03.02.22 @ OHM, Berlin The pulse of the night is calling. On Friday, Feb 3, Patterns of Perception kicks off 2023 with a genre-agnostic lineup, Solid Blake and Sybil, two artists exploring the hidden shades of techno, from burning percussion to dreamy euphoria. Bringing it full circle, residents Steve Duncan & Andreas Maan will open & close the party respectively with their heady, wide-ranging grooves. Selected listening Solid Blake Sybil More info: Facebook / Resident Advisor

02.12.22 @ OHM, Berlin Featuring Spekki Webu, Nicole & DBR (live) What will the dancefloors of tomorrow feel like? What forces will inspire expression and movement? How will technology influence creativity? What will music sound like? -- Future Patterns is an annual VA project that invites both artists and listeners to explore the future of electronic music and the forces that will shape it. Join Patterns of Perception and Minimal Collective at OHM Berlin to celebrate the launch of the VA series, featuring a future-gazing live set from DBR, plus colourful, driving DJ sets from Spekki Webu and Nicole. All profits from this event and the Future Patterns project will be donated to Deutsches Kinderhilfswerk. The Future Patterns 01 VA compilation is now available to pre-order via Bandcamp. Selected listening Future Patterns VA DBR Nicole Spekki Webu More info: Facebook / Resident Advisor

Before the pandemic began, two members of our collective (Steve Duncan and Kim Bergstrand) went to a techno party together in Helsinki. The set that stood out from all the rest that evening was from a local artist called HOMI: in Steve’s words, his sound was delicate, detailed, percussive and psychedelic, yet with groove and power. They connected after the set and became good friends, setting the wheels in motion for the second release on the Patterns of Perception label. More than two years later, we can still hear the similarities between that first live set and HOMI’s Välitila EP. In the lead-up to the record’s release on November 4, we caught up with HOMI to hear the story behind the record from his perspective and to explore some of his more unexpected influences – from the DIY ethos he brings into his studio space to the impact of becoming a dad not so long ago. You can listen to previews of PTN02 on Soundcloud and pre-order your copy via Bandcamp. Where does the story of this EP begin for you? For this particular record, it started I'd say already two years ago, or even more. We got a studio space with my friend here in Helsinki, and I moved my production completely there. Before that I was doing music at home all the time, like in all the cracks in life: in the morning, in the afternoon and at lunch hour, really just all the time. Then I started to spend good eight to 10-hour days at the studio. Music-making and being with music were more focused on these intense bursts in the studio, so that was quite a shift. At the same time, I changed my production. Before I didn't build a track by multi-tracking, I was jamming basically. All the instruments, synths and whatnot, were always on. When I was finished recording, I just erased everything so there's no going back. Now I started to do a multi-track recording and arrangements which evolved over time. And the arrangement process itself, it took place over time. So I started to kind of prototype tracks – I’d do 2, 3, 4 prototypes in one day – and just let them sit there for a week or so. And then I’d see what I created, and what's interesting, and continue working with those. Production-wise, that was a very big change. What impact do you think it had on your sound or the music you were making? It got more complex in the sense that you can imagine that if you're jamming there are limitations on what you can do: you only have a set amount of hands. So that changed things quite radically. When a track has been sitting around for a couple of weeks and you come back to it, you are maybe not interested in some elements anymore. But some are super interesting and you start to focus on those. I tried out things that I wouldn't have tried otherwise. Also at the same time, I got interested in more fast music. Before, BPM-wise, I was usually at like 120 or 30. And nowadays, it's 140, 150. I don’t know why that happened. Any clues about where that came from? These tracks were the first batch in that study of faster music, which nowadays is defacto for me. There was a particular record, which was Rod Modell’s Captagon, that I was listening to. It’s very dubby stuff that’s super fast at times. It’s an absolutely amazing record, the only record that I haven't played in any DJ set. But looking forward to it, maybe one day. Have you had a similar evolution of your sound as a DJ? I haven't been DJing much lately and am more focused on the live. I have a background in guitar playing and live jamming, and the improvisation part is the thing that fascinates me the most. I'm most interested in music-making anyway. When you are performing live, you kind of memorise a bunch of stuff that you've created and then you improvise a set based on that. Basically, anything can happen. It sounds like the spontaneity of playing live is what appeals to you most. It’s absolutely the key. I'm not the guy who likes to finish tracks; I'm not the finishing type of guy. I just love making music and improvising – the finishing of a track is almost secondary or the byproduct of music-making for me. Every once in a while you have to nail things down, and that comes when you feel you have something to say. It's the moment that you say, ‘this is interesting and this is what I want people to hear’. Music-making has also always been an escape in some sense. Music is a space where the rules and the axiomatic facts of life don't hold true anymore. You can do whatever you want. You can do anything, and it’s okay as long as you dig it. You have some very interesting musical projects going on alongside your electronic