[Above image credit: Boiler Room]
Stump Valley are a duo of Italian producers and DJs, who’s story is just as interesting as their sets. The pair started DJing very early, both influenced by their families who surrounded them with music throughout their childhood, and met in Turin, where the lack of people listening to underground music pushed them together almost immediately. However, after a few years on the Italian scene during the 90s, Alex and Francesco still didn’t feel like they had found their sound, nor the platform to share it. For this reason, they decided to move to the outskirts of the city, in a place which literally translates to Stump Valley. There, completely alienated from the internet and TV, they lived for 2 years, with the sole intent to produce new, yet old-sounding music, with a modern electronic connotation.
Nowadays, Stump Valley are not quite as elusive, but still maintain the same direction producing and playing music with a retrospective-house flair, an abundance of synths, and Fusion Jazz, Afro and electronic influences.
This set embodies all the artists’ influences delivering a mellow, upbeat and exotic sound. Although pure percussions and tempo changes are often recurring, Stump Valley show off not just their song selection skills, but also their superior mixing abilities, with flawless transitions, not just from track to track, but also from genre to genre. To top it all off, Stump Valley end the set with 15 minutes of Jazz classics, closing with ‘A tear of smile’ by Roy Ayers.
This set from the main stage of Dekmantel is made for the daytime, and is very different all the others we have heard from the festival, which is rich in more techno and heavier acts. It is a testament to the attitude of Dekmantel, which continues to book a wide variety of artists and acts, and to that of Stump Valley, who’s biggest wish it to produce and play music which works now, would have worked 20 years ago, and will still work in 20 from now.