Mindarts is a mysterious electronic music artist and producer, and the first signee to the fittingly named, new Dutch electronic music label, Dutch Dance Records. The label’s debut single — and Mindarts’ latest release, “Lumination” is a dense, yet expansive banger that sonically seems like a slick synthesis of John Carpenter soundtracks, industrial house and Tour de France-era Kraftwerk.
Tag: house music
Hagop Tchaparian is a rising British-Armenian electronic music producer, who’s music career started in earnest back in the 90s: As a teenager, Tchaparian played guitar in post-grunge, punk outfit Symposium, an act that had a few years of some international success. They were big enough to play the States on Warped Tour. They played Reading Festival‘s main stage and opened for Red Hot Chili Peppers and Metallica. Then they became disenchanted with the music business, and split up debt-ridden.
After Symposium, Tchaparian contributed to a 2000 compilation Hokis, which featured music by Armenian artists — but he mostly got drawn into London’s club scene, where he quickly became friends with Hot Chip and later a tour manager for both Hot Chip and Four Tet (a.k.a. Kieran Hebden).
“After wanting out of guitar bands and with a massive interest in all things dance music, my first job (mainly due to being broke) was flyering outside many of London’s clubs,” Tchaparian recalls. “I would stand outside all of the main clubs starting at around midnight in East London, ending up outside the Ministry Of Sound around 9am. I would hear the sounds from outside and see the people coming out and really wished I was inside! I began to get inside finally and was checking out as much of it as I could and by a huge stroke of luck, ended up helping out people like Hot Chip and Four Tet on tour. I got to travel and observe them and many others at festivals, clubs and shows creating these special unforgettable moments.”
He would make the occasional remix that friends like Four Tet would play in their DJ sets, but working on new, original music wasn’t foremost on his mind. However, during that time, he kept gathering little snippets of rudimentarily recorded sounds. There was a deep emotional resonance in continuing to fit these samples together into a storyline that made sense of him. On their own, the rhythm tracks could successfully power an underground dance floor, but the elements surrounding the beats were the undercurrents that he felt helped push the music beyond party rituals.
When he played some early bits and pieces for Hebden, the acclaimed producer, musician and DJ encouraged Tchaparian to continue, and turn it into a full body of work if he could. “I love synthesizers and music gear but there are some sounds that I hear around me as I go about my life that make me sit up and really pay attention,” the rising British-Armenian producer says in press notes. “I try to capture as much of them as I can and have used them as the main building blocks of the album. I need music to mean something to me otherwise I’m not as interested. It’s a bit like younger days where I would just gravitate to certain inspiration like oxygen – I just really need it.”
Tchaparian’s full-length debut Bolts is slated for an October 21, 2022 release through Kieran Hebden’s Text Records. Bolts will feature ten songs of hyper-personal rhythm-driven music that mixes techno with field recordings of his travels through Armenian and Mediterranean culture. Essentially, the album combines the audio evidence of a life’s experience with the notion that lo-fi techno can be the appropriate canvas for conveying that experience.
He has been gathering sounds and vignettes for the better part of 15 years, having begun accumulating before smartphones included a record function. The British-Armenian producer would isolate sounds from videos that his friends sent him, like an Armenian wedding clip that showed members of the party jumping over a fire while a drummer played in the background. He would stop street musicians and ask them if he could record their playing, like the women playing the qanun, a harp-like Arabic string instrument; or he would record with professional musicians, who would play instruments like the zurna.
Tchaparian also listed places that were important to his family, like Anjar, Lebanon, where his father’s family took refuge after being driven out of the Armenian-Turkish town of Musa Dagh in 1939. He documented himself following the almost exact footsteps his father took.
The end result is an album that can be described as a man chasing and following his heritage around the world — while sprinkling bits of his everyday life among the manipulated folk instruments of his ancestry. So the album’s material has a deep, emotional power to it.
Bolts‘ third and latest single “Round” is woozy, yet contemplative deep house banger centered around skittering beats, tweeter and woofer rumbling low end, glistening layers of reverb-drenched and pitchy synths, paired with subtle bursts of electronic bleeps and bloops and manipulated instrumentation paired with Tchaparian’s unerring knack for hooks and swooning nostalgia.
