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VIEW ALL ARTIST PROFILE ALBUM REVIEW FIVE QUESTIONS INTERVIEW

Artist Profile: Héctor Oaks

ARTIST PROFILE

Héctor Oaks emerged from European rave culture with velocity and vinyl. Raised in Madrid during Spain’s 1990s rave explosion, dance music, Bacalao culture, and warehouse memory formed part of his youth's social weather system. When he relocated to Berlin, framing the move as "Berlin University", the city’s record shops and uncompromising dancefloors only sharpened this already present instinct.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON March 9, 2026 ADD TO READING LIST

Interview: A.A. Williams

INTERVIEW

Following global tours with Cult of Luna, Explosions in the Sky, Sleep Token, Russian Circles and The Sisters of Mercy,  the classically trained multi-instrumentalist A.A. Williams arrives at Control on March 5 as a headliner in her own right, with Faunlet opening the night.

Haunting and heavy in equal measure, her music sits at the crossroads of post-rock, doom metal and atmospheric folk, leaning into vulnerability with striking poetic depth. Some songs feel like odes to the darkness within, her voice unfolding as both confession and companion.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON March 5, 2026 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Jorkes

ARTIST PROFILE

Jorkes' music has always been built from frictions that shouldn't, on paper, fit so smoothly. It arrives at a quiet certainty about when to loosen the screws and when to tighten them again. In Jorkes' hands, acid grins and ’80s synth-pop aches. The result is a dancefloor language that’s playful on the surface and emotionally complex beneath it. On Saturday, March 7, Jorkes brings that sensibility to Control Club, alongside nd_baumecker, Vio PRG, and New Disorder.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON March 4, 2026 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: ADIEL

ARTIST PROFILE

ADIEL views the dancefloor as a site of consequence. Her vinyl-focused sound is hypnotic techno built from pressure, rolling low end, stealth percussion, and a dubby atmosphere, threaded into long, elastic arcs. Coming from Rome's Goa Club and its famed Ultrabeat parties, she specializes in that rare propulsion that deepens the room’s trancelike state minute by minute.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON March 3, 2026 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Stavroz – Take a Seat (Moodfamily)

ALBUM REVIEW

A Stavroz groove moves like foot traffic at springtime dusk. As downtempo as a genre tends to treat listeners as passengers, they insist you walk. That insistence has shaped them since 2011, when the East Flanders quartet began as DJs and later grew into a live band.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON March 2, 2026 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: MARRØN

ARTIST PROFILE

In the early light of an Amsterdam Sunday, mist rises through the skylights of Garage Noord. Its concrete floors are slick. The sound system is pressure calibrated. What unfolds feels like a morning sermon. Bodies gather, drawn by rhythm. Behind the decks stands MARRØN. The tempo is high, and the mood is devotional. For Jessey Voorn, the man behind the project, these Sundays function as a holy day for underground music. In this space, history, discipline, and presence fold into sound.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON February 19, 2026 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: AMALIAH

ARTIST PROFILE

AMALIAH builds her sets around friction and swing, always keeping drums tense. Simultaneously, she slides between techno pressure, clipped house propulsion, and broken UK weight. She brings peak-time UK drive, then drops in leftfield turns and micro-shifts that keep the groove alert. London taught her that lesson, where crowds decide quickly and punish vague phrasing.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON February 17, 2026 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Commodo

ARTIST PROFILE

The elusive Commodo is a spectre from the industrial north of England who has spent the better part of fifteen years redefining the bass. From the steel city of Sheffield, Commodo (aka Dom Tarasek) emerged in the early 2010s with a low-frequency hum that sent waves through the very foundations of the UK’s underground.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON February 16, 2026 ADD TO READING LIST

Interview: Avishag C. Rodrigues

INTERVIEW

New York–based and constantly on the road, Avishag operates at the edge of dark electronics, noise, and experimental rock, shaped by both US and European scenes. Active since her teens, she approaches music with a visual artist’s eye, building hazy, abrasive songs that lean as much on texture as on form. A small part of her work extends into short films, but the core of her practice lives on stage.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON February 14, 2026 ADD TO READING LIST

Interview: Elf Traps [UK/RO]

INTERVIEW

Two restless minds, one live-wire ritual: Elf Traps fuse acoustic drums, machine rhythms, and synth breath into a real-time conversation where friendship becomes friction and improvisation sparks the current.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON February 12, 2026 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Kollektiv Turmstrasse

ARTIST PROFILE

Kollektiv Turmstrasse began quietly in the late 90s when two friends, Nico Plagemann and Christian Hilscher, set up a home studio on the German Baltic Sea coast. Today, that evolution continues in a new form, as Kollektiv Turmstrasse becomes a solo project under Plagemann's direction. On February 13, Plagemann brings Kollektiv Turmstrasse to Control Club.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON February 9, 2026 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Tommy Four Seven

ARTIST PROFILE

With Tommy Four Seven, there are no slogans, theatrics, or booth-dancing in his sets. Instead, he offers a disciplined intensity that reshapes techno from within. His music isn’t designed to overwhelm in the typical sense. It carves space, controls pressure, and lets tension guide the way.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON February 4, 2026 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Mint Field - Aprender A Ser: Extended (felte)

ALBUM REVIEW

Mint Field, the Mexico City duo of Estrella del Sol and Sebastian Neyra, is a pair of heuristic topographers, delineating the liminal thresholds between conscious cognition and the velvet drapery of REM sleep. Their latest, Aprender A Ser: Extended, is a shadow-drenched companion to their 2023 full-length album, synthesized from the same recording sessions but cordoned off into its own autonomy.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON February 2, 2026 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Vega Trails - Sierra Tracks (Gondwana Records)

ARTIST PROFILE

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON January 27, 2026 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Shkoon

ARTIST PROFILE

One evening, Thorben’s partner began playing music. Ameen began to sing. What emerged was a vocal art known as mawwal; raw and entirely indifferent to the Western frameworks Thorben had spent his life mastering. Ameen's voice did not follow the tempered scales of the piano; instead, it found the microtonal quarter-tones that give Arabic music its distinctive emotional weight.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON January 26, 2026 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Stella Rose - Hollybaby (KRO Records)

ALBUM REVIEW

Those who embark on the New York-to-Los Angeles journey often look to shed fast-paced East Coast neuroticism for the narcotic embrace of the Pacific. This pilgrimage most famously appears in Joan Didion's work as a descent into a landscape where the Santa Ana winds dry out frazzled nerves. Stella Rose sought another kind of revelation when she recorded her latest EP in the City of Angels.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON January 22, 2026 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Timo Maas

ARTIST PROFILE

Frankfurt's Timo Maas is a true pioneer of the electronic dance music genre in every sense of the oft-used expression. For over four decades, he has produced and presented an innovative and genre-defying sound, which seamlessly blends elements of techno, house, trance, and ambient music. Let your ears show you precisely what he has to offer as he returns to Control Club on January 24.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON January 19, 2026 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Piezo

ARTIST PROFILE

One afternoon in Milan, Luca Mucci was explaining the concept of “perc-y wrigglers.” Mucci, who produces and performs music under the moniker Piezo, speaks of sound as if it were a physical specimen he had just caught out of the air, observing it with a mixture of scientific curiosity and mild amusement.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON January 16, 2026 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Batida DJ

ARTIST PROFILE

Pedro Coquenão has spent over a decade making music that actively campaigns against cultural amnesia. As Batida DJ (which translates to "beat" in Portuguese), the Angolan-born, Lisbon-raised artist brilliantly fuses his Angolan heritage with the atmosphere of Lisbon’s clubs. His creative palette is vast, drawing on radio, visual art, installation, performance, and pure rhythm.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON December 22, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: KLOUD

ARTIST PROFILE

In modernity, there is a certain quality of darkness; a manufactured, almost pressurized negative space. It is in this carefully engineered void that the electronic music project known only as KLOUD operates. In this manufactured void, it establishes the night's terms immediately: an evening of high-intensity, all-original techno revolving around pressure, tempo, and the reflexive response when sound repeatedly strikes the body. On Friday, December 26, 2025, KLOUD plays Control Club.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON December 19, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: MCMLXXXV

