In summer 2019, my collective organized the third and fourth edition of Activités en Forêt, a small-scale rave in Amsterdamse Bos. We usually round up about 70 people, and invite our friends to throw a small DJ set deep in the woods. On the fourth edition, I was happy that most of the Parisian All We Need Is Acid crew could get to Amsterdam to party with us, among them DJ Antoinette, Rnkic and Waveguide.

They brought some fresh sounds from Paris, what they called downtempo. While having heard of it, I never caught onto the fade until this party. The idea is best described by the description of Front de Cadeaux, spearheads of the genre:

F2C is bringing an epistemological breakdown applied to the art of the dj'ing culture by playing 45 rpm at 33 rpm (+/- 98 bpm). We call it Supreme Rallentato, and it shows that the body follows the groove, and not the bpm even at peak time.

Wanting to hear more, I quickly asked my friends to give me a list of labels to dig through. The first that came up was Tursiops, which is where the track I chose for today was released: Ed Isar - La Source.

Ed Isar is the boss of the label, and specializes in a subgenre of downtempo I dub slow trance (not sure this is an official name). The core concept is to revive old Goa tracks from the 90’s (or produce tracks as if they were from that time), and keep the BPM really low, 100-110, in stark contrast with arguably the most popular trance subgenre of our times, psytrance, which usually kicks around 150. He organizes (well organized…) parties in Paris he calls 33RPM +8%, yet another reference to playing trance tracks at 33RPM instead of 45.

The track I chose is one of my favorite slow trance tracks. The panning synth, hypnotizing acid line, bouncing trance kick with a fair share of triple kicks thrown here and there, and of course the signature sound of the track coming at 02:10. This to me is the epitome of party sound, with the absolutely epic tribal bridge in the middle of the track, slowly building back up again, getting you to bounce left to right, smiling like there is no tomorrow. Your body sloths his way through until lasers flash around you, traveling at the speed of light, driving in slow motion the wheel of this spaceship of fortune that is your mind, until the signature comes back again as your spaceship shatters on a dancefloor full of bouncing entities, probably human, could be alien though. Anyway, enjoy.

PS: for more downtempo, you can try the following playlists from Waveguide and me. Other labels you should check out include (but are not restricted to): Worst Records and Ears on Earth.