The album’s bangers offer an almost secondary, magnetic purpose. “Come for the beats,” they imply, “but stay for the emotional content.” With this in mind, great though these beats are, they’re not easy — Hagops’s globalized narrative complicates this party’s soundtrack beyond the margins of ethno-cultural chill-out comps. The beauty and the storytelling here are beyond obvious genre or form: ‘Bolts is a very particular and this is Hagop’s excavation of his Armenian heritage through a lifetime’s worth of remote recordings.
New Audio: JOVM Mainstay Lutchamak Shares a Swaggering Banger
Over the past couple of years, I’ve managed to spill quite a bit of virtual ink covering the prolific French electronic music producer and JOVM mainstay LutchamaK.
Continuing upon his long-held reputation for being prolific, LutchamaK began the year with the Bitrate Scale_rmx EP, which featured remixes of Threshold album single “Bitrate Scale” by three artists, who liked his work and wanted to create their own takes.
He followed that up with the five-song TERMusik, which featured the slickly produced Tour de France and Computerworld-era Kraftwerk-like deep house banger “100 Miles.“
Since then, the French JOVM mainstay has remained busy: He followed the release of those two previously mentioned EPs with the 12 song album way up the path, which featured some of the most eclectic material of his growing catalog to date — with the album’s songs featuring elements electro pop, techno, synth wave, breakbeats and others.
Adding to a rapidly growing catalog, the French JOVM mainstay recently released the four-song X project EP. As LutchamaK tells me, the EP sees him crafting tech house bangers specifically for the dance floor. X project‘s first single, the swaggering “X (version 2.0)” continues a remarkable run of bangers. Drawing from 90s Acid House, the track is centered around tweeter and woofer rocking thump, glistening synth arpeggios and enormous hooks paired with a looped spoken word mantra.
Sub Caesar is an emerging Dutch electronic music producer, who started to seriously pursue music as a career over the past year. And since then, he has released a handful of singles across the electronic dance music spectrum — from classic house, techno, house music, deep house and even commercial house.
Interestingly enough, Sub Caesar can trace much of the origins of his music career back to his childhood: His father was a professional musician in a symphony orchestra — and as a result, he heard a lot of classical music in his home. He also listened to a lot of disco and 80s pop; the first vinyl single he remembers purchasing was Kool & The Gang‘s “Celebration.” He went on to buy hundreds of cassette tapes. However, the Dutch producer will admit that his first musical love was progressive rock — in particular acts like Pink Floyd, Genesis and Electric Light Orchestra.
Sub Caesar’s first few releases saw him creating electro house/dance pop-inspired sound that seemed to reflect an old school musical upbringing. But lately, the emerging Dutch electronic producer had a desire to break old habits and old thinking, and to push his sound and creative process into new directions.
His latest single, the sultry “Do You Like Our Owl” derives its title from a scene in Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-film Blade Runner: Deckard (Harrison Ford) first meets Rachael (Sean Young) at Tyrell Corporation headquarters. An artificial owl is prominently featured in the lobby. Rachael asks Deckard “Do you like our owl?” That bit of dialogue is featured on Vangelis‘ Blade Runner score, a score that the Dutch electronic music producer says he “must have played a million times.”
Featuring glistening and oscillating synths, skittering beats, tweeter and woofer rocking thump paired with a chopped up vocal sample from Mariami, “Do You Like Your Owl” is a sultry yet dreamlike take on deep house that brings Octo Octa to mind.
Tim Bernhardt is a Munich-based electronic music producer, who has had a lengthy and successful career of releasing house music under a number of different aliases. Bernhardt’s latest project Satin Jackets was created over a decade ago as a way for the German producer to explore his lifelong love of disco and the clean, polished productions of acts like CHIC and Trevor Horn.
Bernhardt’s second Satin Jackets album, 2019’s Solar Nights was one of the most successful nu-disco records of recent memory, and the subsequent years after the album’s response should have been extremely busy with sets across the global club and festival circuits. But much like the rest of us, the pandemic limited Bernhardt to the four walls of his new Munich studio. Without live music and touring, the rising German producer wound up — much like countless other artists — turning to the internet to keep in touch with his fans and to sow the seeds for what would become his forthcoming, third album Reunion.