ARTIST PROFILE

MCMLXXXV (Nicolas Endlicher) is a name that carries disciplined austerity, yet his work is anything but minimal. As a DJ, curator, and co-founder of the Berlin party and collective Herrensauna, he has helped recalibrate what high-intensity club culture can hold, where pleasure does not apologise for its own severity.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON December 17, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: CEM

ARTIST PROFILE

In the sweat-soaked expanse of Berlin nightlife, CEM is an agent of particularly high-intensity chaos. 2025 marks the "10 Years of Herrensauna" milestone. For fans in Romania, the energy arrives on Friday, December 19, when CEM is scheduled to perform back-to-back with MCMLXXXV at Control Club.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON December 16, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: The Raveonettes – Pe’ahi II (Beat Dies Records)

ALBUM REVIEW

If Pe’ahi (2014) was the violent swell of grief breaking over distortion, then Pe’ahi II is its drowned revenant. The Raveonettes’ tenth studio album delivers an anti-narrative in which wounds continue to echo, quieter and deeper with time. In support of the record, they return to Bucharest for the first time in a decade as they take the Control Club stage on December 13 2025.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON December 12, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Sansibar

ARTIST PROFILE

Sansibar stands as a crucial figure in the fertile yet understated Finnish electronic underground, splitting time between Berlin and Helsinki while maintaining residencies at key Helsinki venues, Kaiku and Post Bar. His ambition is rooted in a fascination with frequency manipulation and a vision of sound as transportation, bridging the sterile precision of electro with the emotional charge of trance and breaks.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON December 10, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Samantha Togni

ARTIST PROFILE

A queer Italian DJ and producer based in London, Samantha Togni has established a notable reputation in the electronic music scene, particularly within hard, high-tempo techno designed for crowded rooms and fast transitions. On Friday, December 12, 2025, she plays Control Club in Bucharest as part of Sqweez!'s final bash before the holidays.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON December 9, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: ULTRA SUNN — US (Artoffact Records)

ALBUM REVIEW

ULTRA SUNN’s debut maps nine rooms under the strobe with no ornamental corridors or drywall fakery. US arrived in April 2024 on Artoffact Records and declines pyrotechnics in favor of a civic tempo. Rather than chase spectacle, the record tightens its EBM exoskeleton, pares it back, and fits it with new wiring.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON December 8, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Rødhåd

ARTIST PROFILE

With a name that translates to "redhead" in Norwegian, Rødhåd is an enigmatic figure in the techno scene known for his signature blend of hypnotic rhythms and thunderous bass. An artist whose sound and style embody the raw, industrial spirit of Berlin techno, Rødhåd (real name Mike Bierbach) has both paid his dues and carved out his own singular path across the two decades in the game.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON December 3, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: New Model Army - Unbroken (earMUSIC)

ALBUM REVIEW

After the widescreen experiments of From Here and the orchestral pageant of Sinfonia, the sixteenth studio album from New Model Army, Unbroken, pares things back to a “roots” grammar. It's a tactical decision that lands through experience — the kind that only accumulates across decades.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON November 28, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Yellow Days - Hotel Heaven (Sugar Load Recordings)

ALBUM REVIEW

His voice still has a sandpaper falsetto and a Ray Charles fixation that hums in the background, but here, things feel tighter and more assured. Hotel Heaven lasts just 26 minutes yet speaks like a slim novella. Where A Day in a Yellow Beat sprawled, this one distills.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON November 27, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Kangding Ray

ARTIST PROFILE

Kangding Ray (born David Letellier) first gained notice with ambitious, concept-driven albums on Berlin’s experimental Raster-Noton label. These releases showcased his dual approach to dancefloor energy combined with intellectual depth. As Kangding Ray will arrive at Control on Saturday, November 29, consider this profile your heads‑up.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON November 25, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Guti

ARTIST PROFILE

Guti (born Gabriel Gutiérrez) is an Argentinian pianist and live electronic musician who builds dance music from the keyboard up. Keep an eye out for his world-renowned live performance at Control Club when Personnal invites Guti to Bucharest on Friday, November 28, 2025.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON November 24, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: SONS - Hallo ([PIAS] Recordings)

ALBUM REVIEW

Hallo treats impact as a design question and trusts the quiet half second before the snare lands. Velocity becomes a material force, shaping space, weight, and time as expressive tools. On November 26, 2025, SONS bring their high-octane garage rock to Control.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON November 21, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Mild Orange – The//Glow (ONErpm)

ALBUM REVIEW

The//Glow extends clarity into a two-environment palette and reads like the next logical chapter. And if you want to test their set of listening conditions calibrated for low fatigue and slow reveal, Bucharest gets its turn on Friday, November 21, 2025, at Control Club.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON November 19, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Siu Mata

ARTIST PROFILE

Paris-born and now part of the city’s club vanguard, Siu Mata builds rhythm like architecture. His tracks shift weight and change the room with small movements, designed for DJs who prefer steering a floor with increments and for dancers who want propulsion without fatigue.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON November 18, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Amor Satyr

ARTIST PROFILE

Hailing from the French underground, Amor Satyr has become known as a “Parisian alchemist” of club music through a blend of bass and rhythm. Drawing on his Française roots and early affinity for Latin sound systems, he and long-time collaborator Siu Mata have forged a sound that slips between scenes.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON November 17, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Korhan Futacı

ARTIST PROFILE

The Istanbul-born saxophonist, vocalist, and composer Korhan Futacı turns improvisation into a way of life through a career that spans jazz, rock, Turkish folk, and experimental sound art.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON November 14, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Métaraph

ARTIST PROFILE

As a non-binary creator emerging from Europe’s underground techno scene, Métaraph is part of a wave of modern artists who craft their brand around an artistic identity intertwined with personal expression, clubbing history, and community. On Friday, November 7, Control Club is introduced to Métaraph's emotionally charged artistic universe.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON November 4, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Zombies in Miami

ARTIST PROFILE

Zombies in Miami are two undead figures in the neon light who build pressure one bar at a time. On October 31, Cani and Jenouise land at Control for a DJ set just right for Halloween 2025 - Attack of the 50ft Speakers.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON October 28, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Tamikrest – Tamotaït (Glitterbeat)

ALBUM REVIEW

Across nine tracks, the Tuareg desert rockers turn in strategic waypoints on the cartography of exile, finding the coordinates for survival when the homeland exists only in memory. On October 24, Tamikrest returns to Control for another night of Saharan winds and electric riffs shaped by longing, resistance, and connection.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON October 21, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: shame - Cutthroat (Dead Oceans)

ALBUM REVIEW

Cutthroat is the sound of shame crashing a party that was never meant for them, tracking mud on the furniture of the status quo, while refusing to apologize. If you were at their Control show two years ago, then you know what's up. If not, well, they're back on Tuesday, October 28, for another round of confrontational post-punk fury.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON October 21, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Robag Wruhme

ARTIST PROFILE

Across three decades, Robag Wruhme has built a musical language of tiny gestures that somehow move whole rooms. He came up through Thuringia’s post-Wall underground, matured on Pampa and Kompakt, and now curates his own Tulpa Ovi imprint. On Friday, October 17, the groove-maestro himself graces Control Club's Room 1.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON October 15, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Bombino

ARTIST PROFILE

Bombino sings in Tamasheq about dignity, exile and return, while his right-hand pulse is the argument. On October 16, he returns to Control Club after a sold-out set that was a highlight of the venue's 2024 live roster.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON October 13, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Drew McDowall - A Thread, Silvered and Trembling (Dais Records)

ALBUM REVIEW

Former Psychic TV, Coil, and The Poems member Drew McDowall’s A Thread, Silvered and Trembling moves like weather sealed within. Working with Randall Dunn at Brooklyn's "sound temple," Circular Ruin, McDowall anchors the sound in depth of field with a palette that reads as both chamber and electronic at once. It's a compact orchestra emulsified into a voltage that closes down the 10th Bucharest Photofest with Drew McDowall at Control Club.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON October 9, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: The Wants – Bastard (STTT)

