Advertisement
"DC10" has now passed from a noun into an adjective. No longer just the name of a place, it operates as an easily understood descriptive for a whole sound and lifestyle. And who better to provide a snapshot of the red-bellied club's trademark musical vibe than DC10 regular Matthias Tanzmann, with his latest LP, Restless?
Other DJs who patrol the gravel alleyway behind the terrace bar which serves as an unofficial backstage may offer greater flights of fancy, or noisier moments of glory, but Restless (produced and then mixed by Tanzmann) offers an exposition of what its like to be dancing in front of that bar around, say 6PM, which is hard to argue with.
On one hand, Restless makes you realise just how simple the formula is: clicky percussion, panned effects, mumbling basslines, an occasional funky blast to leaven the loaf. It isn't rocket science, yet in Tanzmann's expert hands the constituent parts gel together to achieve lift-off. There's the languid bump-n-drive of Album01 and the sexy machine music of Keep On. The crisp, minimal "pocka-pocka-pocka" beats of Redirected (accented with handclaps) and Hotel Sapporo that'll keep that sea of heads beneath the booth bobbing obediently.
What Tanzmann gets absolutely right, throughout (and this can only be a tribute to his decade-plus DJing experience) is the pacing. He obviously recognises that ten minutes can fly by in DC10 in the blink of a wildly rolling eye but will feel like eternity waiting for the beat to drop into your headphones, so he keeps the music moving. Most of the tracks are between six and eight minutes but to his immense credit you never feel yourself clockwatching. The music is dense enough, woven with snippets of vocals (as on Rugby) or shot through with stabbing rave synths (Crazy Circus), that you never find yourself thinking, "next please." More please, possibly, but never "next."
Restless also neatly mirrors the DC10 quicksand effect. That is, you think - I'll just pop in for a little dance - and the next thing you know its an indefinite amount of time later, your bloodstream now contains more vodka than a Smirnoff distillery and you can't quite remember what you were doing there in the first place. The thing with DC10 is by the time that's happened you stand almost no chance of remembering what the hell the DJ was playing. For all of us who danced our way through last summer in a blur, this album is our opportunity to remind ourselves what we were missing.
Like this? Try: Various Artists -- DC10 Ibiza Monday Morning Session (Four:Twenty)
![]() |
![]() |