After a good 2017 in electronic music, the trend continued in 2018 with more electro, broken beat, new beat, industrial and EBM, with new artists jumping on this train, so I’m curious where this will go in 2019.
On the local scene, in Romania, things are evolving in a slightly slower pace, but still in a good direction.
After releasing Dollkraut’s second album one year ago, Dischi Autunno presents now these three superlative remixes. Subversive Berlin duo OTTO take the lead with a warm, Arabic twist on the album opener ‘Bonnie Says’ by lifting the groove with a little organ-squeezing spring while maintain its faraway haze and mystique. Accurately hyped Romanian-also-in-Berlin Borusiade follows with an overwhelming floor-ready update on ‘Have I Told You’. Already a familiar face with the label, she weaves a chasm-like new-wave narrative that sucks you deep into the mix and galvanises the pundit attention she’s getting right now. Finally Mannequin Records founder Alessandro Adriani joins the party with a tunnelling twist on the somnambulant aesthetic of ‘Valium’. Flipping the dreams for a much darker 3am reality, it will leave your dancefloor pining for more.
Lena Willikens is the kind of artist who’s only capable of following one path – her own. In many ways, she’s the archetypal selector, an unpredictable DJ who often eschews all notions of genre in favor of what she describes as “different temperatures, different time zones, different moods and a healthy portion of chaos.” Although her methods have certainly proven effective on the dancefloor, Willikens also refuses to be bound by its traditional limitations.
Cómeme starts 2018 by proving again to be a safe haven and a sanctuary for sensitive plants and unique characters devoted to music – just like Miruna Boruzescu aka Borusiade – from Bucharest. This is the first album of Borusiade, in which she takes her music to a new level, finding her very own expression, that is making us first shiver then sweat, then chill and finally melt. Her visions unfold through 8 pieces of music that follow a dreamlike narrative of associations and transformations. Somber synthetic atmospheres, sparse and spatial rhythmical arrangements, strangely seductive melodies and lysergic ally pulsating bass lines lead us away from a dystopian present towards a sensorial experience we long to repeat as soon as it’s over. ‘A Body’ is a deeply poetic work in which again and again you will hear Borusiade’s voice, sometimes dissolving and recreating meanings in mantra-like repetitions, sometimes layering itself to pagan choirs of smooth ecstasy. Then again you will also hear that voice close to you, singing, sharing an experience or a thought. It is always soft, effortless and unpretentious, but always strong, clear and precise, like the voice that speaks to you in an altered state of consciousness. It seems to come from the same person that is holding your hand, when everything else seems to fade into uncertainty while wandering through strange times and places.
2017 proved to be a good year for the electronic music world, from my point of view. With the revival of the old school electro, with acid, industrial and afrobeat still hot and EBM growing stronger, 2017 was a very interesting year music-wise.
Regarding the Romanian producers, things are also moving in a good direction. There are no new faces to the game, but the ones already there are leaving their mark and their music heard more and more.
Silent is the new single by Miruna Boruzescu aka Borusiade from Bucharest. Silent is a suffocated cry. Silent as in silence that is hard to take. Sitting and waiting in silence, while exploding on the inside. Silent as in silence before the storm. An intense track that recalls industrial spaces, hedonism, sweat, sex and disconnection from the outside world. The rattling sound of ghost train passing by, or big reverberated factory machines unleashed. Body music 2017. The B side features a remix by the project Khidja , also hailing from Bucharest, and is driven by the track’s bass synth, a neurotic now school electro rapture take on the original.
Cititrax present a split EP by two massive talents, Borusiade and The Sixteen Steps. Borusiade, originally from Bucharest, Romania began as a DJ in the early 2000s and then started producing music in 2005. With a background in classical music, she combined her love of raw electronics, obscure themes and melodic lines to create her own signature sound. She has released on the Cómeme label as well as Corresepondent. Infatuation and Confutation are dark, moody and intense tracks that catch you upon first listen. The flip side of the Promises and Infatuation EP features The Sixteen Steps, the brainchild of George Lanham who cut his musical teeth DJing and running events in the south of England. We have been listening to many of his tracks endlessly for a while now. Signals From The South and Promises On The Run are both immaculately produced, hypnotic, dance floor killers. They are sparse ebm meets smoky warehouse techno, and offer a wonderful contrast to Borusiade’s layered emotive tracks that reminisce of an East Village club in the 1980s. Themes of infatuation, appearances, and anonymity appear throughout this EP from the music itself right through to the cover art.
P-Balans is activating again all its current accomplices in order to reinforce the heretic electronic scene of Bucharest. A first collaboration of Khidja, masters of psychedelic depths, and Delusion Men (comprised of Holy Fix and Utopus), the reliable founding persons of Future Nuggets. All together delivering a smash techno-punk EP uplifted by an enchanting slowburner remix signed by Borusiade.
In the last years more and more Romanian artists are making their voice heard across the electronic music palette.
Romania is well known for the minimal/micro-house/Romanian-techno and tech-house music, but now we have artist that experiment and dive into other sounds, the kind of sounds we love at the Hipodrome of Music.
The Hipodrome Of Music 