ALBUM REVIEW

A self-described “No Wave / No Pop techno punk” album, Bastard is machine-driven yet emotional, with grief at its core. In support of the album, The Wants bring their genre-defying sound to Control on Saturday, October 11.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON October 8, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Hinako Omori - stillness, softness… (Houndstooth)

ALBUM REVIEW

stillness, softness… draws breath inward and steadies the room until attention begins to thrum. What you hear is concentration turning into sound and returning as a durable calm. This calm opens the 10th edition of Bucharest Photofest as Control Club welcomes Hinako Omori.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON October 8, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: nd_baumecker

ARTIST PROFILE

In a city with no shortage of headliners, nd_baumecker has built a career on a rarer commodity: custodianship. As a long‑standing Panorama Bar resident and former in‑house booker, Andreas Baumecker’s influence on Berlin club culture extends well beyond the booth. On October 4, he'll join the Control 17th anniversary festivities with an all-night second room takeover.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON October 1, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Ida Engberg

ARTIST PROFILE

Across two decades of late nights, airport mornings and blue-hour dance floors, Ida Engberg has refined a particular kind of big-room hypnosis. On 3 October, Bucharest gets the close-quarters version at Control Club, where she helps mark the venue’s 17th anniversary.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON September 30, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Years of Denial - Love Cuts EP (Veyl Recordings)

ALBUM REVIEW

In the hyperkinetic vortex of modern electronic music’s ever-subdividing taxonomy, Years of Denial remain obstinately uncategorizable. The French-Czech duo’s latest, Love Cuts EP, is both an interstitial passage between 2023’s Suicide Disco 2 and the forthcoming third instalment and an autonomous exercise in mapping love’s most labyrinthine territories. On October 4, this vernacular will be spoken on stage as part of Control Club's 17th anniversary.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON September 29, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Preoccupations – Ill at Ease (Born Loser Records)

ALBUM REVIEW

Thirteen years into their role as one of Canada’s most unsettled musical entities, Preoccupations return with their fifth LP, Ill at Ease. It's an album that is radiant, grim, melodic, and mistrustful. If past work like Cassette (2017) and Viet Cong (2015) saw the band violently cutting at the barbed wire of structural austere post punk, Ill at Ease allows the wire to remain, but it's now humming and adorned with fairy lights. On October 2, Preoccupations bring their formidable and familiar sound to Control Club.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON September 26, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Phase Fatale

ARTIST PROFILE

He has spent the past decade finding ways to compress the gloom of post-punk and industrial into techno’s frame, stripping out ornament and emphasising structure until what remains is sound as control. How fitting that Phase Fatale joins the 17th anniversary celebrations of Control on October 4.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON September 24, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Los Bitchos - Talkie Talkie (City Slang)

ALBUM REVIEW

From the threshold, Talkie Talkie reads like an autonomous venue with working lights and the shared pact that pleasure circulates. Los Bitchos, the UK-based quartet of Serra Petale (guitar), Agustina Ruiz (synths/keytar), Josefine Jonsson (bass), and Nic Crawshaw (drums), arrange the room so melody, rhythm, and air trade stewardship without hoarding. The titular nightclub channels an ’80s social-tech logic where movement sets the terms and the beat handles mutual aid. On October 3, Los Bitchos bring this world to Control Club for its 17th anniversary.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON September 23, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Control 17 Year Anniversary

ARTIST PROFILE

We’re thrilled to share the full lineup for Control’s 17th Anniversary, a milestone that reflects the many subcultures that we gathered and frequencies the club has tuned into over time. Across three nights, the celebration stretches across a wide range of genres, including post-punk, neo-psychedelia, techno, EBM, and the entire electronic spectrum - music that keeps our community curious and moving.

WRITTEN BY September 23, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Warfield - Deathrock Devotionals Vol. 1

ALBUM REVIEW

A thirty-year arc from a psychedelic hip-hop debut (My Field Trip to Planet 9, 1993) to the black-suited, synth-seductive hauteur of She Wants Revenge, Justin Warfield's songs always move with minimal parts, maximal voltage, and a baritone trained to set groove to image. Deathrock Devotionals Vol. 1, the opening instalment of his solo project WARFIELD, is brisk proof that he always preferred the shortest route to the nerve ending. Five tracks that treat acceleration as aesthetic, memory as fuel, and Los Angeles as both cemetery and arcade. On September 19, Control welcomes WARFIELD to Bucharest.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON September 16, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Dekmantel Soundsystem

ARTIST PROFILE

Dekmantel Soundsystem is the travelling embodiment of a particular Amsterdam idea, that selectors come first and history moves forward with the glue of groove holding everything together. On Saturday, September 13, ctrl gets to witness the debut of Dekmantel Soundsystem's exciting new formation as Casper Tielrooij and Interstellar Funk unite for a special night.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON September 10, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: SCARLETT

ARTIST PROFILE

Among techno’s rising architects, Italy’s SCARLETT has a sound that is violent, vulnerable, cinematic, and always pushing into something narratively charged. With over a decade of experience as a DJ and producer, she has transitioned from bass-heavy roots into a dark and emotionally complex techno identity. She brings this singular energy to Bucharest on June 6 for an anticipated performance at Control Club.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON June 4, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: AMIT

ARTIST PROFILE

AMIT, the UK-based composer and producer Amit Kamboj, was one of the first artists to consistently employ a "half-step" style in drum & bass, operating at a distinctive 174 bpm. Growing up amid traditional Indian music and dub reggae, AMIT's productions frequently feature modal scales, tabla-like percussion, and dhol rhythms. On May 30, ctrl x Odyssey Sessions will welcome AMIT to Bucharest.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON May 29, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Seba

ARTIST PROFILE

The Swedish operator Seba has crafted breakbeat elegies with cinematic scope, heavy with mood, and light on ego for three decades. Whether you know him from his Bukem-era rollers, drumfunk excursions with Paradox, or the crystalline liquid pressure of his later sets, Sebastian Ahrenberg’s fingerprints are all over the atmospheric wing of drum & bass. His spacious, human, and endlessly emotive sound is built for the headspace and the system alike. On May 30, that system will be at Control Club as Odyssey welcomes Seba to Bucharest.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON May 29, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Ora the Molecule - Dance Therapy (Mute)

ALBUM REVIEW

Dance Therapy, the second LP from Norwegian polymath Nora Schjelderup aka Ora the Molecule, eschews the detached spectacle of contemporary electronica for an affective and narratively integrated structure, a psycho-cosmic libretto for disco existentialism. It pirouettes between synthetic and sincere, bridging private melancholia with the dancefloor’s ritualistic hedonism. In its best moments, it recalls the fluency of early Goldfrapp and the dramaturgy of Annie Lennox. But Schjelderup’s vector is part kitsch, part catharsis, wholly other, and distinctly her own. On May 30, she brings this distinctive sound-world to Control Club, as part of the 9th Dokstation Music Documentary Film Festival.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON May 27, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Anna B Savage - You and i are Earth (City Slang)

ALBUM REVIEW

On May 28, Anna B Savage will perform for the first time in Romania as part of the 9th DokStation Music Documentary Film Festival at Control Club.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON May 26, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Al-Qasar - Uncovered (WeWantSounds)

ALBUM REVIEW

Uncovered, the second full-length release from Al-Qasar, is a retro-futurist reverie steeped in Arab folk and laced with the circuitry of Western psychedelic rock. A record that binds together four radically reimagined covers and three originals into an ecstatic tapestry where languages tangle, instruments cross-pollinate, and temporalities collapse. Rest assured, it’s also a banger. Not coincidentally, Al-Qasar will be performing in Bucharest at Contrul Club as part of the DokStation Music Documentary Film Festival on Thursday, May 29.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON May 26, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: DECIUS

