John Thorp

In 1985, musician Metin Demiral loaded the first vinyl pressing of Pizza Funghi, the debut LP from his group Cafe Turk, into his BMW and set off to Berlin from Switzerland. Demiral, who moved to Switzerland from Turkey in the ‘70s, had recently won a competition hosted by the widely-read Turkish language newspaper Hurriyet, and spent double the amount of the prize money recording an album that was far ahead of its time. Combining elements of psychedelic rock, disco, reggae, and kosmische, Dem...

Through adventurous IDM and techno, Colombia’s Veracco lays down a politically-charged manifesto on his debut album. John Thorp finds out what it all means.
The foundations of Verraco’s unlikely musical perspective were established using the same tool as many teenagers across the world; with a fake ID. Growing up in the Colombian city of Medellin, Verraco found himself at venues like Carnival and megaclubs that were regularly playing host to DJs such as Mathew Johnson, UMEK, Marco Carola and ...

‘Weil es leichter ist, ohne Stil zu schreiben’ reads the enormous cracked stone slab adorning the cover of Minor Science’s debut album, Second Language. The statement translates to ‘because it’s easier to write without style’, a quote from the Irish novelist Samuel Beckett, when asked why he’d switched from writing in English, to writing in French.
Minor Science is the alias of Angus Finlayson, the Berlin-based, British-born producer to whom style frequently bear...

Extended interview with Berlin-based DJ and producer for ongoing Phantasy series, 'The Forum'.

Currently based in Berlin, Rachel Margetts began the Yr Lovely Dead Moon project some years ago. Incorporating raw electronics, avant-garde songwriting and poetry, Margetts’ first album evolved into shape across Europe, taking in scenes from Manchester to Armenia.

Years later, this debut album takes equal influence from boundary-pushing music and literature, not easy to pigeonhole, but with nods to Jenny Hval, Demdike Stare or Anne Clark, while Margetts has also provided eye-opening support f...

In the early 1980’s, the session musician and budding studio engineer Michal Turtle was just one member of a community of creatives living in the Central London district of Camden. Long since gentrified, the atmosphere during this era was loose, communal, and hugely creative, with emerging scenes from dub to post-punk converging easily. Turtle, a musical obsessive and percussion student inspired by emerging pop experimentalists such as David Byrne and Jon Hassel, arrived in Camden from his su...

Red Axes are rock & rollers, first and foremost. But that doesn’t mean house and techno don’t explicitly inform their sound. Following the release of their self-titled LP on Dark Entries, John Thorp dives into the psychedelic palette and lasting friendship that defines this Tel Aviv-based duo.
“If you talk to the average teenager of today, and ask them what it is about rock & roll music that they like, then the first thing they’ll say is the beat,” announces a spoken-word sample on ”Zeze,” cl...

Peder Mannerfelt is undoubtedly one of the most unusual and illuminating figures in modern-day techno. As well as his relentless and playful solo productions, Mannerfelt has a history as a producer that crosses an axis all of his own.

Hyperaktivist‘s dancefloor rituals are the stuff of legend in the Berlin underground, but her reach extends much further. John Thorp discovers how this Venezuelan up-and-comer has been slowly changing the scene for the better.
It’s often said that Berlin is a transient city, a still-emerging metropolis in which people arrive to find themselves, lose their minds and more often than not, move on. For those who stay put and stay partying, club culture asks DJs, promoters and producers to prove t...

“Every single technical component of our smart devices can be and will be, used and repurposed to identify and track us,” says conceptual artist and electronic musician Jasmine Guffond. “One significant technological development is the proliferation of smart assistants. Amazon has sold more than 100 million Alexa devices and a quarter of U.S. adults own a smart speaker. These devices are forever listening. We’ve invited surveillance as service into our homes.”

It’s bewildering to imagine a world without the contributions of Andrew Weatherall. Known for a decades-long career as a pioneering and hugely influential producer, remixer and DJ, his legacy reaches well beyond the boundaries that constrained many in his generation. Where some of his former peers have found themselves placed on pedestals as ‘legends’ – dusted off every few years to remind us of their former glories – or have been confined to relics of the acid house era,...

There’s an interview on YouTube in which LCD Soundsystem founder James Murphy discusses failure. Or more specifically, he describes his former life as “like really, really, really a failure.” At the end of this decade-long slump, Murphy wrote Losing My Edge, a satirical takedown of musical gatekeepers that affectionately skewered the exact figures it moved on the dancefloors of indie discos worldwide, himself included.
As a teenager, far removed from the peak of Brooklyn ...

Interview with Paramida, for Phantasy series.

As part of DJ Mag's round-up of all the best in dance music in 2019, and in the 2010s, we decided to spotlight some of the best in film, too. Here are some of the finest documentaries and feature films about dance music from this decade: from EDM superstars and journalistic storytelling, to fantastical madness and introspective works about community, politics and resistance
Set in Paris in the heat of the French filter house movement, a requisite Daft Punk cameo is about as glamorous as this ...

“Everything, everywhere, at the same time”; This is how Paul Woolford describes his early days immersed in club culture in the North of England, a “subconscious training” for the decades of creativity - DJing, producing and experimentation - that then followed. From the clubbing public’s perspective, Woolford’s career has been defined by a series of transcendent club records rinsed across scenes. There was, of course, Erotic Discourse, a rubbery, psychedelic banger that began as an experiment...