“Throughout 2020 we recorded a number of what we called Lockdown Streams” Bernhardt explains in press notes. Without virtually no promotion, Bernhardt’s Lockdown Streams wound up being streamed over 1.5 million times — but for the rising German producer, the real reward was the response from fans. “We had so many positive comments from people saying how these streams had helped through difficult times or simply put a much needed smile on their faces. Despite being unable to connect in person, these sessions helped me rediscover the power that music can have to create shared moments.”
“It allowed me to rediscover the connection between what I do and what people feel and that fed directly into making Reunion,” Bernhardt continues. “There’s a lot of despair and division in the world right now but it is so important we try to stay positive and hold onto the things that bring us together. There’s few things that can do that more than music, and that was the thought I took with me when I started work on this album. Not just the idea that music brings people together but going beyond that, asking why we do the things that we do and feel what we feel.”
While Bernhardt was able to connect with his fans online, he was also able to reach out to his friends and collaborators around the world, reuniting with many of the vocalists and songwriters, who had contributed their talents to his first two albums — 2016’s Panorama Pacifco and 2019’s aforementioned Solar Nights.
Where the first two Satin Jackets albums saw Bernhardt attempting to first develop his own sound and then elevate his production to another level, Reunion reportedly reveals an artist who has become confident in his abilities and artistic vision, has become completely at ease in the studio — all while expanding upon his sound.
“The feelings that music inspires can be intensely personal but at the same time it’s a universal language that can help us communicate and break down the barriers between us and connect,” Bernhardt says. “So this album is meant as a canvas for people to paint the colours of their existence onto and share with others, an escape from a sometimes harsh reality but also an offer of a common space where we might remember what makes us stronger.”
Reunion‘s second and latest single “Different Directions” is a slickly produced, lounge meets alt pop take on house music centered around warm bursts of guitar, layers of glistening synth arpeggios, skittering beats and an infectious, razor sharp hook paired Belgian vocalist Ivy Falls‘ sultry yet plaintive delivery. The end result is a song that’s a chilled out, summery banger that you can nod your head to — while contemplating the song’s lyrics.
Reunion is slated for an August 26, 2022 release through Eskimo Recordings. Be on the lookout.
Reunion, the third album from Satin Jackets releasing this summer on Eskimo Recordings, is a stunning follow up to the German producer’s first two critically acclaimed albums, featuring 14 stunning tracks of nu-disco, house, leftfield pop and guest vocals from the likes of Australian star Panama, Belgian singer Ivy Falls, US based vocalist Metaxas and up and coming British singer Tailor.
Today, the acclaimed German nu-disco artist Satin Jacketshas released “Different Directions”, featuring the vocals of Belgian singer Ivy Falls. This new single will appear on the forthcoming Satin Jackets double LP Reunion, which will be released in full on August 26th, 2022 via Eskimo Recordings and is available for preorder now. “Different Directions” is a smooth bit of chilled-out, loungey nu-disco pop in the style of groups modern Poolside & Jungle – a perfect soundtrack for cruising out into the rest of your summer.
New Audio: Egyptian Producer John Ashraf Shares a Cinematic and Club Friendly Banger
John Ashraf is an Egyptian medical student and electronic music producer, who recently began to take his passion for music professionally by releasing his work through the various digital streaming platforms.
Ashraf’s latest single, the cinematic “Assassin’s Story” is centered around glistening synth arpeggios, skittering beats, twitter and woofer rattling thump and woozy bursts of oud paired with HSN’s sultry delivery and an enormous, rousingly anthemic hook. The end result is a track that sounds as though it could be on the soundtrack of a major action movie — or video game — while being club friendly.
New Video: JOVM Mainstays Bubba Brothers Share Sultry and Euphoric “Let’s Have Sax”
Portuguese DJ and production duo Bubba Brothers — Eliseo Correia and Justino Santos — formed back in 2015 and since their formation, the duo have produced and released an increasing number of dance floor hits, including:
- 2019’s “Carla’s Beat” which landed at #21 on Beatport’s Top 100 Chart and at #6 on the Top Releases Chart. The track received airplay on London-based Trickstar Radio’s Metropolis, and as a result they were invited to play at Spain-based Los 40 Radio.
- 2019’s “Tonyca,” which was selected as one of the songs of the summer at Faro, Portugal-based club LICK.