ARTIST PROFILE

Formed by brothers Liam and Luke May (Trashmouth Records, Medicine 8), alongside Quinn Whalley (Paranoid London, Warmduscher) and Lias Saoudi (Fat White Family), DECIUS is a composite organism stitched from the UK underground’s sleaziest corners—equal parts queer ritual, acid invocation, and punk theatre. On May 24, DECIUS ignites Control Club's spirits with a live set, headlining a Tryouts London label showcase that takes over the entire venue, promising a night of maximal sleaze.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON May 21, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Danny McLewin

ARTIST PROFILE

For Danny McLewin, the myth of the 21st-century crate digger is methodology. McLewin excavates, curates, and reanimates forgotten or orphaned sounds, mapping a cartography of music at the intersection of alchemy, collection, and cultural savantism. As one half of the psychedelic-disco duo Psychemagik, and as a solo selector with an uncanny feel for rare groove psychedelia, McLewin has helped reshape the aesthetic parameters of the balearic revival, the cosmic reissue circuit, and the vinyl-based DJ mix. On May 24, McLewin will join the Tryouts London festivities at Control Club, a night that also includes a sleazy live set from DECIUS and a packed venue label takeover.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON May 19, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Alex Wilcox

ARTIST PROFILE

A Texan-born artist, Alex Wilcox first fell in love with music through '90s rock, but his initiation into techno came during a visit to Berlin. On Friday, May 23, Alex Wilcox will headline the return of Sqweez! at Control Club.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON May 19, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: François X

ARTIST PROFILE

One of Paris's most disruptive electronic artists, François X, has spent over a decade crafting a sound that draws from Black American dance music and the European avant-garde. On May 16, he will bring his uncompromising techno vision to Control Club, promising a night of high-velocity and cinematic intensity.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON May 13, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Pierre Omer's Swing Revue – Tropical Breakdown (Voodoo Rhythm Records)

ALBUM REVIEW

Tropical Breakdown wears its tuxedo with a knife under the cummerbund. Pierre Omer's Swing Revue play swing the way it stumbles through a fever dream after too many drinks. If swing once meant parties in sepia-toned ballrooms, Tropical Breakdown, the group's second album after 2016's Swing Cremona, plays it as if whispered from under a bar stool. It's dance music for end times. Or, for no times at all. Just make sure, when that day comes, you're with the Swing Revue in a rum-soaked tango club, roadside circus, backroom jazz den, or imaginary speakeasy. On March 16, that venue will be Control Club as Pierre Omer's Swing Revue bring their genre-twisting swing to Bucharest.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON May 9, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: O.B.F

ARTIST PROFILE

O.B.F. (Original Bass Foundation) emerged in 2002 on Geneva’s outskirts as a forward-thinking dub and reggae sound system. Founded by producer and selector Rico, alongside operators G and Stef, the collective quickly earned a reputation for its distinctive and versatile style. They promote forward-thinking dub music heavily influenced by Jamaican reggae, 90s UK dub, and contemporary urban sounds​. On May 10 2025, Black Rhino Radio will celebrate its 4th anniversary with O.B.F and Spanish MC Sr. Willson holding things down.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON May 7, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Matias Aguayo

ARTIST PROFILE

For Aguayo, sound is a social language that cuts through noise and isolation and summons a sense of togetherness. This fall, Bucharest will again fall under this spell when, on Friday, May 9, Aguayo returns to Control Club with a new live set, sharing the bill with Mexico’s Iñigo Vontier.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON April 30, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Iñigo Vontier

ARTIST PROFILE

Iñigo Vontier offers something stranger and more vital to modern electronic music's dim, tranced-out underworlds. The Guadalajara-born producer and DJ has spent over a decade quietly carving out a space marked by haunted vivacity—ritualistic and irreverent, laced with psychedelic mischief. His sound defies borders and genre orthodoxy, balancing regional specificity with cosmopolitan reach. The reach comes to Control Club on Friday, May 9, as Iñigo Vontier joins a bill that also sees a live set from Matias Aguayo

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON April 30, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Porridge Radio - Clouds in the Sky They Will Always Be There For Me (Secretly Canadian)

ALBUM REVIEW

Clouds in the Sky They Will Always Be There For Me is the fourth album from Porridge Radio, arriving with the quiet weight of experience. What began in 2015 as Dana Margolin's lo-fi open-mic project in Brighton has since evolved into something more volatile, sculpted, and carrying the tremor of the band's early urgency.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON April 30, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Efterklang - Things We Have in Common (City Slang Records)

ALBUM REVIEW

Things We Have in Common, Efterklang's seventh album, refines the band's ongoing engagement with human connection.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON April 23, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Mario Liberti

ARTIST PROFILE

Born in Lima. Forged in Miami. Tempered in Paris, Mario Liberti's music bears the fingerprints of cities that never sleep but dream in shared rhythm. Like a seasoned digger sifting through dusty backroom bins, Liberti's basslines slide between continents, drum loops soak in archival memory, and synths flutter like passport stamps

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON April 22, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Tim Reaper

ARTIST PROFILE

Whether in the club cavern or the vast world of online streams, Tim Reaper often appears studious behind the decks, but his unassuming presence belies nothing less than a revolution in jungle's new epoch.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON April 16, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: DJ SWISHA

ARTIST PROFILE

Born in Philadelphia, shaped by Los Angeles, and now immersed in Brooklyn, DJ Swisha is known for his high-octane, cross-genre approach to club music. His fast-paced sets and productions span footwork, house, jungle, Jersey/Baltimore club, ghetto house and more. Over the past decade, he has built a reputation for polyrhythmic, nostalgic, dancefloor-ready tracks that never compromise on a hard-hitting beat​. On April 11, the beat hits Bucharest as aim+wall presents DJ Swisha at Control Club.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON April 8, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Mia Koden

ARTIST PROFILE

Born Sancha Ndeko, a South Sudanese-British DJ and producer, the Mia Koden story spans continents and cultures. In youth, she was steeped in her parents’ pan-African record collection and later made frequent soundsystem pilgrimages to hear roots reggae, jungle and dubstep in their natural UK habitats. A culture Koden honours every time she performs, imbuing her sets with lively African percussion, chest-rattling bass, and inventive blends that reflect her heritage and London environs. On April 11, Mia Koden brings these influences to her set at Control Club for the latest edition of aim+wall presents.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON April 8, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: SPFDJ

ARTIST PROFILE

The experience of an SPFDJ (Lina Jonsson) set is to be drawn into ecstatic, insurgent release. Her sound is an accelerated cocktail of acid techno, EBM, hardcore, trance, and occasionally breakbeat, which doesn't aim to please.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON April 8, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Rider Shafique

ARTIST PROFILE

Rider Shafique is a lyricist and MC who bridges poetry, spoken word, social consciousness, dancehall, dubstep, and drum and bass. At the 18th instalment of Black Rhino Residency, the lyrical legend will bring his vocal prowess to Control Club.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON April 6, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Fireground

ARTIST PROFILE

Fireground landed on the scene like an inevitability. Since 2021, the Naples-born duo of Angela and Daniele have threaded themselves into electronic music's DNA with intuitive and deliberate sound. It is an unorthodox blend of techno propulsion and house warmth that doesn’t posture. It pulses. On April 5, they’ll bring that pulse to Control Club, teaming up with the Zenker Brothers [ARTIST PROFILE] and local shapeshifter Dyl for a night under the Ilian Tape banner, a family Fireground have made distinctly their own.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON April 1, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Zenker Brothers

ARTIST PROFILE

In the mythology of techno, there is a rare breed of artists who build worlds quietly, stone by stone, beat by beat, while others rush to colonize them. Dario and Marco Zenker are two such figures. The Munich-based siblings have created a fluid, dub-drenched sonic language and an ecosystem broken in all the right places. This April 5, Bucharest will have a rare chance to experience the brothers take over the decks at Control Club. For anyone with a stake in rhythm, tension, and transportive dance music, this isn't an event to miss.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON March 28, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: SP:MC

ARTIST PROFILE

Few navigate the space between voice and production with the finesse of SP:MC. For over two decades, Stewart Procter has built a reputation as a vocal artist who redefined what an MC could be and a producer whose beats expose dance music's most elemental forms. His influence is everywhere, whether hosting drum & bass sessions, laying down textured dubstep productions, or curating UK garage hybrids.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON March 24, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: She Past Away - Disko Anksiyete (Metropolis Records)

