- An Aarhus state of the union (two, actually) from Erika de Casier's producer of choice.
- For a period in the mid-2010s, some of the most exciting dance music in the world was coming out of Aarhus, a small coastal city in the middle of Denmark. Initially released collectively under the Regelbau moniker, a party-turned-label run by C.K., DJ Sports and Central, the trio quickly shifted their attention to their Help label and their Safe Distribution network. There they fused the color of vintage New York house, the hazy breakbeats of Vancouver and hints of UK garage or drum & bass, all made with Europe's best sound systems in mind. It's like that old George Clinton and Kraftwerk joke—only it's Mood II Swing, Jack J, EL-B and SW. trapped in an elevator with nothing but a sequencer to communicate with.
Nearly a decade on from the early releases, it's still hard to quantify the Aarhus sound. Just take a look at what Natal Zaks, AKA Central, has been up to for the past three years. He's co-produced Erika de Casier's Sensational—one of the best pop albums of the decade—put out an LP of strange indie ballads and released a string of club-friendly 12-inches that run the gamut from skeletal techno to velvety house. And if that doesn't make you feel lazy (did I mention he opened a club?), he just dropped two double-packs of vintage Aarhus house. For a producer never content with one sound, Softness and Up & Down are refreshingly familiar, with his staple late night grooves only briefly interrupted by the occasional ambient swell.
Both albums start out with Central in club mode. On "Anix, the kicks are just ever-so-slightly blown out, but then Zaks introduces a watery sounding synth. The melody however, is cut into quarters, so we only get a full glimpse of it every four bars. "Moulder" is a bit faster at 130 BPM but still understated, as Zaks adds more hidden nuggets—a broken chord there, some reverb, what might be birdsong. It's these little embellishments that call your attention inwards across the four discs: the croaking-frog-like synth on "Ain't OK," the UK garage swing of "With Me," the rapidfire drum fills on "Motta" or the stand-out lead line and French touch chords on "Leggin."
He does trot out a few new ideas across these eight sides of wax. "Orla" is like listening to a Barker track pitched down on crackly headphones—there's a breathtaking arpeggio that keeps trying to break itself out of the muffled drum loop holding it to the ground. "Lost Touch" is primordial dub techno, with piano chords and a wavering synth chiseled out from different angles across the track.
Both Softness and Up & Down are understated and functional. On each, there's only one track without a 4/4 rhythm, while the skittering IDM melodies and broken rhythm of "Memory Loop" and "Collect" are closer to his Palato or Mitro aliases. But none of the tracks on either record feels like tools. Instead, this is contemporary deep house at its most beautiful. I can personally confirm that these records will add an elegant—and bassy—heft to your next dinner party. It's for this reason, and the sheer amount of material he's released in a month, that these two LPs remind me of the artist formerly known as Traumprinz. Like his mysterious German contemporary, listening to Zaks' music is like stumbling on a secret that is almost too precious to share.
TracklistSoftness
A1 Moulder
A2 Hidden Apex
B1 Ain't OK
B2 Memory Loop
C1 Berries
C2 With Me
D1 Orla
D2 So Kind
Up & Down
A1 Anix
A2 Dozi
B1 Motta
B2 Collect
C1 Absent
C2 Kkmo
D1 Leggin
D2 Myt