Adding to a growing profile across the European Union, the Portuguese act have made appearances on a number of TV channels including TVI 24. They’ve played sets at the international electronic music festival circuit including Faro Academic Week, Sun and Moon Festival, Dancefloor Leiria and Pete Tha Zouk’s Infinity Sunset. They’ve also played clubs like London-based Ministry of Sound.
Over the past couple of months, I’ve written about four singles in the Portuguese duo’s growing catalog:
- “Amandla (Tutu),” a euphoric, Balearic house meets tribal house banger, featuring skittering and percussive beats and a soulful vocal sample.
- “No Name Song,” a deep house banger, centered around tweeter and woofer rattling beats, explosive hi-hats, glistening and a trance-inducing groove meant to get you off your ass and moving.
- “Karma” a seemingly Ibiza-like deep house banger centered around percussive, tribal thump, skittering beats and glistening and oscillating synths placed within an expansive, hook-driven song structure.
- “Make House, Not War,” another club banger, centered around a reverb-drenched, chopped up vocal sample, tribal beats, deep bass drops and a propulsive and melodic bass line. And although the song continued a remarkable run of euphoric bangers, the song draws from our uncertain and tumultuous time: “Music has always been a form of peaceful statement and freedom of expression,” the duo explain. “Our message is clear in this track: More House. No War.” They add that the strong and intense drops in the song specifically represent the violence and bludgeoning of war while the melodic bass line represents the peace that they hope prevails in the end.
The Portuguese duo will be playing their first ever club gig in Ibiza at El Paradis on June 26, 2022. And to celebrate the occasion, the duo recently released a new single, the propulsive club banger “Let’s Have Sax.” Centered around skittering hi-hat, woofer and tweeter rattling beats, chopped up vocal samples paired with a mournful modal-like sax line, “Let’s Have Sax” finds the duo crafting a warm, soulful yet playful banger that nods at classic, Larry Levan-era house.
The duo paired their latest club banger with a punny and sultry visual that shows a hand unzipping a little black dress, that same hand running up the woman’s body with interspersed split screens with a saxophone player. The couple becomes increasingly sensual as it glides to its conclusion.
New Audio: JOVM Mainstay LutchamaK returns with a Sleek, Deep House Banger
Over the past couple of years, I’ve managed to spill quite a bit of virtual ink covering the prolific French electronic music producer and JOVM mainstay LutchamaK.
Continuing upon his long-held reputation for being prolific, LutchamaK began the year with the Bitrate Scale_rmx EP, which featured remixes of Threshold album single “Bitrate Scale” by three artists, who liked his work and wanted to create their own takes.
- DNMK‘s deep house-leaning take on “Bitrate Scale” that features a brooding, murkier air than the original
- Haalleyck‘s trippy and cosmic take on “Bitrate Scale” centered around thumping kick and glistening and oscillating synths that feels more like a complete rework of the original
- Darbinyan‘s uptempo, deep house take on “Bitrate Scale” centered around oscillating synths, skittering, tweeter and woofer rattling beats, glistening synth arpeggios, robotic vocodered vocals D euphoria-inducing hooks
- LutchamaK also contributed his own murky and brooding remix of “Bitrale Scale” that retained the thumping kick of the original but while pairing it with oscillation synths and vocodored vocals
He followed that up with the five-song TERMusik, which featured the slickly produced Tour de France and Computerworld-era Kraftwerk-like deep house banger “100 Miles.“
Since the release of those two EPs, LutchamaK has released the 12-song album way up the path, which features some of the most eclectic material of his growing catalog to date — with the album’s song featuring elements of electro pop, techno, synth wave, breakbeats and more.
way up the path‘s latest single “Flashing Lights” is a yet another, swaggering deep house banger featuring glistening synth arpeggios, skittering beats and twitter and woofer rattling thump within an hook-driven yet expansive song structure. Sonically, “Flashing Lights” sees the JOVM subtly refining and honing his sound and approach with a lean efficiency.
E. Tyree (born Edward T. Solomon) is an emerging and somewhat mysterious, electronic music producer, who specializes in techno and electro pop. His latest single “Shockwaves,” which clocks in at a little under 90 seconds, is a retro-futuristic, deep house banger featuring glistening synth arpeggios and skittering beats.
