Friday, August 19, 2011

Timeless By Lawrence


01. Lawrence - Floating
02. Melchior Productions - Zukunft in Englisch
03. Chez Damier, Ron Trent, Stacy Pullen - Forever Monna
04. Soul Capsule - Overcome
05. Smallpeople & Rau - Life Aquatic
06. Schatrax - Overcome
07. RVDS - Another Track
08. Morphosis - Silent Screamer
09. Aril Brikha - On & On
10. Delano Smith - My Life
11. Baby Ford & The Ifach Collective - Ambo
12. Isolée - Thirteen Times An Hour
13. Pigon - Koto
14. Mike Dehnert - Beatmatching
15. Robert Hood - The Realm
16. Roman Flügel - Brian Le Bon
17. Plaid - OI

Being Germany's Gateway to the World, the port city Hamburg always had a special affinity to America. So, it's not surprising that Peter M. Kersten aka Lawrence has a deep musical and spiritual relation to the Detroit Techno aesthetics for more than ten years now. His label Dial Rec, which he runs together with Carsten Jost, stands more than almost any other European address for the value-conscious cultivation of high-quality melancholy Techno. After seven albums under his producer aliases Lawrence and Sten, Kersten now continues the perfection of his sound vision also as a DJ in a congenial way.

"Timeless" is far away from the dictate of the dogmatic obligation to currentness that DJs have to face nowadays, but celebrates electronic dance music as a timeless sensual component. With instinctive certainty, Kersten covers 16 years of living club history without ever losing the sight of the acoustic 'here and now', or even becoming the slightest bit anachronistically nostalgic. Instead, under his sensitive hands, milestones of minimalized Deep House like "Forever Monna" by Chez Damier, Ron Trent and Stacey Pullen (1995) or the 1999 club hit "Overcome" by Thomas Melchior/Baby Ford come together with contemporary and intensive hommages to Detroit Techno like Smallpeople & Rau's "Life Aquatic", Delano Smith's "My Life" or Pigon's fantastic Dub Tech romance "Beatmatching" from the 10-Years-Anniversary compilation of Dial Rec in a wonderful way.

Besides that, the mix features such well-known names like Aril Brikha, Isolée, the Ifach Collective and Robert Hood, before Roman Flügel sets a wistful final chord with "Brian Le Bon", a track based on Duran Duran's masterpiece "Save A Prayer", and Plaid finishes the mix with the crystalline "OI" from their classic album "Not For Threes" (Warp). Lawrence's mix literally breathes the serenity of a light-flooded Sunday morning somewhere between a modernist city and a wood glade, and thus gives his global artistic approach a suitable dimension.

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