Selections: Doc Sleep

Doc Sleep is a DJ, producer and label boss based in Berlin. One of the brains behind the city’s Room 4 Resistance party and co-founder of Jacktone Records (home to Hugo Paris, gayphextwin and Roche among others), her production output has mainly revolved around heady techno cuts — check out ‘MJF’ for Kontrapunkt, her ‘Acid Rub’ of Stereogamous’ ‘Sweat’, and ‘Crème Fraîche’ for Dark Entries (a staple of San Francisco, the city where she first cut her teeth as a DJ). 

She has made excursions away from the dancefloor too, and it’s there we find her focused on her new album ‘Birds (in my mind anyway)’ for Tartelet Archives. Lead single ‘Tomorrow is Beautiful!’ with Glenn Astro is a swirling dream of soft metallic tones and lush atmospherics. ‘C&L at the Sea’ is submerged breakbeat gold, while tracks like ‘Fog vs Moon’ and ‘Secret Spells’ appear like half-caught glimpses of IDM records played in reverse — at once alien yet strangely familiar.

Even more obviously moody moments — the industrial thud of ‘Flooding Meadow’, the paranoid urgency of ‘Wiped Memory’ — reflect a complex range of emotions, making the most of the space afforded by the album format. It’s a gripping ride that reveals new secrets with each play. Doc Sleep’s Selections are equally multifarious, spanning gorgeous ambient sonics to club thumpers. Dive in below. 

“Half a second in, you know this is gonna be special. At the jump, we’re greeted with melody, analogue drumming, and then bursts of BASSLINE. We haven’t even gotten to the Rhodes yet! Each instrument has time to shine and then they all rip it together in a loosey-goosey tango.”

“Fashion Flesh makes far-out art. He builds his own equipment, and often runs sounds through a cassette deck — no two takes are the same. Daphne Oram would dig it. ‘Kisses’ is a sonically dense sidewinder, we’ve got some cool squelching, layers of vocal work, distorted percussion, and an organ that comes across like a theremin. At the 01:21 mark he abruptly stops the recording for a few seconds. Don’t worry, it comes back. FF can start and stop time at will.”

“This is gorgeous meditative music for late-night warehouses and it’s just got everything I love about dance music — so emotive! Hypnotic drumming, a warm jazzy riff and the perfect amount of hisssssss. Head down, eyes closed, WORMHOLE.”

“junenit is the IDM GOAT for a lot of my friends. It’s always hard to pick a single track because her releases are best experienced whole in my honest opinion, but let’s do this. ‘arest b’ is a nine-minute overnight roadtrip through murky moonlight and fog, featuring some signature skittering rhythms and morphing underwater melodies that come up for air at just the right times. I don’t know if this is for the floor or headphones — BOTH.”

“rRoxymore delivered a gorgeous present for us all to unwrap with this record. She went longform! Always keeping us on our toes. ‘Sun in C’ takes us to hypnotic places, then seamlessly moves into jazzy cathartic territory halfway through this nine-minute wind. The track could go on forever and I’d be happy. In fact, I would like to live in it — how much is the rent?”

“Reflective Records returns (yay) with this impeccably produced EP. I play every track — early and often — which does not happen much with modern dance 12s, to be honest. This isn’t a collection of randoms, it’s an album journey lovingly packed into an EP. ‘February’ is suffused with warm sunshine and will be there to give you a hug during your comedown.”

“Gag Reflex flips this cool M&M abstract number into a ritualistic percussive viber. The drums and texture dancing around the breaks is clutch, we’ve also got pads, bubbling bloops and so much texture going on, I want to reach out and touch it.”

“A hot tip from Kiernan Laveaux, another fab release by gear wizard, Liquid Asset. I love the vocal samples added by Eboys, it’s giving early 2000s Rabbit In The Moon vibes. If you close your eyes, click your heels, you’re raving in a Minnesota cornfield.”

“Yet another deep dancefloor hit by one of the best to ever do it. Those pads! Impeccable arrangement — perfect track.”

“Driving Deena rhythms, gorgeous weirdo Matias melodies, non- standard arrangement — I hope these two make more!”