Apparat - DJ-Kicks

Sasha Ring’s work under his Apparat moniker has always been evolving; over three albums on the Shitkatapult label and the collaborative full lengths with Ellen Allien and Modeselektor as Moderat on Bpitch Control, he’s surprised a lot of listeners with his output. Confined to little or no definitive style his music has always been in a constant state of metamorphosis, simultaneously breaching new waters and staying true to his unique spirit of musical openness and his obvious passion for sound design. Aptly joking that his DJ KiCKs selection reflects his style to “not really have a style” it’s evident that Ring is more than aware that his contribution to the series might look ‘intelligent’ on paper – with the tracklist aligning variant artists like Oval, Autechre, Ripperton and Thom Yorke – but given his recent tour at the start of the year, it’s simply a representation of where he’s at in terms of modern music. “I didn’t want to make this kind of ‘smart’ mix, that’s eclectic and sounds like it’s done ‘on purpose;’ but I need to do different things to keep myself motivated,” Ring explains. “At first I wanted to make a collection of influences, all kinds of old songs but then sometimes with those mixes it’s hard to keep some kind of flow and they’re just not very easy to listen to, so I ended up using good new music; music that almost gave me hope that there’s more out there than boring minimal techno.” The Apparat contribution is as stylized as the preceding mixes in the series from Kode 9 and James Holden; with Ring embracing the opportunity to create a mix that represents both his personality and his brave take on ‘club’ music. With an incredibly prevalent talent for manipulation of both tempos and melodies, Ring includes tracks from a handful of dubstep producers like Dutch producer Martyn – whose ‘Miniluv’ provides a glorious rhythmic propulsion when under-layed beneath Patrice Baumel’s ‘Sub’ – and Ramadanman’s ‘Tempest’ – whose melody all but dissipates at the optimum moment – layering and blending them perfectly with tracks from across an array of genres from Autechre’s percussive white noise to Oval’s erratically colourful sound slices or the echoed clicks of Phon.o’s ‘Intervall.’ “A mix needs a bit of dynamic,’ he states. “There were these weirder things I wanted to use, like this Four Tet remix (of Born Ruffian’s ‘I Need A Life’) and then there are some tracks i had to use as tools to glue it all togehter. The way I used the Martyn track is more of a tool to adjust the Patrice Baumel track dynamically to the following ones. But most of the songs are in there for musical reasons. All these artists have their own sound signatures and manage to inject that space into every new song they produce.” Achieving a sense of progression in the mix through both his selections and his awareness of sonic space, Ring manages to harness his enthusiasms for frequency perfect soundscapes, often creating moments of sheer beauty out of his polarized composite parts. “The mix isn’t that balanced when it comes to melody I guess,” he continues, considering his point. “There’s a lot of sweetness on there, but it is dark and mysterious at points. I guess the bittersweet-ness has long been kind of my thing and with this mix I was just trying to spice it up a bit.”