House/Electronic

There are not many conventional rules in the world of Dutch DJ/producer DJ Marcelle/Another Nice Mess, or they have to be her own, but which she is more than happy to break at any time she fancies. For the past 15 years she has been travelling around Europe and beyond, playing her brave three turntable sets in front of often both stunned, surprised and euphoric audiences. She is an original, skilled mixer, with a very distinctive style of her own, avoiding most DJ-cliches and stale rules. Marcelle - who believes in using strictly vinyl - creates every gig fully improvised sets, containing the latest leftfield sounds in new electronic, world and other independent music, merged and mixed with a skill rarely seen in international 'beat-boring-matching' (as she calls it) days. From the start she has always been much, or even more of, a musician as she is a DJ, as amongst others was recognised by Faust founder member Hans-Joachim Irmler, who since 2008 has released four Marcelle albums on his Klangbad label. 'In The Wrong Direction', her debut 10'' for the Munich label Jahmoni released last autumn, was typical for Marcelle's way of thinking. The heavy bass, combined with strange rhythms, odd voices and self-irony about her limited sense of direction in real life, made it both an unusual but not less fitting club record. Now, on follow-up 12'' EP 'Too', she surprises even more. Instead of fiddling about on computers and machines for months on end like so many producers do, she produced four fresh new tracks in the space of only a few days. The title of opener 'Too Long' shows Marcelle's sense of self-irony once again. But in fact, the almost 12 minutes of this track, are worth every second. Over a driving, almost krautrock-esque beat (but, being a Marcelle record: not quite), there's some of the maddest percussion ever put on wax. The relentless bass and very strange sounds (is it a woman, an animal?) complete the song which, judging from the audience reactions it got when the dubplate version was played; make it a perfect, addictive track to play in every open-minded DJ-set. 'Too Trumpety', the opener on side B, was already produced before Donald bullied his way to the US presidency. This very danceable track uses horn sounds, orchestra tuning and train sounds as if it couldn't have been done otherwise: Marcelle strongly believes in improvisation and the power of coincidence. Not only with the now very fitting 'Too Trumpety' title, but also the train sounds on this track were coincidentally on another track of the recording but they fitted the mood of the song perfectly. Elsewhere on the record Marcelle remixes 'Too Long' (wittily retitled 'Too Short Dub') and 'Too Scratched' is an abstract, short track made out of broken, damaged and scratched records. To honour one of her influences, she later added a Lee Perry sample (greeting the punks - Marcelle was in 1976 one of the first and certainly youngest punks in the Netherlands!), only realising after she had done so that Perry's nickname 'Scratch' is more than fitting for the title of the track. Once again - the joy of coincidence! On stage and on her records Marcelle transcends a sense of openness and a feeling of freedom, which often have her described as ‘totally enriching’, ‘a true ear opener’, a real ‘pioneer’.