While simultaneously being a club and lounge friendly banger, “Shockwaves” to my ears, at least, recalls Octo Octa‘s Between Two Selves, the 100% Silk Records roster and 80s Kraftwerk.
Organic Mood is an emerging and mysterious Ukrainian electronic music producer. His latest single “Fields,” which features Alexander P. is a melodic deep house jam centered around glistening synth arpeggios, tribal beats and chopped up operatic vocals. The end result is a song that sounds both lounge and club friendly while nodding at slick synthesis of Between Two Selves era Octo Octa and Enya.
Portuguese DJ and production duo Bubba Brothers — Eliseo Correia and Justino Santos — formed back in 2015. And since their formation, the duo have produced and released an increasing number of dance floor hits, including:
- 2019’s “Carla’s Beat” which landed at #21 on Beatport’s Top 100 Chart and at #6 on the Top Releases Chart. The track received airplay on London-based Trickstar Radio’s Metropolis, and as a result they were invited to play at Spain-based Los 40 Radio.
- 2019’s “Tonyca,” which was selected as one of the songs of the summer at Faro, Portugal-based club LICK.
Adding to a growing profile across the European Union, the Portuguese act have made appearances on a number of TV channels including TVI 24. They’ve played sets at the international electronic music festival circuit including Faro Academic Week, Sun and Moon Festival, Dancefloor Leiria and Pete Tha Zouk’s Infinity Sunset. They’ve also played clubs like London-based Ministry of Sound.
Over the past couple of months, I’ve written about three singles in the Portuguese duo’s growing catalog:
- “Amandla (Tutu),” a euphoric, Balearic house meets tribal house banger, featuring skittering and percussive beats and a soulful vocal sample.
- “No Name Song,” a deep house banger, centered around tweeter and woofer rattling beats, explosive hi-hats, glistening and a trance-inducing groove meant to get you off your ass and moving.
- “Karma” a seemingly Ibiza-like deep house banger centered around percussive, tribal thump, skittering beats and glistening and oscillating synths placed within an expansive, hook-driven song structure.
The Portuguese duo’s latest single “Make House, not war” continues a remarkable run of euphoric club bangers featuring a reverb-drenched, chopped up vocal sample, tribal beats, deep bass drops and a melodic and propulsive bass line. If this song doesn’t make you get up and start moving, you might probably be dead by now.
But while euphoric, “Make House not war” is deeply informed by our wildly uncertain and tumultuous time: “Music has always been a form of peaceful statement and freedom of expression,” the duo explain. “Our message is clear in this track: More House. No War.”
The Portuguese duo add that the song is their message for this time with the strong and intense drops representing war and the melodic baseline representing the peace that they hope prevails in the end. May peace prevail — and may you get out there and cherish the freedom of being on the dance floor.
Portuguese electronic music DJ and production duo Bubba Brothers — Eliseo Correia and Justino Santos — formed back in 2015, and since their formation, the duo have produced an a growing number of dance-floor hits, which include:
- 2019’s “Carla’s Beat” which landed at #21 on Beatport’s Top 100 Chart and at #6 on the Top Releases Chart. The track received airplay on London-based Trickstar Radio’s Metropolis, and as a result they were invited to play at Spain-based Los 40 Radio.
- 2019’s “Tonyca,” which was selected as one of the songs of the summer at Faro, Portugal-based club LICK.
- Last year’s “Karma,” which landed at #1 on Beatport.
Adding to a growing profile across the European Union, the Portuguese act have made appearances on a number of TV channels including TVI 24. They’ve played sets at the international electronic music festival circuit including Faro Academic Week, Sun and Moon Festival, Dancefloor Leiria and Pete Tha Zouk’s Infinity Sunset. They’ve also played clubs like London-based Ministry of Sound.
Last September, the Portuguese duo started their own label Mossdeb Sounds. Now, as you may recall, i wrote about “Amandla (Tutu),” a euphoric, Balearic house meets tribal house banger, featuring skittering and percussive beats and a soulful vocal sample.
“No Name Song,” landed at on Traxsource‘s House and EDM charts for a number of consecutive weeks, and once you hear it, you’ll quickly figure out how that happened: “No Name Song” is a deep house banger, centered around tweeter and woofer rattling beats, explosive hi-hats, glistening synth arpeggios and a trance-inducing groove. And much like “Amandla,” “No Name Song” will get you off and ass and moving.
