Damian Schwartz is an electronic musician, DJ and performer based in Madrid, Spain. He studied jazz, composition and bass, a cornerstone of his work and compositional approach. Damian started as a Dj and producer during the early 2000's as part of the Net28 platform of labels and artists. Damian's latest work is called 'The Dancing Behavior'; read more about it HERE.
'An influences mixtape is one hell of a task. You will always end up leaving a lot of things behind, so I just tried to focus a bit on what’s been obsessing me the most lately.
I come from different backgrounds, and i’m very much interested in many different kinds of music and styles, but I've been quite busy and entertained lately trying to find the links between the music I feel most attracted to, and that's, in part, the idea behind this. How styles and sounds get linked and influence each other, or how two separate artists or movements come to the same conclusions thru different approaches are the kind of things that interest me a lot.
I’m quite obsessed with Riley influenced minimalism; those repetitive synth lines and that added hypnotic approach to music has been a big part of my inspiration for many years. I was quite surprised when I discovered Eduardo Polonio, Spain’s minimalism pioneer, whose song “Arsilah” is opening the mixtape, by the way. There’s a bit of drexciyan and Detroit experimental side sound too, present in the brilliant Bill Converse “Meditations/Industry” album, as well as Stingray’s Urban Tribe track. Jazz is a very important part of my life present here by the hand of Coltrane or Yusef Lateef, serving also as the link to more African and Arabian sounds, sounds that remain present in the amazing “Spirits Speak” by Underground Resistance, which also serves as a link back to synthetic sounds, like those from Eugenio Muñoz´s Randomize project or Autechre´s “Tri-Repetae”, which remains one of the most important electronic albums in my life.'
*drawing by Martin Carpaneto