Strati

Now making music as considered and carefully crafted as his DJ sets, Eric Cloutier has long been an influential selector. Though he recently started releasing his own music, it’s fair to say that Eric Cloutier has established himself as an influential underground figure purely off the back of his DJ sets. Known to be able to tease and control crowds for extended periods of time without resorting to cheap thrills or lowest common denominator kicks, since first emerging in 1996 he has been installed as resident at some of the most knowing venues around the world, and for good reason.

These include local hotspots in his native Detroit, internationally acclaimed clubs in his current hometown of Berlin but also mythologised places like The Bunker in New York. In terms of festivals, only the finest will do, and as such Cloutier is one of the select few who gets invited to play the culturally considered affair that is Japan’s Labyrinth.

“I like to keep it really body-oriented,” says the man of his inimitable DJ style. “I like to focus on hypnotising people in to a deep groove and just locking them in.” House, dub and techno are all fair game for Cloutier, and be they deep and driving tracks or harder hitting selections, every one bridges the gap between the old and the new in seamless and unpredictable ways.

2014 finds the high quality DJ further focussing on making and releasing music. As such and as well as being involved with the forthcoming Bunker label and already established TANSTAAFL imprint, his first productions and remixes have been snapped up by Studio-R, Freund Der Familie and Steve O'Sullivan’s influential Mosaic. Given that he is such an acclaimed and informed DJ, it’s no wonder Cloutier’s deep, airy and atmospheric music is turning out to be just as essential for those who know.

Plants Army Revolver is a project which digs deep into the abstract territories of techno to find a primordial world in tension between rhythmic textures and sonic changes.
The result is produced by meticulous studio work and a strong live component. The sounds and percussions emerge from a deep place in-between ambient and techno.

Plants Army Revolver, is a duo composed by Marco Ragni and Birgan Valentin, the first a resident dj at Serendipity Club and owner of "Mondo Musique" a record store, Birgan is a sound Engineer based in Rome.

Nuel is an Italian DJ, live musician and producer who has a reputation for sculpting perfectly hypnotic and meditative sounds. He distills rhythm, groove and texture into powerful compositions that can be techno, can be ambient or can be trance inducing and wholly downtempo. He does so to stunningly absorbing effect in LP form on labels like Further and Aquaplano and as well as his solo concerns, Nuel is also a chief studio partner of Donato Dozzy: together the pair have put out many seminal deep techno, minimal and tribal soundscapes that are much fawned over.

Part of a new wave of Italian techno producers, Nuel isn't someone to sit still for too long. As well as those expensive and highly sought after Aquaplano EPs, he has also put out perfectly smooth and compelling drum & bass and electro beats and has recently been locked away working on a wealth of new material. In 2016 he releases EPs on a number of labels, as well as a sophomore full length on Seattle’s Further Records in 2016 entitled Hyperboreal.

As a DJ, Nuel is just as focussed on mood, texture and atmosphere and manages to suck people into his supple, shadowy yet surprizing techno-scapes whenever he plays. He layers up elongated synths, subtle bleeps and blips and a whole world of intergalactic motifs that make you feel as if you are flying through deepest darkest space or travelling to the centre of the earth. His sounds are expertly reduced yet masterfully impactful, always coming imbued with a cerebral sense of hypnotism that you simply cannot fake.

Valerio Gomez de Ayala was born in Naples (Italy) in 1984, and he’s now based in Rome since 2011. He's one half of the dj/producer duo natural/electronic.system.
At the end of the '90s, he started collecting techno, IDM, ambient, experimental, house and electronic music records from all over the world. He was later influenced by the florid Neapolitan house/techno scene and inspired by the foreign djs coming to perform in Naples clubs.

He met his friend Antonio in high school. Together they founded the natural/electronic.system. project in order to express their personal definition of sound, mixing together different genres of electronic music during dj sets aimed at having organic textures of sound.

Over the years they became keen on the old and modern sound coming from another Italian city, Rome, where they started connections with local musicians. At the same time, n/e.s. started performing dj sets in different Italian cities, while running some nights in Naples and private parties in the forests on the slope of the volcano Vesuvius. In 2009, natural/electronic.system. took part to the mighty Labyrinth festival in Japan.

Since then, they started exporting their distinctive sound in different clubs and festivals. Since 2012 Valerio is resident DJ at the STRATI night in Rome.