Cycles by DJ Strawberry

DJ Strawberry, or rather Emre Öztürk, is a Turkish sound artist, representing Algorave Istanbul. He debuted with the track 'Hafif Müzik' on the compilation album “grids” released by outlines. The album “Cycles”, which is the artist's full-length debut, is the third release in the catalogue of guides, a sub-label of the outlines label.

Side A of the cassette opens with 'Motion', an extremely spacious and ambient composition in which individual sounds gradually reveal a vast cosmic landscape. DJ Strawberry's next track, 'Dance/Music', floats in a similar sounding atmosphere, but is enriched by vocal samples, which in the initial phase of the track are repeated single words. In the central part of the recording, the author of the spoken words is revealed – he is one of the most important representatives of Chicago Footwork, DJ Spinn, who is joined after a while by his legendary friend DJ Rashad. Excerpts from their conversation are taken from a 2012 French TV interview. In it, Rashad and Spinn talked about the origins of footwork and it is this part of the conversation that is placed by Strawberry at the climax of the piece. The modern and futuristic footwork sound is combined here in a surprising way with the story of two Chicago legends. 'Variation' is the third number on the A-side, which calms the atmosphere after the extremely exciting and dynamic 'Dance/Music'. We find ourselves in a dub-ambient space, watching the spectacular ethereal images shift. Concluding the A-side, 'Fast Track' is a composition in which one can hear inspiration from the Japanese footwork minimalism of DJ Fulltono and CRZKNY from their joint project Theater1. A clear rhythmic pulse is surrounded by delicate micro-drops.

The B-side of the cassette is a consistent development of DJ Strawberry's created sound world. 'Acelem Var' presents a subdued liquid variation of ambient dub. 'Acelem Yok', on the other hand, is the most monumental track and its dramatic layer is as spectacular as the final section of 'Dance/Music'. The concluding B-side of “Cycles”, 'Mono Ton', is like an extended complement to the last track from the A-side, 'Fast Track'. Here, too, you can hear the scattered particles floating in rhythmic space against an underwater, impressionistic and ambient background.

DJ Strawberry's album “Cycles” is an extremely mature offering. Different genre traditions intermingle here: ambient, minimalism, dub techno, clicks and cuts and Chicago Footwork. Strawberry builds his songs with great sensitivity, combining the modern with the classic Chicago sound. An excellent example of this is 'Dance/Music', in which the producer seems to be drawing attention to the prevailing trend in recent times where music and DJs have become more important than the people on the dance floor. Emphasising this problem by referring to the foundations of the dancer/DJ relationship in footwork culture is a treatment that puts things back into perspective. In turn, the fusion of the unique beauty of ambient with footwork and a tempo of 160bpm moves the “Cycles” album towards illustrative music, which could be the perfect soundtrack to accompany the new discoveries of Webb's telescope. It's also not hard to imagine these tracks sounding from the radio of a space-traversing Tesla.

outlines is a searching label. It starts with Chicago Footwork and aims at new forms, outlines and intuitions.

guides, is the more frivolous branch of outlines, where releases are characterised by greater freedom of form.

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