Dekmantel Podcast 154A - Ben UFO

Christmas is here! We hope you have a lovely one and, to help make it a musically memorable time, we’re playing Santa and will be delivering a couple of extra special mixes today and next week. Ben UFO is someone very close to everything we do here at Dekmantel. His taste is broad and well informed, and his rare skill in the DJ booth is matched only by his endless quest for exciting new sounds to play. In that regard he embodies our outlook perfectly: he is someone who unearths a previously unknown gem as often as he breaks a red hot new record. His sets have been a key feature of Dekmantel parties around the world and, for us, he is one of the very best DJs out there. In basic terms, this is a deep mid-tempo house and techno mix. But the reality is that it unfolds with such an intriguing narrative that it feels like so much more. The mixing is so smooth you barely notice where one track ends and another starts. Instead, without realising, you find the atmosphere constantly changes, taking you from sci-fi machine grooves to muggy bumping techno, from celestial and hallucanogenic synth lines to creepy meandering riffs that encourage you to follow them into the unknown. It’s a mix that places you at the heart of a smoky dance floor, but is one that offers as much of a cerebral thrill as a visceral one. What’s more, it somehow feels like only half of the story.