productions, can you tell me about them? I have been, for maybe two or three years now, practicing and playing West African music. Usually, I play the djembe and DunDuns, and rehearse the traditional songs. It’s a little bit different in the sense that in my production and music making, I am exploring things, but here I am exploring African music and trying to understand and feel what it is about. I don’t improvise so much. I try not to make my own music but get into that music, and express through that. It is an interesting avenue for me to express through something that is already created. Then last year I started making drone metal. It’s electric guitar, which I haven’t done in a decade or longer, but I got interested in that and got sucked into it. It was listening to this album from (American experimental metal band) Sunn O))) called Life Metal. Fuck it was mindblowing. The project was bubbling for maybe two years before I decided I had something to say and started to explore that avenue. It strikes me that these two projects show two sides of your relationship with music: studying and creating. Yeah, the African music is completely about exploring the interest and respect for the music. It’s a tribute to it. The drone metal is the same, but I want to expand the territory or the concept of what it can be by creating new things. I would say the difference is this: being an artist is the expression of something through your own ideas, while musicianship is expressing through an existing piece of music. In a sense, you know what you are doing. For me the artist is totally the opposite: not knowing where you are, but improvising. Has becoming a dad had an influence on your music-making? After becoming a dad, the musical landscape is for me even more open. Even more things are possible now when I am making music. It can be even more abstract. For the last maybe six years I have been very interested in techno and driving music that can live in a club setting. Now the interest is more focusing on explorations, where anything is possible, even more than it was before. I also had to go through quite an identity crisis in one sense, where you really rediscover yourself. Through that kind of discovery, or rediscovery, you start to think about what’s important in music for yourself. And during COVID also, I wasn’t going to clubs and would be a bit lost about what to do (music wise). So then I would always start to fall back to just making something and being amazed at what came out. When was the last time you went to a gig? The last time I went to a gig was with Samuel (van Dijk, aka VC-118A, who contributed a remix to PTN02) to see Autechre. And reflecting back after that, the music that I’m making now, well I don’t even know what it is anymore! It’s more about the shapes, timbres and whatnot, I don’t have any fixed time or anything. It’s just a mesh of sounds. Before the gig, I had been exploring those domains and acquired a SOMA Ornament sequencer. With Autechre, I took it as a sign that this is how it should feel. So the equipment is also quite crucial to this latest evolution of your sound? The equipment is an absolutely huge thing for me, what you can express through certain instruments. I was about to become an instrument builder, that was my childhood dream: inventing instruments that could express certain sounds. I was on that track and the music playing happened instead. What other instruments and equipment have you made yourself? I have always been making stuff with my hands, it could be anything. I built an electric guitar when I was maybe 15 or 16. Then it was like, ‘I can do anything with this’. Then there were keyboards and turntables, and for two-track recording I had a tape machine which I took from school, from language class. It was a kind of hacky solution and I started to do tracks with that. That was maybe 7th grade. I think in 9th grade I got a four-tracker classic tape machine and added more keyboards and turntables, and it just went from there. I can’t believe you built an electric guitar at 15! Where do you think the drive to not just make music but also the actual instruments comes from? I was always the guy who likes to make things with his hands, to create and build things. Somehow it felt natural. And I still create things and build things: lots of the equipment here in the studio has, even on a smaller scale, been made by me. I made these “distorters” with diodes soldered straight into the cable. Very lofi but I still use those on a daily basis. And some of the electronics like delays I created. I even built some of the studio furniture. I see the studio as an instrument itself; it’s my instrument nowadays. The ergonomics of where things are, building the table, putting stuff there: it’s very DIY. I’m constantly building and modifying things. You’ve said that you consider yourself an artist, rather than a musician. Why is that? I consider myself an artist because I like to perform and improvise. I improvise music and present it to others. But musicianship is just a different kind of trade where you have a very, very special relationship with an instrument. The musician, it's a profession. Many of my idols are musicians or have been musicians. I have zero interest in being a musician by making my living with music. Just making the music and sharing it with other people – like-minded people, hopefully – that's the primary goal. And I'm also so very sensitive in that I bet that if my artistic career would kind of get going, it somehow could be influenced by the attraction of making a living out of it. Then it wouldn't be very good for my music making. What drives you as an artist these days then? I don't know what it is. You make music and you find something very interesting and you work with it. You try to express things; it’s all about expression in the end. HOMI’s Välitila EP is out on vinyl and digital on November 4. Pre-order your copy via Bandcamp.

