Early last month, it was announced that Dutch producers Steffi and Martyn would be handling curation on the sixth volume of the Air Texture compilation series.
Streaming exclusively above is the second taste of the compilation, a track from Detroit’s DJ Stingray called ‘Last Shift’. A brooding electro cut centred around halftime beats and plaintive synths, it’s one of the DJ and producer’s more refined outings of late.
The likes of Actress, Shed, dBridge, FaltyDL and more feature on the new compilation which takes in 26 tracks in all, also including tracks from both Steffi and Martyn themselves. The Air Texture series invites two producers or DJs to pull together a double-CD of unreleased music. The only rule placed on them is that the music featured should stray from peak-time dancefloor bangers. However, they have entire autonomy over their picks otherwise.
Air Texture will release Air Texture VI on October 5 on CD and digitally. Keep reading below for a quick catch-up with Steffi and Martyn as they explain further the workings of their contribution to the compilation series.
Aside from the general concept behind the Air Texture series that the music featured should stray away from peak-time bangers, did you give the producers featured on the compilation any further guidance?
Before approaching any artists, we talked over the ideas we had for this compilation, and what kind of vibe we were after. We share a lot of musical history so often when we talk about music we use that as reference, and with only a few key words we both know what we’re on about. When contacting producers, we didn’t do an extensive "brief", but again just a few key words to explain what it was that we were looking for. Besides, we didn’t want to impose anything, let people do what they’re good at. Some artists tailor made something for us, while others sent us a selection of tracks and we were able to pick and choose, guide them a little if they were open to that.
Did you put together a wishlist of people you wanted to approach to contribute to the compilation?
Yes, as said before, we share a lot of musical history, but we each walked our separate paths in electronic music. Along the way we’ve come across so many talented musicians – young as well as seasoned – and we wanted to try and represent that on the compilation. The list we put together represented a wide range of styles and genres and we think that’s what makes it both challenging for us, as well as exciting for the artists involved. Personally, we’re excited to be featured alongside some of our favourite artists.
You say one of the big challenges of the compilation was to make something cohesive as a listening experience. How did you come to deciding that the end result was the cohesive listen you wanted it to be?
Whether something succeeds as a "cohesive listening experience" is obviously up to each individual listener, but after we got together the bulk of the tracks we spent some time together to sit down and go through all the music. We have a lot of experience as DJs, but also doing radio, podcasts etc so we used that "intuition" to move tracks around and come up with a good order. To keep a collection of tracks like this compelling it’s important to not just gradually build the intensity but to also include some sidesteps, something that keeps your interest piqued.
