In 2021 6AM brought you a list of LGBTQI artists that helped establish a foundation for modern electronic dance music (house, techno and beyond) or are setting the current tone for the future of electronic music. This year 6AM brings you a curated playlist of the same artists’ to celebrate Pride month. This list features hot tracks from artists such as Frankie Knuckles, Honey Dijon, Paula Temple, Danny Tenaglia and more!
This edition of the 6AM Guest Mix features Panamanian native, Pittsburgh-based Dj, and Music Curator Jen Nuñez. Jen has a broad palette that gives an immediate and profound insight into a music-lover that can effortlessly pick sounds across genres and set the mood for listening deeply with gratitude.
This weeks Guest Mix features DJ, producer, and label owner DSTM, who said he tried being normal once, and it was the worst two minutes of his life. Read more
Congrats on your new music! It was worth spending some time in the studio but now that you have a final product in hand, itâs time to make this release stand out of the crowd. Planning a release and deciding which type of activities to handle depends on the style of music and each artist has her or his own approach. However, if you are curious to have an overview of some key activities to take into account, 6AM has got you covered.
Born in Bogota, Colombia and raised in Catalonia, Leduq aka A Rebel Bunnie is a performer, dj, producer. Co-creator of the pandemic trans rave “tRAVEsti” (travesti meaning drag in spanish), their dj sets are hyper energetic performances reclaiming the rave as a political space of queer freedom of expression, for both artist and audience.
Amsterdam-based DJ and producer Keith Carnal is a tastemaker in todayâs world of techno. His own style of techno has a strong emphasis on melodies, groove, and percussive elements. The artist returns to BPitch with a rousing excursion into the visceral side of techno. Stocked with deadly drum arrangements, thumping kicks and imposing bass lines, Keith Carnalâs armory is well equipped to cause maximum impact on the dance floor.
“Ape Shit Crazy” takes listeners straight into the depths of Keith Carnalâs wild mind. It’s a bombastic cut that utilizes a pitched down spoken word vocal. The storyteller takes its listeners into the world of after party excess and “ape shit craziness” as the beats pump relentlessly. Itâs debauched, heavy and utterly alluring.
A resurgence of ancient styles are influencing today’s experimental electronic music. Artists are revisiting folk traditions from around the world to create tracks that makes sense of the present.
Mexican-American musician Debit, aka Delia Beatriz, utilized pipes and flutes to create her new album The Long Count. Beatriz created, with the help of machine learning, digital instruments modeled after ancient Mayan wind instruments held in the collection of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. The albumâs title references the Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar, an ancient cyclical calendar that captures the universe’s creation and destruction.
Debitâs otherworldly and at some points unnerving album shows that folk music isnât just a genre. Folk music can be means of making sense of the world and connecting with others, both in celebration and in mourning. Philip Sherburne writes eloquently, “harnessing unfamiliar instruments to ask questions about tradition, heritage, and post-colonial forgetting, her music suggests that certain sounds may unlock emotions we canât readily decipher, placing us in a lineage far vaster than we might have imagined.”
Polish composer Wojciech Rusinâs Syphon was also created using digitally processed instruments. Rusin used digitally processed reeds, 3D printed instruments, and a cappella singing for “what he describes as a ‘speculative’ approach to medieval and renaissance traditions, performed in an imagined future in which the past is recalled only in fragments.”Â
Rather than being used as means to understand the world, folk music is being captured in today’s electronic music as a feeling. Polish composer Piotr Kurekâs new album World Speaks is inspired by the 19th century painter Thomas Cole. Just as Cole’s landscapes were riddled with classical and Biblical symbolism, Kurek layers reeds, organ, voice, and samples thereof into “surreal, moirĂ©-like patterns.”Â
The melancholic composition Community of Grieving by Polish sound artist Zosia HoĆubowska and Stockholm composer Julia Giertz also invoke ancient feeling. “Harrowing vocal harmonies” and “otherworldly ululations dissolve into thick sheets of digitally treated drones, techno rhythms, and ASMR-inspired breathing.” The artists wrote the 24-minute piece for the the online-only 2020 edition of Krakowâs Unsound Festival in response to the newfound fear and confusion around the world due to COVID-19. The piece attempts to reconcile mourning rituals with the comfort that is found in community.Â
Anfisa Letyago has positioned herself as one of the most influential DJâs / Producers within the dance music industry. After moving from Siberia to Naples at the age of 18, she has since released her productions on a list of high calibre labels including Drumcode, Kompakt and Rekids. Anfisa decided to challenge herself artistically at the beginning of 2021, with the announcement of her new label N:S:DA, a name taken from âNisidaâ – the Neapolitan island inaccessible to man. In January she launched the label with her debut EP Listen, followed up in April with âNISIDAâ.
Manchester DJ and producer Mason Maynard has built himself an exceptional reputation since first bursting onto the scene in 2017. Mason Maynard has releases on Hot Creations, Relief and Sola cementing his standing as one of the sceneâs brightest young prospects. His performances at clubbing and festival institutions such as Privilege (Ibiza), Parklife (Manchester), Hideout (Croatia) and Space (Miami) have brought his sound to global audiences. In recent times, his “Lookinâ At Me” release saw him work alongside USA heavyweight leaders Insomniac, setting the tone for a new musical direction, with tastes of rhythmic Detroit style electro further establishing his ever-growing musical palette. Mason talks to 6AM about his newest EP with Hot Creations and about his artist project as a whole.
RE/FORM Festival has announced its Phase 1 lineup for Spring 2022 on April 2nd, expanding to 5 rooms of Techno, House and Experimental.