In his own way, Felix K is a historian. On a video call to discuss his recent four-hour mix for Patterns of Perception – itself a sign of the depth of his musical knowledge – it was hard to ignore the library of records covering the full length of the wall behind him. “What happens if I move out of this apartment?” he joked, though not without a hint of trepidation. Luckily, that’s not on the cards for the Berlin-based artist any time soon. As a music composer, DJ and label head, Felix K has accumulated a profound knowledge of genres ranging from jungle and drum and bass, to techno and house, through a methodical approach to record collecting and archiving. His mix for Patterns of Perception, the 100th in our series, focuses on blending classic, foundational dub with more contemporary UK sounds. In doing so, it showcases the connections between scenes and styles that the average listener, and many DJs, would be unlikely to make. Ahead of his set at our September 16 party at OHM Berlin, this interview explores the concept behind Patterns of Perception 100, as well as Felix's research-driven approach to digging and collecting. Photos by Chris Abatzis. Your mix for Patterns of Perception is quite an ambitious four-hour piece: can you tell us how you approached curating such a special musical journey? When I started working on it early in the year, I already had something in mind. I knew I wanted to do something longer, though not four hours – that just happened in the end. The original idea was something like a dub mix, but a dub mix that captures a house and techno vibe, because there have been a lot of movements in the UK by dub producers who got really into techno. For example, the UK producer King Alpha, when I listened to his records I thought, he was doing the stuff that techno usually misses. I wanted to make a mix covering tracks like this. But I didn’t want to do just a dub or reggae mix, because I am not really connected with the reggae and dub scene. I don’t plan to play DJ sets there; I would love to do it but it would be something completely new. I realised maybe it’s something you could do if you mix it with more styles. For example, there was a mixtape that Jah Shaka, one of the leading dub and reggae figures, made. He usually plays the original track, on the A-side, and then immediately afterward he’s playing the version. On one mixtape that I got to know via a friend, he played a house record that wasn’t at all known in the house community because I guess a reggae guy wrote it. It was just distributed within the reggae and dub scene. If you watch documentaries about the late ‘80s or early ‘90s in the UK, you can see reggae guys dancing to 1988 house music. In Berlin, this would never have been possible because these scenes were quite separated as far as I know. I really liked the idea to mix them and bring them together. So maybe this was the big idea, but in the end, I just went through and mixed the tracks without thinking about it too much. How would you describe the place where the mix ended up? You have to find tracks that fit together and, in the UK, it is so much influenced by the soundsystem culture that it is kind of a similar vibe or sound. Some of the more contemporary tracks from Livity Sound or Hessle Audio, it’s basically soundsystem music but it turns out to be a little different. They have the same starting point and they do it a little differently, but still, it has the same roots. The mix also gets faster over time. I think I like that you don’t really recognise that it’s getting faster. Over four hours, you have a lot of time to just tweak a little bit. But in the end, it is drum and bass, which is fast. I kind of like the effect. In the end, it is soundsystem continuum. Does stretching it over four hours give you more room to play? I listened to it again today and I thought maybe four hours is a little bit boring now. But now it’s there and I still like it, and the tracks are great. With a four-hour set, it’s not 100% interesting all the time. Maybe on the dancefloor, I would have stayed longer on the good moments and left out some other moments. If it’s a mix tape, you can go to the kitchen and cook something, then 10 minutes later you can go back and dance a little bit! Was creating this mixtape vibe intentional? Did you plan it this way from the beginning? I don’t think it’s possible to do it with another approach. If you mix a dub record, you cannot blend it like house or techno. The tracks are different. In dub, you mix it a little bit differently, so I tried to incorporate this a little bit. Et voila: you have a mixtape. Some parts were mixed by blending in the next track, then suddenly there are tracks that stop and the next track starts in a different way. The tempo is kinda the same but it’s not really like a blend you expect from a house set. You have to break it up a little bit to get everything in it. So it was kind of intentional but many things weren’t planned really. When I started to do it, after three hours, I wanted to stop. It went from slow to fast techno, you have a little progression. Then I thought maybe I could give a little bit more, then it got even faster. Then I thought, ‘okay just two more tracks’. And then I‘d have more ideas. In the end, the mix was something like 4 hours 20 minutes and I cut the last minutes because I just thought it was too much. But four seemed like a statement. You mentioned the Jah Shaka mixtape earlier - how has he been an inspiration for you? He’s a dub and reggae guy, and he’s on another planet. He’s also famous for inventing the more techno sound within dub. So he was the guy who played all these four-to-the-floor dub records that are very inspirational for me. He’s a really important figure for this kind of development. I remember the conversation about the mix tape but I don’t remember the name. I just know the house record because I ordered it from Discogs one day. But it’s a white label so nobody knows it and if you see it on Discogs, the producer seems to have never done another record so it’s quite obscure. What are some of the other tracks or artists from the mix that really stand out for you? The first record, which has a super nice house vibe, was on a label run by 4hero. They also started Reinforced some months before, this label was called Partners Inc. The first track was the first release in 1991, the artist was