soon. After watching this set first hand at Sonar’s resident advisor stage, my phone was filled with grainy videos of fuzzy audio gold.
Excluding the Tessela tune above, couple of favourites include:
- Pangaea – skips desk
- Jesper Dahlbäck – What Is The Time, Mr. Templar?
The DJ’s blend together well making it hard to differentiate between their selections, and as with most good sets the mixing flows and has definitely made me enjoy tracks normally I wouldn’t even glance twice at.
I’d be lying if I said this mix didn’t single handedly sustain my playlists for a few weeks, and I’d be lying if I said this isn’t well worth a listen…
Full track list available here…
Event: Sónar 2016 - Day 1
I’ll admit I’ve cheated a bit on this one, my favourite 2016 night and mix are quite heavily linked. The warehouse that hosted the festival was colossal, with high ceilings and a mix of indoor and outdoor stages that you could barely differentiate between. Intermittent rain was a saviour on account of the Catalonian climate, and I’m sure I’ve sustained some form of permanent hearing damage from that sound system… but it was worth it.
We arrived to Soichi Terada flipping around stage in a mic’d up mess of colour and odd props. The beat was fast and clunky and very electronic, vest easy to groove to. Every now and again he’d let off a high pitch squeak into the mic or pretend to chase a prop around the stage: music and a show.
Next up was Ben UFO b2b Helena Hauff, have a look above for some more information about this. After that came Kerri Chandler a welcome injection of slightly more funky / Jazzy house and techno, and this DJ definitely lived up to his reputation.
Day 2 of course was a great night, as were the off-sonar events we went to. These are however completely overshadowed, every time I think back to that holiday I get thrown back to that resident advisor stage watching a grown Japanese man cartwheel around the stage.
To read more click on the links below to read some of the Mantissa crew’s take on 2016:
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