BASSIANI

LDS (an acronym for Luca Daniel Schwarz) is based out of Stuttgart, and fast blazing a trail beyond his native Germany. 2018 saw his Dub Tapes From Outer Space EP out on Transatlantic Records, dubby techno stirrings crossbred with a hint of the psychedelic, dub both reduxed and reinterpreted, and people started to pay attention. From his studio, he pushed this work in all directions, a process of investigation, critical thinking, creation of sounds and modulation, a spark plug method of getting his software instruments into the kind of feedback loop he needs to produce the best results. Conceptually, though there’s a mirroring of past influence, it’s music for a newer and thoroughly networked era: the ‘educational internet' is, he says, the place he spends a lot of time both learning and developing his music. That signature sound has dovetailed with the work of labels like Monnom Black, Blue Hour and Planet X, where his productions have also taken on genres like trance and IDM. The benchmark for all his releases, sets, and (starting in 2023) live performances is a high-speed fluttering salvo of rhythms that penetrate and resist any type of conceptual reverse manufacture, but to Luca it matters little: ‘the impression and thoughts of the listener are the only concepts that are true’. It’s what people feel then, that puts him on the map. It’s dub techno but not as you know it, atmospheric pads deputise their role to hardheaded beats and the end product is no less hypnotic. For Bassiani Podcast 234 LDS riffs on relatively simple construction, daisy-chaining tracks faster than you can identify what trace of emotion they’ve left behind, and building a mood that’s rife with ideas and ready to dance. This is switched on techno for the internet generation, immersive beats in conversation with their author, a reworking of the old and the birth of something entirely new.

@ldstechno