Adele. Partners Inc for me is like the UK-US house connection. They did it really housey, unlike Warriors Dance for example which was more progressive and really danceable in a way. Partners Inc was more sweet and jazzy. I really like both but this was the perfect track to start with. In German we say it’s an “earworm” track. It’s a great opening track. Have you been able to play it in sets or mixes before? No, never. Because for a house set, it’s too poppy in a way and the kick drum is very little. Usually, if you are in a set, if people are dancing, it’s maybe too soft and poppy for that vibe. But for a mixtape – it’s perfect. Any other tracks or artists that have a strong personal significance for you? In the end, they all have. The second track was done by Mad Professor, also on a dub label called Ariwa, Mad Professor’s label. The whole album is straight with a house kick drum all the time, so he implemented in the ‘80s this kind of vibe. I don’t know if anyone knows about it outside of the dub music scene. Maybe a few who are really digging deep but I don’t know if the connection is known to many people. So for you, the mix is really about showcasing and exploring the connections between dub, house and other sub-genres in the UK scene? UK music is about this, in my opinion. Sometimes it happens that I speak about music with people from the UK and if you speak about UK music, they know everything. Maybe not everyone is like this but I’ve met quite a few people like this and it’s made an impression on me. It’s given me a super high, romantic vision that it is really a blend of so many different styles. How did you discover dub and reggae? Did you start somewhere else that led you to dub? No, in the beginning, I started with jungle and drum and bass. This was in the ‘90s my music. When I bought records, it was basically just jungle all the time. More than 10 years ago I started to also get an interest in techno and then about six years ago, my behaviour changed: I didn’t go to record shops any more with just the next night in mind. It was like okay, I discovered something and now I want to know everything about let’s say house, and go through YouTube and buy stuff on Discogs. I just want to know what it was like in 1997 or ‘98 and I want to understand these connections. I’m not a music scientist or anything but I do it with method and a system, where I am really going deep. At the moment I am doing this with house and dub, and exploring the UK and US connection. It’s more like an addiction to knowing about it – to knowing where we are from. Usually whatever I do, at some point I want to discover the stuff under the hood. It is just my mindset. You’re almost a historian in your approach, would you say? Well if you really want to know about the history there are other guys. Joe Muggs and Brian David Stevens have a 500-pager about soundsystem culture, I just ordered it actually. And there are documentaries on the radio and on YouTube. The BBC made a documentary by DJ Flight from London about drum and bass and jungle. What I have heard of it so far was really good. I collected a few documentaries and house and techno and everything, maybe at the end of the year I will do a few threads on Twitter to recommend a few of these. So these are the historic documents. I am a consumer but maybe one day I can open an archive or something. I mean if I die, what happens to all of these records? Can you tell us a little bit about your process, your method? I am not sure if I really have a process for it but Discogs is a good tool. You might not get historical proof about anything. But if, for example, you go to Jah Shaka’s Discogs page and you go through credits to look for things like who are the musicians he worked with, what did they do and what was the studio where he recorded this record? Then you realise he did a few records in a studio called Addis Ababa and then you see it was started by two or three brothers from Africa who got into this reggae soundsystem world in the UK. They had a studio and this famous reggae guy produced his music in their studio. Then you see what did they do at the end of the ‘80s? They started a house label, probably the first UK house label. They released a record by Bang The Party, and Bang The Party was the first UK house producer duo who got a release in the US on one of the biggest house labels. Some guy wrote a comment on one of the releases and I think maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not. But the story is nice, and why not? Then you can follow the label they founded in 1986 called Warriors Dance. In the beginning it felt like a mix of hip hop, hip house, house, reggae. So they had the influences and then at some point, they kinda defined the UK sound of 1988. Then you go further and see who was influenced by it. Then you go to 4 Hero and when they started Reinforced Records, the first releases kind of sound similar to Warrior’s Dance. And when you know about Partners Inc, their house label, it connects in a way. So this is the process behind it: go through and follow the information that is in these databases. Can you tell us about one of your recent finds? Today I got a record, probably everybody in dub knows it. It’s a Channel One release from The Revolutionaries, originally from 1976 but it got reissued like one hundred times. This one is from last year. The story behind this is I found a track on a compilation in February. The track on this record had sounds that I knew from several drum and bass records – they sampled it. So I already knew the track without knowing it. Then I was at Hardwax and I spoke to Arthur to ask if he knows the original. He said it’s a famous riddim that’s used in a lot of reggae tracks, and he told me about a website where you can track down riddims. I went there and tried to find a record that just had the riddim without vocals. Then I forgot about it and last week, on one of my last days on vacation, I was just browsing the internet and suddenly I found this 7-inch with the same riddim. When it arrived it was like, ‘ah I can finally listen to it’. It made me very happy. Without the information, it would be impossible to find it, even though it is a super big hit. What was the turning point for you with taking this more methodical approach? Well it is kind of an addiction of mine. At some point, you grow older and other things get more important. This