Soundroom Podcast 067 - Assal

When you meet an artist who says she enjoys 'heating up the dancefloor' at Watergate and other clubs she plays at, you know you're onto something really special here. Assal (her name means honey in Persian) is somebody who simply gives the impression that she's for real whilst communicating naturally via her music. Perhaps the heat that she speaks of is a literal translation of the well known and well loved (yet often overlooked these days) art of warming up in a club. It's usually an opening dj's job to gradually increase the energy and intensity in a room and it's this position of trust that she often finds herself in at the moment. Or, possibly, it's something way deeper and more acutely intuitive that's at the heart of her expression of warmth. Either way it describes her music perfectly. Recently she's played alongside Priku, Thomas Melchior, East End Dubs and Arapu to mention just few of the bigger house and techno names who have enjoyed working with her, receiving these well programmed and soulful sets of hers, leading effortlessly into theirs. Her selections maintain a core awareness and respect for house music's roots, echoing those earliest days of Chicago's home spun music yet woven masterfully within a liquid weirdness and trippy minimal groove that perhaps shows off her German upbringing. You certainly get the idea that this particular selector spends hours alone crate digging, finding new records, ever eager to unearth essential gems in an earnest effort to bring new music to the world. Assal's parents moved to Frankfurt am Main from Persia during the Iranian revolution, allowing her access to German music and a new culture at a tender and impressionable age. Having already learnt piano, by the age of 10 her interests grew into other areas of music as she rejected her school work, instead developing an intense fascination and relationship with electronic music propelled by an awareness of events such as the annual Berlin Love Parade. She then began collecting magazines and cds obsessively as she grew up in the 90's, rapidly absorbing all she could in her newfound passion for all things electronica. Now as she consolidates her burgeoning recording career to work alongside and naturally blend into her djing (she's recently completed a music production and engineering course at the highly regarded Funkhaus at Nalepastrasse in Berlin) you get the idea that as she works on her new productions now she's taking the same amount of care and passion that she spends on her live dj sets, with an awareness of space, soul, movement and energy and, yes, that ever present warmth and heat that she speaks of. Assal on - soundcloud : https://soundcloud.com/assalmusic - facebook : https://www.facebook.com/assal.music/ Soundroom on facebook : https://www.facebook.com/soundroompodcast/