DJ Chart: Dusky

Deetron – Photon [Unknown]

Deetron is on fine form here with a peak time floor-filler of a track. The bassline harks back to classic mid 00s electro-house, but the piano stabs add a different, more classic house flavour when they appear. The two snare-roll filled breakdowns in the middle of the track provide some big room madness.

Lorca – Calcutec [Naked Naked]

This track works great either in a warm up or a peak time set. The bassline is the focus at first, giving way to swirling, gliding pads and melodies reminiscent of James Holden, Nathan Fake and the Border Community label, all the while underpinned by the aforementioned bassline. The combination manages to be both tender and aggressive at the same time.

Dense & Pika – Lazy Wayne [Hotflush]

A pretty mental track, this one. Trippy vocal snippets are sped up and down in the intro (and later the breakdown), giving way to a bassline and groove that sounds like someone making rhythms by hitting industrial pipes and pieces of broken machinery. We usually play it sped up quite a lot, giving it a more frenetic feel.

Flowers & Sea Creatures – The Very Next Day feat. Wrong Jeremy (Eric Volta’s Navigate The Untold Cosmos Remix) [My Favorite Robot]

A long number with a long name to boot. We’ve been starting almost all our recent longer sets with this. The beautiful pads in the intro reset the vibe of a dancefloor nicely. The arrangement is crafted carefully, with different sections weaving in and out with plenty of understated details.

Jonny Cade – Get Off My [Music is Love]

This track channels speed garage, post-garage, and techno flavours. Stabs very similar to those in Shed’s classic 10001 2” track (under his vinyl only WAX alias) filter up and down, while angular bass hits provide some grit. A couple of string filled euphoric breakdowns appear throughout the track, while diva-style vocals provide a big lift at the right moments.

Traumer – Underlying [A-Traction]

This French producer provides a solid techno number here, proving simplicity can often work wonders when it comes to techno. Pads build up and up for the first couple of minutes, travelling further and further into a reverb wash, before some dry crusty stabs come in sharply, leaping out of the speakers. These move around and build up in another crescendo, before doing it all again. At the right point in the set this one can do some serious damage.

Patrice Bäumel – Vertigo [Speicher]

When the crowd needs waking up, we play this track. It’s a twisted monster, with its drunken riff going in and out of tune with itself, creating a trippy, disconcerting effect that propels the groove. It builds up massively over time, and every time you think it’s reached a climax it keeps upping the stakes, until it finally reaches a huge peak guaranteed to get people dancing.

Dan Curtin – Bassius [Transit]

Dan Curtin is a master of wonky techno, and this one does the business. Strange atmospheres complement the groove, with the random jazz samples that get thrown in a particular favourite for us. It gets quite dark in the second breakdown, but brings it back with the return of the rubbery bassline. When we need a deeper, quirky moment in our sets, we’ve been reaching for this.

Outboxx – Feel Your Love [Futureboogie]

We’ve been playing this in the deeper parts of our sets, and it always gets a good reaction. The focus is a keyboard riff that repeats, only occasionally going through the whole chord progression. Similarly the vocal is kept short throughout, only played out in full here and there. Some 303 acid style delayed hits come in later, rounding it all off nicely.

Locked Groove – Enigma (Scuba’s Warehouse Mix) [Hotflush]

We can hear the unlikely combination of grime, techno, progressive house, and a nod to Ten Walls’ recent use of brassy synth sounds in this one. It’s got a couple of surprising twists and turns that keep the ear interested throughout. The euphoric pads in the breakdown are unexpected but work brilliantly, leading us neatly back to the main riff.