researching mindset, if it wouldn’t be music, it would be something else. It’s not just about collecting – I hate this. I couldn’t say, ‘oh now I move to Spain’, because what would I do with all this stuff behind me? It’s really a big rucksack that I can’t take anywhere. It’s a problem, it’s an addiction really. But I like the information I get out of it. Moving away from the classics, what new stuff are you listening to at the moment? I think at the moment Livity Sound, I don’t know how they do it but everything they put out at the moment is really good. Forest Drive West of course. Everything he is doing is magic. Let me look through my collection actually. On Fresh 86 there were some super interesting jungle revival albums by Kloke and FFF. Calibre had a really nice album on The Nothing Special. ASC did really cool records on Spatial. The records were new but the style is old: it’s mid-90s atmospheric drum’n’bass. Then there’s one really standout guy I would recommend because almost every track is great: Al Wootton. And then it’s Livity, Livity, Livity. I try to buy everything but I still miss so much by them. Do you feel like these artists are doing a good job of evolving the sound? Do you like the direction that it’s going in? At the moment I have the feeling I really don’t know about any directions anymore because everything seems to happen at once. Every detail is represented, so many styles are represented. If you listen to a DJ set, many people try to incorporate a lot of sounds at the moment. A few years ago, there were so many sets for one sound. Two hours deep techno. The tracks are great and they are doing a lot of justice to the genre of deep techno. But two hours of deep, stompy techno can be boring. Now it is like everything is in there. For me, maybe it is my age but I really do not know what the directions are at the moment. It is a melting pot like the early ‘90s when everything was possible. We will see where it goes. What do you think could be the reason for this? Maybe it is convergence, maybe it is a digitalisation thing because the information is there on Discogs for example. What I do, everybody can do. You just have to dig a little. Catch Felix K alongside upsammy at OHM Berlin for our next party on September 16. More info on Resident Advisor and Facebook. Photography: Chris Abatzis for Patterns of Perception

To warm up for our party at OHM this coming Friday, September 16, we invited upsammy plus Patterns resident Steve Duncan to share five tracks in the 150bpm+ range that have caught their attention lately. Selected by Upsammy Sub - Tensions "I think is a beautiful eerie track that merges IDM elements with DnB, also some electro. It feels quite organic and electric at the same time, something I really like in music." Opiate - People (Remember Salami) "This track also contains an eerie and floaty element. I enjoy the vocal-ish sound in this track and also the pads, they feel very nostalgic. The wobbly bass/synth gives the track some sort of underwater vibe." S’apex - Tonexad (Far Behind) "This track sounds hyper digital, it has a crispy 2000’s distortion to (even though it was released in 1998) which I like. I guess you would qualify this as DnB but the drum sounds are not so obvious, very well designed. It becomes quite futuristic, sci-fi and snappy." ИНФХ - Limitless body "This track is a bit newer and super futuristic, also quite deconstructed I would say. It reminds me a bit of recent Aphex Twin. I love the spiky, modulating, sharp sounds. It feels like I’m morphing in and out of different spaces." Nebuchadnezzar - Lethal Weapon "This track is aggressive and playful at the same time, it has a heavy bass that sort of skips around. Nice to play in a set as a pulsating half-time head nod moment." Selected by Steve Duncan Pretty Sneaky - A "The understated groove in this tune is pretty hard to pull yourself away from. It's also easy to get lost in the wonderful, free-flowing percussive details happening throughout." Actefy - Glow "Whirling rhythms and insistent percussion offset by a delicate melancholic pad. Lovely stuff!" Vel - Squirmin' Like A Toad "This track combines heft with cosmic psychedelia, but what sticks the most are the round, rubbery (squirmy?) kicks and wild rhythms." Martsman - Subbed "Have been coming back to this track regularly since I first heard it. There's something special in the simple, compelling arrangement - and the towering sub bass." Sage - Boy "Building around a simple abstract vocal sample, this track pulses with smooth energy." Full playlist: Patterns of Perception // upsammy & Felix K is taking place on Friday, September 16 at OHM Berlin. More info: Website / Facebook / Resident Advisor

With our annual ://about blank Summer Edition fast approaching, we invited two of the performing DJs Kia and Naone, plus Patterns resident Steve Duncan to select three tracks that embody their personal interpretations of "psychedelia": an adjective that we use and hear all the time, but one that also feels highly subjective. Ali Moghrani - Exodus The perfect song to set the mood of a mix or a set - its open ended, and I wouldn’t really call it a specific genre…just deep and groovy. - Kia Dienzephalon - Elektroakupunktur I never quite know how to define my “sound” but id say this song gets pretty close to it. I love 90s and early 2000s trance but I never really just play one genre anymore.. this tune works so well blended into so many different directions. This one sums it up perfectly for me, a beautiful deep roller with a warm and euphoric mood. - Kia Kooler ‎– Freefall (Abakus Remix) I was so excited when I found Kooler. It’s an old Sebastian Mullaert moniker, back when he was making psy/prog/breaks in the early 2000s. My sound has evolved a lot from specifically deep techno in the last 4-5 years, and I listen to/ play a lot broader spectrum of trance/breaks/prog now. It made so much sense to me that it was Sebastian Mullaert, because no matter the genre, his productions really speak to me! - Kia Astralasia ‎– Unveria Zekt (Fur Duhel) Follow the hypnotic voice, channel your inner confusion and paranoia. But the beat will keep you grounded. - Naone Intergalactic Federation - Intergalactic Funk Deep cosmic psychedelic track. Feels like you’re drifting in the space… - Naone Insync vs Mysteron - White Plains A dark but also a bright tune, a.k.a. weird music. Timeless and endless. - Naone Rozzo - Zorro's Horse A chunky, yet sultry roller that discombobulates the mind as much as it moves the body. - Steve Deep Space Organisms - Into The Blue A cosmic, kaleidoscope tune takes its time to melt itself into your consciousness. Deep, yet bubbly and euphoric. - Steve Funckarma - Sphere A deep, introspective dive with fluttering percussion paired with that wandering, intergalactic bassline. - Steve Full playlist: Patterns of Perception Summer Edition is taking place on Sunday, July 10 in the ://about blank Garten in Berlin. More info: Website / Facebook / Resident Advisor

