- The Hessle Audio cofounder gets into party mode.
- In the past few years, the Hessle Audio cofounder Pangaea has focused on studio productions, not DJ mixes. His contribution to Dimensions Festival's podcast series is his first recorded set to surface since 2017, when he helmed a Solid Steel radio show of minimalist techno that led into breakier territory. This Dimensions session is a fun hour of mostly new releases that contains more house jams than previous Pangaea mixes. It's his boat party vibe.
The set seesaws between looser, housier crowd-pleasers and techno or wave-indebted tracks. Rhythm Overload's 1993 track "Techno Inferno" is a strong opener—its short ambient intro creates a moment of tension before it dives into an all-out, bouncing-off-the-walls shuffle and acid-bass belches. It sets the tone for the first segment's bright-eyed energy through tracks like Truncate's "Missing," which winds nimbly through a sparkling sequence of tracks towards a sloshy, hands-in-the-air house cut from Dan Marsh titled "Sand Dune."
That dynamic between the raucous and the restrained makes the payoff bigger for tracks like Private Press's "The Struggle." It rises out of Bezier's hypnotic, arpeggiated new release for HNY TRX, whose spiralling melody and straight drum programming is similar to "Missing." Even some of the more technoid selections here feel sweaty. For instance, BPMF's "Dark Room" has a metallic aftertaste, but its percussion is so energetic that it feels visceral and almost unmanageable. Innershades' "Ocular Design" has machine-music aesthetics but a playful spirit.
Dimensions Mix 169 is a pretty diverse and ecstatic selection compared to a set like his 2014 fabric mix, which presented a concise vision of introspective, dramatic breakbeats with crunchy outsider techno. The Dimensions set covers jangly old-school rave like Orlando Voorn's 1992 cut "The Light," loungey house moods from Hamburg's Lehult stable, slightly bonkers techno like BPMF's "Dark Room" and sleazy electro from The Exaltics and Egyptian Lover. It's harder to pinpoint from this set exactly what Pangaea is all about as a DJ, but it also shows a more enthusiastic side to his sound.
Tracklist01. Rhythm Overload - Techno Inferno
02. Truncate - Missing
03. Stefan Vincent - Exigent Mistress
04. Roberto & Jamie Anderson - Bare Essentials feat. Robert Owens (Warehouse Mix)
05. Liem & Eddie Ness - STgsFF
06. Dan Marsh - Sand Dune
07. Dungeon Acid - 7Y02
08. Ambien Baby - El Kesh
09. The Exatlics - I Want You feat. Egyptian Lover
10. BPMF - Dark Room
11. Bezier - 林百貨
12. Private Press - The Struggle
13. Innershades - Ocular Design
14. Eric Cloutier - Eleutheromania
15. Limited Edition - The Light
16. Gunnar Haslam - Scale No Flam
17. Leif - Rosa