ALBUM REVIEW

She Past Away, the Turkish duo of Volkan Caner and Doruk Öztürkcan, have long been masters of atmosphere. Their hybrid of post-punk and darkwave drips with the same cinematics that fueled the genre’s progenitors. But their 2019 album, Disko Anksiyete, is no mere throwback. Its anxious energy mirrors the world it inhabits.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON March 20, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: TellaX

ARTIST PROFILE

A producer and DJ from Nice with deep Congolese roots, TellaX has spent nearly a decade crafting a sound that fuses hip-hop battle culture with electronic music. His beats command movement, reverberating through break battles, underground clubs, and sound systems from France to Switzerland to the U.S.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON March 20, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: DITZ – Never Exhale (self-released)

ALBUM REVIEW

Some albums sound like they've been chewed up and spat out. The latest from DITZ, Never Exhale, is one of them. It carries the duality between the road's grime and performance adrenaline into an album full of tension, ready to rupture.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON March 20, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Efterklang - Things We Have in Common (City Slang Records)

ALBUM REVIEW

Things We Have in Common, Efterklang's seventh album, refines the band's ongoing engagement with human connection. With it, the Danish trio of Casper Clausen, Mads Brauer, and Rasmus Stolberg prioritize clarity and atmosphere over intricate ornamentation.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON March 20, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Clan of Xymox - Exodus (Metropolis Records)

ARTIST PROFILE

Few bands have endured the ages like Clan of Xymox. Led by the ever-enigmatic Ronny Moorings since the early 80s, the Dutch band has survived four decades of shifting cultural epochs, from the post-punk genesis of the '80s to the digital gothic renaissance of the 21st century. Their latest effort, Exodus, is an elegy for a world fraying at its seams, reflecting solitude and disillusionment.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON March 17, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Scratchclart

ARTIST PROFILE

Leon Smart, known in the clubs and across the airwaves as Scratchclart or Scratcha DVA, began his musical journey in the underground scene of East London in the late 1990s. From pirate radio transmissions of jungle, drum and bass, and grime, Scratchclart has emerged as an essential voice and curator within a rapidly evolving musical landscape.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON March 13, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: SARABAMBA

ARTIST PROFILE

As the intersection of sound, performance, and identity continues to shape the modern club culture, SARABAMBA emerges as an assertion of fluidity, collectivity, and reinvention. Rooted in anonymity and rejecting conventional notions of individual stardom, the Florentine duo of SARA and BAMBA, in collaboration with producer Abo Abo, have created a creative identity that thrives at the intersection of queer expression, techno-eclecticism, and avant-garde aesthetics.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON March 13, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Omagoqa

ARTIST PROFILE

Exploding out of Durban, South Africa's township scene, Omagoqa—a lethal trio featuring Andile Mazibuko (Ma_A), Franco Makhathini (KB), and Njabulo Sibiya (Chase)—has quickly risen to global acclaim, driven by a commitment to indigenous authenticity as game-changers in gqom. Gqom, the street-born sound known for its stripped-down beats, Zulu drums, and chest-thumping basslines, defines Omagoqa's DNA, as it delivers a raw energy reflective of kasi life.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON March 12, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Breakage

ARTIST PROFILE

James Boyle, better known as Breakage, is a producer’s producer. He is the kind of artist revered for his ability to reinvent sound in a way that feels effortless. From the cavernous depths of dub and bass to the heavyweight low-end of dubstep and even the edges of electronic pop, his music exists in the tension between subtlety and brute force.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON March 12, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Rene Wise

ARTIST PROFILE

There is something primal about the techno of Rene Wise. It seems to operate on a subconscious level, burrowing into the body’s kinetic impulses while maintaining an austere sense of refinement. Few of his generation have held such an acute grasp of rhythm’s ability to anchor and liberate. Even fewer do so with such restraint. Wise’s techno is stripped-back, groove-focused, and hypnotic, fueled by an intrinsic understanding of polyrhythm and sonic heft.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON March 12, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Pinch

ARTIST PROFILE

Rob Ellis, better known as Pinch, is one of the forces that shaped the DNA of dubstep. Armed with an ear toward the seismic weight of bass, he’s spent two decades carving out spaces where dub, techno, grime, and experimental club music collide.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON March 10, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Kode9

ARTIST PROFILE

It starts with a deep, unsettling frequency. It's not quite a melody, but it's not quite noise. Then, a skittering beat that won’t settle, just a little too fast. Suddenly, you realize this is the world of Kode9.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON March 7, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: DJ Stingray 313

ARTIST PROFILE

Sherard Ingram, better known as DJ Stingray 313, has spent over three decades refining electro into a force resistant to dilution. A Detroit native, he has taken electro's fast, uncompromising, machine-driven blueprint and accelerated it into a future where precision is non-negotiable. Whether in the studio, behind the decks, or through his label, he is a key architect of electro’s enduring militancy.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON March 4, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Coco Bryce

ARTIST PROFILE

Almost three decades in, Coco Bryce has played a vital role in developing jungle and breakbeat hardcore. As a DJ, producer, and label owner, his discography spans numerous imprints and a sonic signature that has become instantly recognizable.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON March 4, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Daria Kolosova

ARTIST PROFILE

Daria Kolosova's skyrocketing international reputation is all about keeping audiences on their toes. In blending pounding techno, hardcore, breakbeat, jungle, and electro, she consistently delivers electrifying mixes built on instinct and precision.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON February 28, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Rex the Dog

ARTIST PROFILE

For all its whimsy, Rex the Dog (the artist project of Jake Williams) has been shape-shifting and outmaneuvering the algorithms of dance music history. Somewhere between retro-futurist club alchemy and an electronic fever dream of ‘80s synth-pop and Kompakt minimalism, it barks, glitches, and wags its tail at the homogenization of modern electronic music.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON February 26, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Mount Kimbie

ARTIST PROFILE

Mount Kimbie has been dismantling genre walls with precision and curiosity for over fifteen years. What started as a production duo—Dominic Maker and Kai Campos—tinkering with dubstep mutations in South London has since evolved into a fluid, four-person entity, now including longtime collaborators Andrea Balency-Béarn and Marc Pell.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON February 25, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: MOSES - I Still Believe! Do You?

ALBUM REVIEW

MOSES’ sophomore album, I Still Believe! Do You? (2022) doesn’t ask the question as much as it issues a challenge. The London-based outfit, helmed by the irrepressible Victor Moses, 2020 debut, Almost Everything Is Bullshit, was a tangle of sweat-drenched guitars.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON February 24, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Mala

ARTIST PROFILE

Born and raised in South London, Mala has been an ambassador of UK Bass since the turn of the century. Stirring dubstep’s musical melting pot with its most primal ingredients before it even had a name, Mala was a founding member of DMZ, the crew behind some of the most prized 12s the movement has ever known.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON February 22, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: The Beauty of Gemina - Songs of Homecoming (TBOG Music)

ALBUM REVIEW

With Songs of Homecoming, The Beauty of Gemina crafts an evocative return to the band's electronic roots while charting a meditation on belonging and transformation. Four years after Skeleton Dreams, this ninth studio album emerges quietly, enveloping listeners in an intricate world of shadow and light.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON February 21, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Bassiani: Raves, Raids, and Rebellion

ARTIST PROFILE

Hidden beneath Tbilisi's colossal Dinamo Arena lies Bassiani. Since opening in 2014 by co-founders Zviad Gelbakhiani, Tato Getia, and Naja Orashvili, it has become an internationally recognized nightclub, a political battleground, a fortress of resistance, and a symbol of Georgia's struggle between its authoritarian past and a future defined by progress.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON February 20, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Heavy Lungs - All Gas No Brakes (Alcopop!)