On a video call from her new house in Florence, where she has recently relocated with her partner, Jane Fitz is having a fangirl moment. Even facing fresh lockdown restrictions just a couple of weeks after moving to Italy from the UK, she is almost giddy at the prospect of digging for records in a country that has inspired her so much. Italian music, of all kinds, has always been a passion of Jane’s – and now she’s living in the epicentre of it. “It’s like wow, I can actually meet these people whose music has meant so much to me and just be a total fangirl,” she says. “I never had the opportunity to be that in London.” After what has undoubtedly been one of the most difficult years in the career of any touring DJ – especially one with a gig roster as full as Jane’s – it’s refreshing to see that the UK-born and now Florence-based selector has not even remotely lost the spark for her craft. If anything, her relocation to Italy has reinvigorated her musically, while an enforced break from DJing has given her pause to reflect on where she'd like to focus her energy once the industry bounces back. Here, Jane fills us in on some new projects that have kept her busy the past year and shares how, even faced with the challenges of the pandemic, she’s never lost that deep-set curiosity for music that shines through every set and mix she creates. How have things been going for you this past year? When the first lockdown hit, I kind of took it as an opportunity to say ‘right, I’m going on a really deep dig’. I spent about three months really getting into digging for stuff that I have never really had the time to do, whole days of 12 hours of just searching for music. Then some family stuff happened that put me into a whole other headspace. I was literally hiding behind finding records and finding music, it was the only thing keeping me afloat. Last summer we were lucky enough to come to Italy, took a month off to do a bit of travelling, then the winter was really hard again. So it’s been weird but I’ve been trying to keep up as much as I can. But I did have this brilliant period of just searching and I’m kind of doing it again now. Now that I’m here in Italy, all these different things are available to me that had been really messed up with Brexit. I had parcels go missing and all kinds of stuff. I’m never going to stop buying records, I’m obsessed with it, but now I’m here and things are arriving in two days. So that’s the upside to moving. It must have been difficult for you to go from touring and playing as much as you were, to everything just coming to a standstill. I think when it first hit, I just thought it was a holiday, some time off. By the end of the year, I had no money left at all and I was really struggling. So I have been selling loads more records. I’ve always been selling records – I have been for 15, 16 years – but now I’ve really ramped it up. I’ve done it on the downlow and haven’t put my name to everything, but I’ve been selling loads. So I’m an online shop owner now! It’s just sharing your knowledge in a different way. And it’s another way of using your skills I guess? Yeah exactly. Another thing I have been doing is I’m setting up a publishing company. My background is in journalism and I’m setting up a publishing company with a friend of mine to launch a book/journal/magazine. I’m not going to say too much about it but it’s a nice project because it’s a historical project. It’s more of a research project than anything about new music. If you’ve got those skills, you might as well use them in times of need. So I definitely haven’t been sitting on my ass, I’ve been busy! What music have you been digging for, when you’ve been getting back into it lately? Everything really. I just don’t stop. I’ve always had a big thing about Italian music, whether it’s techno or old ‘90s Italian music or whatever. Now that I’m here, the music that has inspired me for years was all produced in Florence, or at least in Tuscany. Miki is here, I’m good friends with him and all his records are really important to me. It’s so nice to have just by chance ended up in a city which musically is really channeled into my sound. When I’m walking around and I’m looking at the hills or looking at the sunset, I’m getting a little bit of what’s channeled through those original records. Over time, I hope I can add to that myself in some way. How nice if you can rediscover the music you love in its original context. Exactly, and be around the people who made it. It’s like wow, I can actually meet these people whose music has meant so much to me and just be a total fangirl. I never had the opportunity to be that in London. What music are you most looking forward to discovering there? With the Italian stuff there is so much. Obviously there’s italo and deep house, but there’s also all this weird progressive stuff and all the old ‘70s and ‘80s minimalism and strange classical music and some crazy folk stuff. My wife is from Sardinia and there is all this weird folk music which comes out of Sardinia which I really want to go and explore. I’m in the right place I think. Tell me about your mix for Patterns of Perception then. I’m really curious to hear how you put this together and about the direction you took with this one. I must tell you, most mixes I do are not that banging but it just happened to be the records themselves I really liked. I think people expect me to do something a bit more trancey or whatever, because that’s obviously what I’ve been playing more out, but I realised that the records that were getting me more excited were a bit more techno and a bit weirder and a bit more tribal. And I thought: this is exactly how I feel right now. I don’t think I planned for it to be quite so uptempo but they were the records that appealed to me. I’m always