sacred grove: untitled

A sacred grove is a place in a forest thought to hold spiritual powers. Throughout history, these sites have been places of worship and ritual. Since the rave boom of 89’ - a new generation has found an alliance with nature steeped in hedonistic abandonment. So it is a befitting alias for the Malmö-based producer Teodor to use in order to serve us these spiritual excursions into ‘open air’ territory. While he has previously donned this mantle to provide atmospheric lo-fi techno on the Japanese label City-2 St. Giga (then as a duo with his friend DJ Natto) - here he hits closer to the deep house palette of his 2017 album ‘Neo Geo’ under the alias Fyodor The DJ. For the 8th instalment on blundar, the artist has worked closely with the label in picking out the right tracks from his vast archives. While the tempo sometimes staggers well towards BPM levels of hardcore techno, the touch remains gentle and soft. This genre-defying characteristic owes a lot to video game music, and especially Japanese games, where Teo finds a lot of his inspiration. The first track bathes us in tropical field recordings before tripping off into a relentless tribal groove - countered by meandering new age flutes. A2 is a fluid and complex piece, vibrating with a warm tenderness all the while maintaining a minimal progressive path. A3 deals in crunchy breakbeats and layers upon layers. On the second side, B1 builds through a hazy fog of tape hiss, pierced by the bouncing thud of sped-up bongos and an arpeggio that escalate it all into transcendental euphoria. B2 goes ‘off the grid’ for a heady trek of slippery beats that spill out into small flecks of breaks, all the while gleaming through the doorway to a sombre ambient jazz score. Closing off this 12” is a chilling high-speed chase through a neon-flashing night, propelled by a numbingly hard hitting drum machine sequence. The artwork for BLUNDAR8 is as always photographed by mutantexture. The photos - which were taken during a hot summer by the Western Harbour of Malmö - were picked out by Teo as this is a place of great significance for him. A place for the daydreams of sun-dazed ravers