Esplanade EP by Antonelli

A revival that we’re wishing for

Today’s maniac bigger-stronger-faster attitude in music makes them almost vitally indispensable as a contrast and a rest: Deep, subtle House-tracks. Music that draws upon its own magic. Tracks full of warmth, depth and substance. Like the new tracks by Düsseldorf-based producer Antonelli that are now released on Kalk Pets.

Antonelli and Kalk: Sounds as familiar together as if it had been growing (up) together. (In fact they spent quite a long time together eating at one table - though not off one plate)

Kalk and Antonelli: A step that wasn’t planned – but all the nicer it is to considerately take it now. Meanwhile one authorizes to dance, the other proves more playful and melodious than ever before.

Antonelli on Kalk: Three sparkling tracks that are danceable without being constraining. Listenable without having to intellectualize. Tracks that neither play to the gallery nor need breaks to bring about suspense. Three little tales from the country of minimal monoliths.

Of course I’m A Clicktrack’s only simulating a ‘real’ track. At any rate it’s clicking more distinctly than a whole genre of music has in the last few years. In a beautifully soft manner it builds itself up, bass and beat providing the necessary amount of grounding. The courses of two melodies float-up like soap bubbles, dancing and bobbing around each other, entwined, spaced out.

Surrender doesn’t waste any time, nervously it’s rushing forward soon as it’s let out. Sounds a little darker but without getting sinister. Swelling, Harmonia-like sounds arise hazy notions. However certainty will not be gained – the next moment’s already past.

Esplanade gets explicit. But only after a while: It takes more than a minute before the first bassdrum, the most intense on the EP, starts and another minute before the bassline comes in – detroitish? The dancefloor opens its arms, the pretty little head gently swaying between its shoulders.

Stefan Schwander, known as Antonelli, has produced electronic music in Düsseldorf since the mid-1990s. He works under multiple pseudonyms—including A Rocket in Dub, Repeat Orchestra, and Harmonious Thelonious—and collaborates with artists like Jörg Burger (as Pop Up). His style blends techno, disco (notably Giorgio Moroder), new wave, dub, abstract electronica, and African music.