pushing forward to try to surprise myself, as well as anybody listening. I haven’t really put a good podcast together for awhile, I think the last one I did was actually the Italian music one for Tropical Animals. So it was a little exploration for me, of having accumulated lots of new records that I haven’t been able to play out for the past year. That’s the thing, I realised I didn’t know any of my records because normally you buy them and you integrate them into your set immediately, so you know them back to front. But I’ve realised I’ve been accumulating probably the same amount of records and not had a chance to learn them because I haven’t really been listening a lot, just accumulating, and I hadn’t been hearing them out or hearing them loud. So when I got to play a couple of these records, I was just really excited. It felt like the first time I’ve played a set in ages, and I guess it was. It sounds like a lot of fun. Yeah, it was. I was thinking also about when I played for you guys, it was such a nice experience. It was such a warm experience which is not the feeling you think of when you think about Berlin clubs generally. The whole concept – seeing you guys, coming for dinner, hanging out, playing with Eric (Cloutier) and being in the booth at OHM which is really comfortable – the whole thing just felt like a much warmer experience than what you usually get, which is a little bit more wild and a bit more, I don’t know, dirty. I remembered that and I wanted to get into that mindset as well. I also really enjoyed this mix, I think because for me it felt a bit like being brought back to the club, or at least recreating a little bit of that magic again. Yeah for me it definitely felt like I was in a club space – or maybe more a festival space. A bit of me was kind of longing for playing on the side of a Japanese mountain again or all those festivals you do in the summer, they’re all just gone. I much prefer playing outdoors now, that’s one thing I’ve learned n from lockdown: that I don’t really want to be indoors much anymore, I really want to be outdoors if I’m going to play music. It just sounds better and you see people in a different way. I wanted to have people stomping on a forest floor. There was that element of something a little bit tribal to it which I’m not sure you would get so much in the club. There was that cathartic element for me. I was listening back to your interview for the AIR Podcast with Emma Robertson recently, where a lot of the discussion was about getting lost in music and the sort of meditative role that it plays for you. Have you been able to experience any of that lately? Yeah, I think so but in much, much shorter modules. I haven’t had that feeling of when you give yourself to something. Having this time not playing, it’s given me a lot of time to reflect on what I was doing as a DJ and I do think I was playing too often and I do think not necessarily in the best places all the time. And I was selling out a little bit, I really feel like that. At the minute I’m kind of desperate so I’d take any gig (laughs) but I do think that given the opportunity to plan ahead a bit more, I want to really commit to those kinds of gigs where you can do that. Meaning you can play these longer sets and fully immerse both yourself and the audience in the music? Yeah, and I do feel actually that the year before lockdown hit, I was getting more opportunities to do these really long sets. I felt that I was moving away from just being a guest in a club and getting a bit more control. On reflection, I need to keep on with that. I don’t want to just come in and just do two hours at a club. I want the promoter to go, ‘right that’s yours, do what you want’. If you’re young and you’re bouncing and you’re on drugs or whatever, go to a club or be that DJ. But I’m kind of an old lady now – I’m 50 next year – and I don’t want to do that. I want to be the person who gets to go there and sit down and chill out and do a long set and say my thing. It makes more sense to who I am to play in that way. I like doing warm-ups. I hate peak time. To be able to tell a story is so important to me. What are you looking for when you’re digging or does it really depend? I don’t have anything specific that I’m looking for. I’m always a big believer in the mysticism of records, that they will find you. There is a real element that I believe in which is: if you look too hard, you’re going to miss stuff. You need to be open to those opportunities for things to just turn up or somebody in a record shop to just hand you something or some weird unnamed thing in a bargain bin to be screaming for you. I’m not going to say the records talk to me because that will put me in the madhouse but I do think that your instinct and your connections and your experience definitely floods through when you’re hunting for stuff, whether that’s online or in person. I try to be as open as possible when it comes to looking. When was the last time you found something you thought was really fresh? Every day! Every day I find something new. Woody92, who also did something for you guys, he put up a Buy Music Club the other day and I thought, brilliant! There’s so much stuff in there I hadn’t heard of before. So every day I’m finding something new to go and explore, or there are people I know who inspire me to search in a new place. I feel grateful to be excited with wonder and curiosity every day. I was listening to your RA podcast from a few years back and it struck me how different it is to what you’re releasing now, and how much your sound has changed. That was kind of presenting the end of something. There were a few things on there which were telling you what I’m playing now, so if you get to the second half of the mix it goes a bit more ravey and acidy, whereas it starts off more deep. For years that had been my vibe and so there's an element of that which will never go away. It was my history. I played a lot of records in that set that I had been playing for 15, 20 years almost. I also knew that was something that was going to stick around for a long time so I knew if I only play one sound on that mix, that’s all I’m going to get booked to play. I also think it’s really important, as a person who loves music, to evolve. I would be so bored if I’d bought the same records for the last 30 odd years, almost 40 years. What do you think has driven this evolution