Panorama Bar 01: Mixed by Cassy [Ostgut Ton]

[dark bark]

Panorama Bar 01: Mixed by Cassy [Ostgut Ton]   

"This mix is the first release from dance music's current Xanadu, Berlin's Panoramabar, so you already know which way it's going to jump – ideological purity all the way. And that purity of vision, expressed here by resident Cassy, has produced a hugely evocative document of just why so many of us want to go hear a DJ play one record after another for hours on end. Many people will hate this CD for the exact reasons I love it. I love the fact that Cassy brings in each track loud and early, the way you would in a club. It makes me want to hop straight on a plane to Berlin (even more than is normally the case). As an interpretation of minimalism, it's the polar opposite of Hawtin's otaku fussiness. It's stripped back, it's raw and it's uneven, and that's what gives it such energy. If you love house right down to its DNA, you'll love this." – Jacob Wright

Portrayed in elegant black and white, her upper body stretched supine across the album cover, her enormous head of curly hair hiding her face and most of her naked back, Cassy looks like your dime-a-dozen R´n´B star on the cover of her new album. What she is, in fact, is an ingenious DJ/musician showcased by one of the hottest clubs in Europe. So hot that this review is probably already passé.

They don't allow photographers into Berlin´s Panorama Bar, but Cassy's mix for the concern´s label captures the sound and the spirit of the club. A kind of German sister-in-law to London´s Fabric (fittingly, as I would compare this brilliant microhouse mix with "Fabric 17" by Akufen), Panorama can be found inside an abandoned power plant. Cassy´s instinctual beat-building and unfailing good taste leaves no tush resting on its bar stool - everybody is up and dancing when Cassy´s at the controls.

The twenty-four tracks which make up her mix picks the choicest plums from a decade´s harvest. Two of her remixes as well as new material from her upcoming EP are also featured - and certainly not for reasons of vanity.

Microhouse, glitch techno or whatever you want to call it is a music of infinitesimal variation, since the manipulated output of digital impulses is what makes up the beat, the genre is "micro" in more than one sense. Not being an aficianado but rather a casual fan, almost all these artists are new to me. However, some stand out with great distinction by creating such imaginative variants within such a small arena, and Cassy herself does an absolutely perfect job of selecting and stringing these technoid pearls together seamlessly.

While it is the sum of the parts that makes the whole so successful, individual highlights include Shakleton´s flea-circus funk, "Blood on My Hands"; the chugging and percolating "Channel B" by Mono Junk; the fast-forward oompah of DBX´s nicely-named "City on the Edge of Forever"; Cassy´s own humourous remix of Yassin & Arne´s "Bleepy Creep"; and the pseudo-calypso of Mathias Kaden, "Pentaton". That being said, throughout the CD, the various artists amaze with their ability to construct marvelous, heretofore unheard crunchy beats.

As stated above, fully in league with what the present reviewer has often hailed as one of the strongest club mixes in this genre, Akufen´s "Fabric 17" (see review elsewhere in Sonomu).

Posted by Stephen Fruitman at 07:43, 17 Jul 2007

[Discomfort]

Cassy ini bakal maen di Indonesia kalo gak salah.. td gw liat spanduknya di jalan..