ALBUM REVIEW

Bristol quartet Heavy Lungs' All Gas No Brakes is the sound of a band shoving their way to the front of the UK post-punk pile with busted knuckles. It is a searing debut that drags you by the collar and spits in your face, daring you to keep up through tracks that are at once grimy and loud, unpredictable and strangely hilarious.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON February 11, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: DJ Spinn

ARTIST PROFILE

DJ Spinn, born Morris Harper in Chicago, Illinois, is a master architect of footwork—one of the most rhythmically complex and physically demanding dance styles to ever emerge from the windy city. As a DJ, producer, and co-founder of Teklife, Spinn has pushed it beyond its battle-circle origins into the global underground. More than two decades in, he’s still at the cutting edge, ensuring that the genre’s pulse resonates around the world.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON February 7, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Traxman

ARTIST PROFILE

Traxman is both an originator and a curator. He is also a producer whose hands are deep in the soil of Chicago while his mind remains locked on the sound of tomorrow. A foundational figure in the ghetto house, juke, and footwork genres, he has spent the last three decades shaping the sound of a city that thrives on reinvention by bridging Afro-diasporic rhythms, sample-based beats, and the kineticism of urban culture.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON February 7, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Istanbul Ghetto Club

ARTIST PROFILE

In a dimly lit club somewhere in Berlin, a masked figure begins to strum a bağlama. The delicate strings give way to a surge of acid-laden modular synth, and the room explodes into motion. This is Istanbul Ghetto Club (IGC)—an enigmatic collective that has redefined what it means to fuse tradition and modernity, East and West, the underground and the zeitgeist.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON January 28, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: ACTORS

ARTIST PROFILE

In the quiet hum of Vancouver, Canada, ACTORS are redefining modern post-punk by marrying its brood with the shimmer of new wave and the precision of electronic production.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON January 28, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: DJ Assault

ARTIST PROFILE

Craig De Sean Adams, better known as DJ Assault, is a godfather of ghettotech and booty house. If the words Ass-N-Titties don’t ring a bell, you’ve likely never been on a dance floor. For decades, DJ Assault has defined the high-octane genre with a blend of blistering tempos, pounding basslines, and hilariously raw lyrics into a formula designed to move bodies, no questions asked.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON January 27, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Mor Elian

ARTIST PROFILE

The electronic music journey of Mor Elian is driven by the three pillars of evolution, community, and innovation. Tel Aviv-born Elian's early years were spent sifting through crates of krautrock, jazz, prog rock, and early electronic sounds in the city's legendary record shop, The Third Ear.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON January 7, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Simo Cell

ARTIST PROFILE

Born Simon Aussel in Nantes, France, Simo Cell is a dynamic musical force who reshapes sound contours. Blending the grit of UK bass with a rich palette of influences—Parisian house, even classical—his emergence as a globally recognized producer and DJ is a story of constant reinvention.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON January 7, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Kiara Scuro

ARTIST PROFILE

Known affectionately as ZaaZaa, Rosie Cain and Nadia Anderson are the duo behind Kiara Scuro, the London-based project that’s equal parts meticulous craftsmanship and spontaneous chaos. Drawing from the chiaroscuro technique of balancing light and shadow, their name isn’t just a nod to Renaissance art—it’s a manifesto.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON January 6, 2025 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Maruja - Connla’s Well (self-released)

ALBUM REVIEW

With Connla's Well, Manchester quartet Maruja constructs an EP that traverses myth, modernity, and the innermost recesses of the human psyche. It is as though the band has distilled the chaotic energies of our era and imbued them with mythic resonance into visceral and cerebral music.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON December 10, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Curses - Another Heaven (Italians Do It Better)

ALBUM REVIEW

The third full-length album, Another Heaven, from Luca Venezia—better known as Curses—draws from the gothic romanticism of his debut Romantic Fiction (Dischi Autunno, 2018) and the gritty EBM of Next Wave Acid Punk (Dischi Autunno, 2021), threading familiar elements of post-punk, darkwave, and early EBM into something richer, cohesive, and emotionally profound.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON December 9, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Loefah

ARTIST PROFILE

Peter Livingston, better known as Loefah, grew up in the shadow of pirate radio towers and basement clubs in his native Croydon. There, the thrum of the UK garage, the chaos of the jungle, and the grit of grime converged into something uniquely British.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON December 3, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: DEADLETTER - Hysterical Strength (So Recordings)

ALBUM REVIEW

DEADLETTER’s Hysterical Strength captures the dissonance of cherry trees in full bloom against a grey, brutalist skyline. It is an album that bruises and blossoms in equal measure. The Yorkshire sextet, led by Zac Lawrence, wields music that tears through the contradictions of modern life with pointed guitars, motorik rhythms, and dusky saxophone.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON November 30, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Mother's Cake - Ultrabliss (Embassy of Music)

ARTIST PROFILE

Mother’s Cake revels between precision and abandon. With Ultrabliss, the Austrian quartet strides into territory that feels untamed. If their previous works hinted at rebellion, Ultrabliss is the revolution fully realized.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON November 25, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: DVS1

ARTIST PROFILE

Zak Khutoretsky, known as DVS1, is a cultural advocate whose career epitomizes the ethos of the underground—marathon DJ sets, an unrivaled vinyl collection, and a fierce commitment to the purity of techno culture. Through a variety of activities, the last two decades have seen him establish himself as one of electronic music's most important people.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON November 21, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: JakoJako

ARTIST PROFILE

Even with Berlin’s scene, where the boldest and wildest survive, few artists have carved a presence as compelling as Sibel Koçer—aka JakoJako. Through technical skill and an intuitive touch, JakoJako has reshaped how people experience modular synthesis.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON November 19, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Marie Pravda

ARTIST PROFILE

Marie Pravda treats her music as more than just dancefloor fodder. Czech-born and fiercely dedicated, Pravda’s (aka "truth" in Czech) psychedlia-laden techno sets that drift beyond conventional club experiences.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON November 19, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Bo Ningen - The Holy Mountain Live Score

ALBUM REVIEW

Known for their live intensity and aurel alchemy, London-based Japanese psych-rock group Bo Ningen’s The Holy Mountain Live Score provides a striking, layered reinterpretation of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain. The 23-track album is a sonic commentary on Jodorowsky's magnum opus that mirrors its relentless deconstruction of identity and spirituality, transforming its iconic visual intensity into equally visceral soundscapes.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON November 19, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: VIL

ARTIST PROFILE

Over more than a decade, VIL has shaped Portugal’s electronic identity from the dark, bass-heavy roots of dubstep to the precision of techno. On Friday, November 22nd Control Club will team up with Supersanity to welcome VIL to Bucharest.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON November 18, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Villagers - That Golden Time (Domino Records)

ALBUM REVIEW

Conor O’Brien’s latest album as Villagers, That Golden Time, feels like a soft sunrise. Where his previous full-length, Fever Dreams, was all bold colors and kaleidoscopic sonorities, his sixth pulls things back. O’Brien uses his love for the lush sparingly, each note and lyric placed with care.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON November 12, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Roman Flügel

ARTIST PROFILE

Roman Flügel has spent over three decades carving his space in electronic music by following his instincts. A celebrated DJ, producer, and co-founder of multiple influential record labels, Flügel has earned a reputation for reshaping electronic music from the inside out. His sound is as versatile as it is distinctive, evolving with—and sometimes ahead of—the genres he moves through.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON November 12, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: The KVB - Tremors (Invada Records)

ALBUM REVIEW

The ninth album from The KVB, Tremors, is a gem of “dystopian pop,” an artfully constructed landscape of looming dread and bleak allure. The album brings Southampton's Nicholas Wood and Kat Day’s project to new depths, charging its coldwave and post-punk foundations with the anxieties of the present moment—societal decay, collective unease, and the ever-relentless march of time.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON November 10, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Legowelt

ARTIST PROFILE

Legowelt is only one of the many identities Wolfers has donned over the years. Under 20+ aliases like Smackos, Gladio, Nacho Patrol, Polarius, and Franz Falckenhaus, he’s inhabited a range of musical personas. By constantly shifting his artistic identity, Wolfers has crafted an eclectic and extensive discography—a treasure trove for those seeking something familiar and refreshingly strange.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON November 7, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: La Fleur