from housier Jane Fitz to acid/ravey Jane Fitz? Is it just your changing taste or something more? Well, the music that I play now is probably much more representative of the music that I was playing when I first started mixing. In the mid-'90s I was really into Goa trance and before that, I was really into jazz and hip hop and soul. And then I was really into house, end of the' 90s I was probably into that whole French filter disco thing and that didn’t last, then I came back to the UK and got really into the tech house scene. So I’ve always evolved. I was thinking about this regarding new records recently and I think one of the things that drives it is that you get a sound that’s really pure and really original and over a period of a couple of years other producers start to recreate and make that sound. So it gets diluted. By the time it’s diluted, I’ve moved on. I’m always looking for something a little more interesting. How much of this has to do with your own commitment to your craft as well? Most people are not into it for life, but I’m a lifer. If you are fully invested in music, then over time you will evolve because music is also evolving all the time. So you can’t fail to evolve if you’re interested in new stuff and also interested in expanding your own knowledge. No one stays the same – and it’s completely anti-human to not evolve. I would be very skeptical of someone whose sound didn’t change. What keeps you going with music, especially nearing 50 as you said earlier? Just that you’re never an expert. I’ve heard it so many times before but the more you know, the more you realise that you don’t know. The past year I’ve realised there are so many more interesting new things coming out. I’ve always dug old stuff but there is plenty of new stuff to keep you interested. There’s a little online community I’m part of, a little secret music group with about 150 people in it, and we’re all kind of into the same thing. Even that, just being able to share music with people all around the world who are all really excited about things which you’re also into. Whether that’s ambient or psytrance, it doesn’t really matter. I always feel like I’m a beginner and there’s not many things in your life that can make you feel like that. For me that’s exciting, to always have a clean page to start with. You’re a librarian really. I’m not a producer, I do make a bit of music but that’s not my heart. My heart is finding as much crazy stuff as I can really and sharing it with people as much as I can. And telling a story with it? Yeah, using that music to do something else. I bought it but I never made it. For me to feel that I’m actually relevant, rather than just a machine that puts one record on after another, then I feel I have to do something with those. They’re tools to create an experience. I think we all need a way of connecting with another thing that’s bigger than ourselves, and my way of doing that is not religion, but music. That’s what I have faith in and curiosity for music is what drives me.

05-06.05.2018 @ ://about blank Berlin Featuring Polar Inertia (live), Patrick Russell, John Osborn, natural/electronic.system, Laura BCR, re:ni and Special Guest. From the magazine John tells us about his journey to Berlin, the evolution of his sound, and his current take on the clubbing ecosystem. Read and watch the interview We caught up with Laura about her many creative projects, from running a booking agency to organising club nights. Read the interview Selected listenings Polar Inertia Patrick Russell John Osborn natural/electronic.system. Laura BCR re:ni Facebook / Resident Advisor

21.05.2017 @ ://about blank Berlin Featuring Svreca, natural/electronic.system. & Jin Mustafa From the magazine To coincide with Semantica’s 10 year anniversary, we asked label head Svreca for his top tracks from each year of the past decade. Check out his selections One year on, we caught up with natural/electronic.system. to see what they’ve been up to lately. Read the interview Selected listenings Svreca natural/electronic.system. Jin Mustafa Facebook / Resident Advisor

04-05.05.2019 @ ://about blank Berlin Featuring Aleksi Perälä (live), Caim, Cio D'Or, Eli Verveine, Felix K, Eric Cloutier (replacing Jesper Dahlbäck) Patterns of Perception returns to its summer home ://about blank for a 22-hour rave celebrating three years and spanning three dance floors. Patterns of Perception // Three Years commences on 4 May with a diverse program of some of the most revered artists in contemporary house and techno. Like last year, the party will run continuously from Saturday night, ending on Sunday evening with a lush garden closing. Featuring Aleksi Perälä (live), Caim, Cio D’Or, Eli Verveine, Felix K, Jesper Dahlbäck (aka The Persuader), plus resident DJs. Selected listenings Aleksi Perälä Caim Cio D'or Eli Verveine Felix K Jesper Dahlback Facebook / Resident Advisor

11.08.2019 @ ://about blank Berlin Featuring Acronym, Kia & Petar Dundov Patterns of Perception heats up the ://about.blank garden with a diverse programme of both established and emerging artists, selected for their warm, rhythmically irresistible sounds, and natural fit with open surroundings. Petar Dundov, Acronym and Kia join residents Steve Duncan and Hysteria for a day party in Berlin’s favourite garden, ://about blank on 11 August. From the magazine Kia shares a list of upbeat tracks selected with the summer in mind, ideal for an outdoor party in either hemisphere. Check out her selections Selected listenings Acronym Kia Petar Dundov Facebook / Resident Advisor

29.02.2020 @ ://about blank Berlin Featuring Peverelist, Shifted, Konduku, SO, Antonio Giova & Lara Palmer Patterns of Perception gets cosy for its first winter edition at ://about blank, with a program ranging from techno to contemporary electronic music, presented symbiotically across three floors. On top of a diverse program of international headliners booked for the MDF and Lobby floors, the Tent will also be transformed into an ambient/down-tempo space. From the magazine We asked SO to share a selection of his favourite Japanese music with us. Check out his selections We caught up with Timnah to learn more about her take on djing and to explore the importance of friendship for honing her skills. Read the interview Selected listenings Peverelist Shifted Konduku SO Antonio Giova Lara Palmer Facebook / Resident Advisor