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April 2025
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21/08/2024
SonarMix 050: Yen Sung b2b Photonz - Underground house music from a paradise called Portugal
For the
50th edition of SonarMix
, we’ve got a special session from a pair of DJs with over 50 years of combined experience in getting dancers moving. Separately,
Yen Sung
and
Photonz
have made vital (and often unheralded) contributions to the development of electronic music and club culture in Portugal and this session, recorded at Sónar Lisboa 2024, captures them perfectly in sync.
Yen Sung
wasn’t just a female pioneer of electronic music, she was a pioneer full stop, one of the DJs who helped coin the popular slogan from the country’s 90s rave scene: “Underground house music from a paradise called Portugal”.
Photonz
has done his part in keeping that flame alive in recent years, with his recently resurrected label
One Eyed Jacks
as well as his involvement in various community-run projects in the Lisboa, from
radio stations
to
venues
. Together, they’ve also recently started a label dedicated to Portuguese house music (including their own productions),
Alphabet Street
.
At Sónar Lisboa 2024, they’d prepared a set of “
pretty classic house music… mostly focusing on American house, and not a lot of fireworks,” recalls
Photonz
, with typical understatement. “It went down so much better than what we expected,” he remembers, as the crowd fed off their seamlessly mixed selection of NYC tribal house, jacking acid, classic Chicago cuts, and even a few trancey tracks from present-day Portuguese producers.
No tracklist on this one, just 64 minutes of unrelenting dancefloor heat from two of Lisbon’s finest DJs.
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25/07/2024
SonarMix 049: RUUAR - A slow motion summer set recorded live at Sónar Lisboa
Although it was recorded live at
Sónar Lisboa
back in March,
SonarMix 049
feels perfect for high summer. Portuguese duo
RUUAR
’s set moves at tectonic pace, two hours of slow motion breaks and pulsating basslines; an sonic shade from the summer heat.
“Anyone who knows us can tell you how important Sónar’s early years were for us,” Pedro Rebelo and Hugo Bastos explain via email. It was on annual trips to Barcelona for Sónar that the foundations of RUUAR were first laid, as they explored a “wonderful new world of sound”. They paid tribute to that same spirit when they opened Saturday at Sónar Lisboa 2024, dialling down the tempo and reaching deep into their record collections for heat-hazed trip-hop, dubwise ambient music, shadowy drum’n’bass, and even a climatic finale of percussive, polyrhythmic techno. Perfect for both vertical and horizontal listening.
Tracklist:
Intro - excerpt from “Manual of Evasion LX 94” by Edgar Pera and Terence Mckenna
Aspetuck - Zoom Deck
Na Nich - Melt
Senking - Bones
ALPI - Paeonia
Lcp - Schwarze Aare
Dino Sabatini - It's my forest
Baroli - Leviathan
Dino Sabatini - Plena Lunae
Massive Attack - Teardrop
Dschen - One Armed Statue
Vardae - Voices
DjBadshape - Hurrican Kick (feat. Stormskater)
Reeko - Rooted
Voices From The Lake - Prima Luna
Plastikman - Locomotion
Donato Dozzy - Sanza High
Ghost Warrior - Fracture
Ghost Warrior - Intruders
Vardae - Glow
Erd - Tufa
Forest Drive West - They Live (Pessimist Remix)
Homemade Weapons - Spasmolytic
Ceremonial Rite & Jolly - Plot Twist
Aa suud - Pselum
Ghost Warrior -Covert
Martin Goodwin -Coldhan
Atoloi - Verde Serpente
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