ARTIST PROFILE

La Fleur, known offstage as Sanna Engdahl, is a Swedish DJ and producer whose style merges technical mastery with raw emotional pull. It is a style that has brought her around the world, and on November 9, she comes to Room 1 of Control.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON November 5, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: The Telescopes - Halo Moon (Tapete Records)

ALBUM REVIEW

The early records of The Telescopes were driven by an interest in noise rock, psychedelia, and shoegaze, particularly seen in Taste (1989). Following a hiatus, Lawrie returned with Third Wave (2002), an album that marked a shift into ambient and noise territory. This genre-blending approach has only deepened on Hidden Fields (2015) and Stone Tape (2017). Halo Moon feels like a culmination of this evolution.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON October 31, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: E.Lina

ARTIST PROFILE

E.Lina's story starts in Kharkiv, Ukraine, where hip-hop was her first love. She spent her teenage years immersed in freestyle dance battles, beat-making sessions, and rapping. But sometimes, life has plans that you can't see coming. On Friday, November 1, those unexpected twists will lead E.Lina, now one of the most compelling new voices in Europe’s electronic scene, to the booth at Bucharest’s Control Club, as part of ctrl x Personnal series.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON October 28, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Perc

ARTIST PROFILE

From his earliest demos to his current standing as a techno icon, Ali Wells—better known as Perc—has followed a path defined by grit, authenticity, and a constant desire to push boundaries. Hear for yourself as Perc arrives in Bucharest at Control on Saturday, November 2.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON October 28, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: DJ Nobu

ARTIST PROFILE

You can feel something unmistakably rebellious in how a DJ Nobu set unfolds—sometimes slowly, like a rolling thunderhead, and other times with a punch of industrial noise that rattles your core. But to understand Nobu, you have to go back, not to Tokyo’s sleek nightclub scene, but to Chiba, a coastal Japanese city known more for its many fish markets than for underground culture.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON October 18, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Jakuzi - Hata Payi (City Slang)

ALBUM REVIEW

Jakuzi’s Hata Payı descends into the muddy waters of human vulnerability. Released in 2019, the album’s title translates to “a part of the mistake,” suggesting imperfection is both embraced and scrutinized. Jakuzi doesn’t pretend to offer solutions. Instead, Hata Payı sinks into the uncomfortable reality of the mistakes that shape us, the regrets that bind us, and the distance that forms when relationships deteriorate.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON October 15, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U

ARTIST PROFILE

¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U is far from your average DJ. In fact, calling him a DJ at all feels like a gross understatement. Born out of the underground clubs of Osaka and now performing at some of the biggest festivals around the globe, his work is a visceral dismantling of genre boundaries that leaves audiences disoriented, exhilarated, and asking what the hell just happened.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON October 8, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: J. Bernardt - Contigo (PIAS)

ALBUM REVIEW

J. Bernardt, aka Jinte Deprez, steps away from his role as frontman of Belgian Indies' Balthazar and dives into the labyrinth of personal loss with the confessional, Contigo. The name means "with you" in Spanish and is the compass that guides through the tumultuous seas of a breakup.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON October 7, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Interview: LALALAR

INTERVIEW

From the buzzing rhythms of Istanbul, LALALAR has been reshaping the boundaries of Turkish sound for nearly a decade. Formed in 2015, the trio initially entered the music world with a dreamy, reflective, and distinctly indie-pop sound. But what began as a subtle, ethereal act has since evolved into one of Türkiye’s most electrifyingly diverse forces.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON September 30, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: KOKOKO! – BUTU (Transgressive)

ALBUM REVIEW

KOKOKO!’s sophomore album, BUTU, is a wild journey through the streets of Kinshasa, DRC. As the follow-up to their 2019 debut, Fongola, BUTU merges upcycled instruments with cutting-edge techno and synthwave, making it one of the most innovativew releases of the year.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON September 29, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Miley Serious

ARTIST PROFILE

Miley Serious, a Paris and New York-based DJ, merges punk’s spirited energy with the rhythmic complexity of electronic sounds. Raised in Toulouse, Miley first forayed into music in the hardcore punk scene, playing bass in a band before transitioning into DJing.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON September 26, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Mathew Jonson

ARTIST PROFILE

A Canadian-born artist now based in Berlin, Mathew Jonson is a study in balancing precision with unpredictability. He represents a space where the inherent chaos of improvisation meets the disciplined structure of house and techno, built via a mastery of analog hardware.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON September 24, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Dr. Rubinstein

ARTIST PROFILE

Since her move to Berlin in 2012, Dr. Rubinstein is one of the most recognizable personalities in the global electronic music scene. Without the conventional support of a label or self-promotion, her rise is wholly due to the subversive energy she brings while behind the decks.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON September 24, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Squid – O Monolith (Warp Records)

ALBUM REVIEW

In O Monolith, Squid transcends the avant-garde claustrophobia of their critically acclaimed debut, 2021’s Bright Green Field, with the 2023-released sophomore album offering something more contemplative and unpredictable.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON September 23, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: The Underground Youth – Nostalgia’s Glass (Fuzz Club)

ALBUM REVIEW

The eleventh studio album from The Underground Youth, Nostalgia’s Glass, invites listeners to peer through the prism of nostalgia, where the past scintillates with deceptive allure.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON June 13, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Ben Sims

ARTIST PROFILE

Transitioning from DJing to production, Sims began releasing music that mimicked his sets’ raw energy. Tracks such as Manipulated and Way Back Then combined thick basslines with intricate rhythms. His productions quickly garnered attention and resulted in a discography as extensive as anyone’s in electronic music.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON June 4, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

5 Questions For: Loxy

FIVE QUESTIONS

Loxy emerged in the early 1990s through his involvement with London’s pirate radio stations like Eruption FM and Underground FM. He quickly became a mainstay at pivotal London raves such as Desire and Thunder & Joy, where he was celebrated for his sets that featured darker, heavier dubplates.

WRITTEN BY CONTROL CLUB May 31, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

ARTIST PROFILE: ZEBRA KATZ

ARTIST PROFILE

Zebra Katz, the genre-defying alter ego of Ojay Morgan, has carved a path in the music industry with his audacious style and provocative sound. Despite his growing success, Zebra Katz remains committed to his independent roots. Operating under his own label, ZFK Records, he maintains complete creative control over his work. This work, marked by its doomed future and left-of-center nature, continues pushing the boundaries of what art and music can be.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON May 30, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Puma Blue – Holy Waters (Blue Flowers)

ALBUM REVIEW

Strolling through the twilight of an abandoned mega city, where the air vibrates with the hushed, anticipatory white noise of liminal space, you may find yourself contemplating the ebb and flow of life and death. In this moment, Holy Waters emerges as a singular soundtrack.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON May 24, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Julia Govor

ARTIST PROFILE

The artistic narrative of Julia Govor, a revered figure within the global underground techno scene, is one of relentless ambition. Born in Abkhazia, Georgia’s tumultuous yet culturally rich backdrop, Govor’s initial foray into music was shaped by a stint singing in a band.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON May 13, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Dombrance

ARTIST PROFILE

Dombrance, born Bertrand Lacombe, has built a formidable bridge between electronic music and the pulsating dynamics of political history. His sound—a confluence of synth-pop, electro-funk, and disco—does more than make people move; it makes them think, reflect, and occasionally, revolt. I

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON May 8, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Whispering Sons – The Great Calm ([PIAS] Recordings)

ALBUM REVIEW

There is a sense of shifting landscapes in The Great Calm, the latest album from the post-punk outfit Whispering Sons. Since their inception, the Belgian quintet have crafted a mélange of darkness and distance that echoes through the abandoned hallways of post-punk’s vast castle. Yet, in this, their third full-length, a discernible pivot suggests a band grappling with their past while courting the uncertain future.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON May 8, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

5 Questions For: Strawberry Guy

FIVE QUESTIONS

Alex Stephens, also known as Strawberry Guy, initially made his mark as a keyboardist in a band . However, he soon felt the need to explore his own musical path, leading him to embark on a solo career in Liverpool. His 2019 debut EP, Taking My Time to Be, featuring the viral hit Mrs Magic, amassed a staggering 350 million Spotify streams, largely thanks to its immense popularity on TikTok.

