With the offset of festival music that’s pouring through America’s youth culture, many people retain a certain perception that dropping banger after banger and creating the most hype is and always has been the core, fundamental nature of EDM itself. But many newer fans seem to forget that DJ sets were much more than feeding the hype machine; it was a way for an artist to educate young, budding listeners by taking them on a magical, musical and even spiritual journey through varying sounds and textures. More often than not, I find that seasoned veterans and newcomers receive a more fulfilling and satisfying experience when taken through long sets with Sasha, John Digweed and Laurent Garnier than through any Mainstage. These artists understand the concept of building their sets from the ground up and rather than pull out the Sparknotes of their set, they slowly read each page, savoring each and every adjective, sentence and paragraph. As a whole, I find that the genre of Deep Progressive House, which combines the drive of Prog with the simmering, low end grooves of Deep House, transforms ordinary music into an exhilarating rush of the senses. This week, I decided to kick the strength up a notch with an incredible sound coming from India’s own SEQU3l. His signature, tech driven tracks have attracted the attention of Max Freegrant and Jerome Isma-Ae, who are renowned for crafting an entire ecosystem of influential artists and labels under one, unified sound.
[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/100198112″ iframe=”true” /]
However, his remix to 21 Street‘s Jakarta Dream paints a slightly different hue from his usual releases, as it attaches more melodic accessories onto his intricate webs of interlocking rhythms. It perfectly captures the intentions of Guy J and Marcelo Vasami, but accentuated; with more hands on drive to make the track more club friendly. But what SEQU3l has unintentionally accomplished is mix two completely diverse styles into one seamless track; and the results are nothing short of fantastic. His illustrious pads gently spreads over the soundscape with fluffy, buttery textures while the flip side focuses on coarser sounds with industrial buzzers and conveyor belt basslines. Essential details, such as block hits, snaking spiral sounds, blippy percussion synths, vocab reverbs and sweeping white noise implementations extends the reach of the track to greater heights to cover even more aesthetic qualities than before. Jakarta Dream‘s staggering atmosphere, which extends towards the vast reaches of space, is fully explored within the breakdown amidst a sea of white noise and sounds that seem to stroke random lines of color throughout the canvas of the brain as the extent of expressive liberty and improvisation is wonderfully taken into full effect. Screaming, yet smooth synths begin their ascension towards the clouds as it releases like a rush of warm air to the brain, as its constant stimulation between its different styles both engages thought processes while remaining cool, calm and serene; which provides interesting, experimental results.
SEQU3l‘s remix of 21 Street‘s Jakarta Dream is now available on Outta Limits via Beatport, so go grab yourself a copy today. Also, make sure you check out the Original, Mark Hartigan and Stan Kolev & Matan Caspi mixes!
Keep the music alive. -Q
Beatport: http://www.beatport.com/release/jakarta-dream/1128331
On Sunrise Sessions, we find tracks that best exemplifies the chilled, low energy vibes of early Sundays to start your day off on the right foot. We want to show you what many are missing and help you discover an entire ecosystem of music that’s waiting to be explored. Not to be held down by genres, we look into music in a variety of styles, including Progressive, Deep House, Ambient and even tracks that aren’t a part of EDM! Singles, remixes, mashups, bootlegs, edits and collaborations will be featured as well as a wide variety of artists ranging from established, well known names to people who purely reside in the underground.
