Shed
Rave Echoes
Dekmantel
René Pawlowitz isn’t a kid anymore. He made that clear during a recent, career-spanning First Floor interview, briefly summing up his day-to-day existence as follows:
I play gigs. I work at Hard Wax. I have a family. I have two kids at home and loads of things to do. I finished the LP for Dekmantel about three months ago, and I honestly haven’t switched on my computer since then.
Those words likely won’t appeal much to those who want their favorite DJs to live like jetsetting rock stars, but Pawlowitz has never really been that sort of artist. The German veteran is more of a quiet craftsman, one who’s historically let his music do the bulk of the talking, even as he’s tried his hand at a myriad of genres—and more than 20 different aliases—over the course of a decades-long career. As he explained in the aforementioned interview, many of those aliases were rooted in little more than his own whimsy, but Shed has always been his home base, a kind of central node that ties all of the other projects together.
Sonically speaking, Shed is a techno endeavor, but even during the days that Pawlowitz was dropping albums on Ostgut Ton, his music never slotted neatly into the rigid cliches of what Berghain was “supposed” to sound like. Granted, those cliches were oversimplifications to begin with, but in comparison to the records being put out by guys like Marcel Dettmann and Ben Klock, the average Shed release was deeper, more meditative and far more willing to play with established forms. For all of his unmistakable German-ness, Pawlowitz also has a wry sense of humor—all those goofy monikers he’s used are a testament to that—and perhaps that’s why he’s rarely had any qualms about slipping in the occasional cheeky breakbeat or taking detours into heady patches of ambient sound. Though he’s very much a student of dance music history, he doesn’t see that history as an unimpeachable rulebook, and that—in combination with an intense desire to avoid boredom at all costs—has given him an enviable sense of creative freedom.
In simpler terms, Pawlowitz does what he wants, and on his new Rave Echoes album (which also happens to be his Dekmantel debut), that impulse led him toward the creation of an age-appropriate rave record. As he explained:
It’s kind of a rave record, but it’s from the perspective of a 50-year-old raver. It’s easy to listen to. There are no hard breaks, no frustrating vocals and no cheesy things. It’s about just having a good feeling and letting go. It’s like a rave from the couch.
Listening to the LP, the meaning of those words becomes clearer. Rave Echoes may nod toward all sorts of classic rave and techno tropes, but it doesn’t sound like something that could have come out in 1992. Pawlowitz is far more interested in his half-remembered feelings of that era than he is in recreating its exact dynamics, which is why the album is coated in a lush fog, one that blunts the impact of its underlying rhythms—in a good way—and heightens the blissful emotions on offer.
That bliss is particularly potent on “Taking You Home,” a bubbly, house-leaning standout that combines its subtly funky strut with some sweeping, pillow-soft synths and a bit of candy-kid euphoria. “Double Scoop” suspends its hardcore-style breakbeats in a sort of flotation tank, giving even the track’s most booming rhythms a refreshingly weightless feel. More upfront is “Password,” but even though Pawlowitz has delivered two different versions of the track—a “Techno Mix” and a “Trance Mix”—the former places its percussive thrum among swirling textures and epic vistas, while the latter stretches out the composition in a rather spellbinding fashion, offsetting its rhythmic churn with warm, undulating textures that rise and fall like an ocean tide.
Is this nostalgia? Although the album’s official promo blurb includes a quote from Pawlowitz insisting that it’s not, there’s no question that he’s looking backwards. But where many of his middle-aged peers would do so with a sense of longing, openly pining for a return to the good old days, Pawlowitz seems content to appreciate those days for what they were—and leave them where they sit. His memories are there whenever he needs them, and as Rave Echoes repeatedly demonstrates, they’re still capable of inspiring some truly excellent music.