WRITTEN BY CONTROL CLUB May 8, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

5 Questions For: Thomas Simon

FIVE QUESTIONS

New York City based artist Thomas Simon does a lot of film work, so it’s no surprise that his shows have an enveloping, cinematic quality…Simon pulls you in with a swirling vortex of a million guitar, keyboard and percussion textures.

WRITTEN BY CONTROL CLUB April 27, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Σtella – Up and Away (Sub Pop)

ALBUM REVIEW

Σtella‘s Up and Away, her debut with the esteemed Seattle imprint Sub Pop Records (Nirvana, Mudhoney, Sleater-Kinney), marks a turn in her artistic trajectory, deepening her engagement with her Greek roots while expanding her palette with broader, more eclectic musical influences, including threads of mid-century Americana and candid lyrical introspection.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON April 16, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Ozric Tentacles – Lotus Unfolding (Kscope Records)

ARTIST PROFILE

Marking their 40th anniversary, Britain’s pioneering festival band Ozric Tentacles returned in 2023 with Lotus Unfolding, a full-throttled encapsulation of their decades-long interstellar journey through space rock. This album isn’t just a career milestone—it is a highlight of their discography, which has evolved from the cassette-only release of Erpsongsin 1985 through the heights of Strangeitudeand Jurassic Shift and continues from the revitalized energy of 2020’s Space for the Earth.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON April 12, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys – Heaving (Unique Records)

ALBUM REVIEW

In the ever-so-monochrome palette of contemporary music, where echoes often drown originality, Lucy Kruger & The Losy Boys’ 2023 album, Heaving, is able to cast shadows and illumination in equal measure. This audacious departure from the band’s acclaimed, albeit more traditional, pen-and-paper songwriting style of its Tapes trilogy, unravels as introspection under the influence of existential dread under a gothic, moonlit sky.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON April 2, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Jadu Heart – Derealised (VLF Records)

ALBUM REVIEW

Derealised from Jadu Heart unfurls like a lucid dream, tailored for the contemplative soul navigating the early 2020s’ emotional labyrinth. This album is a Nordstar for the introspective wanderer, a soul-stirring third act from the London-based dream pop/shoegaze duo Diva-Sachy Jeffrey and Alex Headford, a duo known for their mask-donning enigmatic presence and genre-blending soundscapes.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON April 1, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Album Review: Pip Blom – Bobbie (Heavenly Recordings)

ALBUM REVIEW

With their third studio album, Bobbie, Amsterdam-based indie rock band Pip Blom embarks on a synth-pop odyssey, diverging from the guitar-driven roots of previous offerings—the fuzzy riffs of Welcome Break (2021) and the easy charm of Boat(2019). Distinguished by their jangly pop hooks and earnest lyrical delivery, the quartet has steadily risen through the ranks of the indie scene, with Bobbie signifying an adventurous leap into electronic pop yet still underscored by an inherent indie rock ethos.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON March 30, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

5 Questions For: Ada Oda

FIVE QUESTIONS

Ada Oda, a fixture within the Brussels music scene, embodies the synthesis of raw post-punk energy and the melodious essence characteristic of Italian variety music. This eclectic band, initiated in 2020 by César Laloux—a figure known for his tenure with The Tellers, BRNS, and Italian Boyfriend—has crafted a refreshingly novel and deeply nostalgic sound.

WRITTEN BY CONTROL CLUB March 30, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

5 Questions For: Meule

FIVE QUESTIONS

Comprising Valentin Pedler, Dorris Biayenda, and Léo Kapes, France’s Meule brings a unique configuration to the stage: a phalanx of modular synths, dual drum kits harmonizing around a singular kick-drum, and a guitar that acts as a conduit for their sprawling sonic landscapes.

WRITTEN BY CONTROL CLUB March 30, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

5 Questions For: PLANT

FIVE QUESTIONS

Emerging onto the Bucharest music scene in 2021, the trio PLANT, sometimes stylized as plantplantplant, has quickly made a mark within the local underground community. Emerging onto the Bucharest music scene in 2021, the trio PLANT, sometimes stylized as plantplantplant, has quickly made a mark within the local underground community.

WRITTEN BY CONTROL CLUB March 29, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

5 Questions For: Sugar For the Pill

FIVE QUESTIONS

In the heart of Greece’s musical renaissance, amidst the shadowy lanes of Athens, emerges Sugar for the Pill—a band that masterfully intertwines the raw essence of post-punk with the ethereal layers of shoegaze. Formed in March 2020, the ensemble quickly established itself with a sound that reverberates with the overdriven angst of guitars and the delicate, almost celestial cadence of vocals, presenting a modern homage to the iconic sounds of the ’90s.

WRITTEN BY CONTROL CLUB March 27, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

5 Questions For: Kadjavsi

FIVE QUESTIONS

Emerging from the ambient shadows into the bright lights of the alternative pop-rock stage, Kadjavsi, the brainchild of Nikita Dembinski, has swiftly evolved from a solo endeavor into a dynamic ensemble that is stirring the Bucharest music scene. Since its inception in 2017, Kadjavsi has been a melting pot of eclectic sounds, seamlessly blending ambient, electronic, and jazz influences under the banner of modern pop, with a distinct nod to the emotional intricacies of love, deceit, and youthful turbulence.

WRITTEN BY CONTROL CLUB March 27, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

5 Questions For: Tasha Safari

FIVE QUESTIONS

Tasha Safari, originally from Ganja, Azerbaijan, has built a career as a techno DJ and producer in Berlin, drawing on her background in a culture that blends Eastern and Western musical influences. From the traditional melodies of Azerbaijani folk music to the experimental edges of psychedelic rock and post-punk, her broad base of influences led to a style incorporating various techno subgenres.

WRITTEN BY CONTROL CLUB March 15, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: REKA

ARTIST PROFILE

Few electronic music artists blend scientific inquiry’s rigor with sound’s expressive capacity quite like REKA. Characterized by an exploration stretching from techno’s dystopian depths to its most illuminating peaks, REKA’s journey represents intellectual curiosity, auditory artistry, and a conscious awareness of what is important outside the industry.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON March 6, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

5 Questions For: Ioana Iorgu

FIVE QUESTIONS

A polymath hailing from the eclectic streets of Groningen, The Netherlands, Ioana Iorgu is a self-taught guitar, bass, and drums maestro. Her musical journey, originating from the stages of Malaysia, has traversed a space from school band performances to the architecture of her distinctive current soundscapes —immersive experiences that envelop listeners in an atmosphere where dissonance meets lyricism.

WRITTEN BY CONTROL CLUB February 27, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Axel Boman

ARTIST PROFILE

Stockholm’s Axel Boman pirouettes on the edges of the musical multiverse with an eclectic flair that’s deliberately off-kilter. Whether through his enigmatic DJ sets, vibrant productions, or the avant-garde label he co-pilots with Kornél Kóvacs and Petter Nordkvist, Boman has painted his career with broad strokes, dabbling in the soulful echos of Americana and threading through the pulsating thump of European House.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON February 26, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Artist Profile: Arnaud Rebotini

ARTIST PROFILE

Arnaud Rebotini embodies the versatility and depth that have come to define the vast spectrum of French electronic music. His transition to electronic music was marked by the release of Organique(Artefact, 2000) under the alias Zend Avesta. This groundbreaking album melded everything from pop to jazz, using an eclectic mix of analog synthesizers, wind instruments, strings, and electric guitar, showcasing Rebotini’s early passion for synthesizer-based music.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON February 20, 2024 ADD TO READING LIST

Interview: Timo Maas

INTERVIEW

Timo Maas has more than earned his title as a dance music legend. But he’d rather you forget that and connect with who he is right here, right now. And that’s someone who never repeats the same trick, someone never happy to rest on his reputation or copy his early career success. He is really only happy when he’s breaking his own rules, subverting expectations and exploring new musical ground.

WRITTEN BY STEVE RICKINSON November 18, 2023 ADD TO READING LIST