Portuguese electronic music DJ and production duo Bubba Brothers — Eliseo Correia and Justino Santos — formed back in 2015. And since their formation, the Portuguese duo have produced an increasing number of dance-floor hits, including:
- 2019’s “Carla’s Beat” which landed at #21 on Beatport’s Top 100 Chart and at #6 on the Top Releases Chart. The track received airplay on London-based Trickstar Radio’s Metropolis, and as a result they were invited to play at Spain-based Los 40 Radio.
- 2019’s “Tonyca,” which was selected as one of the songs of the summer at Faro, Portugal-based club LICK.
- Last year’s “Karma,” which landed at #1 on Beatport.
Adding to a growing profile across the European Union, the Portuguese act have made appearances on a number of TV channels including TVI 24. They’ve played sets at the international electronic music festival circuit including Faro Academic Week, Sun and Moon Festival, Dancefloor Leiria and Pete Tha Zouk’s Infinity Sunset. They’ve also played clubs like London-based Ministry of Sound.
Last September, the Portuguese duo started their own label Mossdeb Sounds. Their first release on their new album, “No Name Song” landed at #1 on Traxsource‘s House and EDM charts for a number of consecutive weeks. Continuing upon that massive momentum, the Portuguese duo’s latest single, “Amandla (Tutu)” is a euphoric, Balearic house meets tribal house-inspired banger, centered around skittering and percussive beats, a soulful vocal sample that will get you off your ass and moving.
As the duo explain, “Amandla” is a homage to the righteous activist and minister Desmond Tutu. They see the song as a joyous tribute to what’s life all about.
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New Audio: JOVM Mainstay LutchamaK Remixes His Own “Bitrate Scale”
Over the past couple of years, I’ve spilled quite a bit of virtual ink covering French JOVM mainstay LutchamaK. Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site over the past year or so, you’d recall that LutchamaK started off the year with a remix effort that featured remixes of Threshold album single “Bitrate Scale” by three artists, who liked his work and wanted to create their own takes.
- DNMK‘s deep house-leaning take on “Bitrate Scale” that features a brooding, murkier air than the original
- Haalleyck‘s trippy and cosmic take on “Bitrate Scale” centered around thumping kick and glistening and oscillating synths that feels more like a complete rework of the original
- Darbinyan‘s uptempo, deep house take on “Bitrate Scale” centered around oscillating synths, skittering, tweeter and woofer rattling beats, glistening synth arpeggios, robotic vocodered vocals and euphoria-inducing hooks
The JOVM mainstay contributes his own remix of “Bitrate Scale.” The LutchamaK remix is a subtle one that clocks in a little over a minute shorter than the original while retaining thumping kick but while pairing it with oscillating synths paired with vocodered vocals. Much like the original, it still nods at Kraftwerk but it feels murkier and brooding.
New Audio: JOVM Mainstay LutchamaK Shares Darbinyan’s Remix of “Bitrate Scale”
Last year, may have been among the most prolific and productive of LutchamaK‘s career to date. The French JOVM mainstay released an insane array of full-length albums and EPs that saw him experimenting with different sub-genres and styles within electronic music.
In that series of releases, you might remember Threshold, which featured “Irie Vibrations,” a track that seemed to mesh elements of Lee “Scratch” Perry-like dub with club friendly trance and house and “Bitrate Scale,” a brooding yet hypnotic club banger that brought Tour de France era Kraftwerk to mind.
LutchamaK starts off 2022 with a remix effort that features remixes of Threshold album single “Bitrate Scale” by three artists, who liked his work and wanted to create their own takes. So far I’ve written about two of these remakes on Bitrate Scale_rmx:
- DNMK‘s deep house-leaning take on “Bitrate Scale” that features a brooding, murkier air than the original
- Haalleycks trippy and cosmic take on “Bitrate Scale” centered around thumping kick and glistening and oscillating synths that feels more like a complete rework of the original
Darbinyan contributes an uptempo, deep house take on “Bitrate Scale” centered around oscillating synths, skittering, tweeter and woofer rattling beats, glistening synth arpeggios, robotic vocodered vocals and euphoria-inducing hooks. Much like Haallecks’ remix, the Darbinyan remix feels like a complete rework for the original.