The Swedish producer known as
DJ Seinfeld first began receiving attention in 2016, not only for his eye-catching moniker, but also for his tunes, which were as rough-edged as they were bittersweet. While everything about his aesthetic, from his track titles and sleeve artwork to his association with a lo-fi house trend filled with similar troublemakers, smacks of irony, his music is actually quite good, and certainly displays more of a reverence for classic deep house than it might appear on the surface. His installment of !K7's long-running DJ-Kicks series begins with "I See U," essentially an ambient echo of the heartbreaking title track to his astonishing 2017 debut album, Time Spent Away from U. From there, he spins a smooth, pleasant selection of low-key (but not necessarily lo-fi) house, sometimes peppered with lush breakbeats or cascading melodies. Things start to heat up during the second half, which ventures into electro; the beats have more of a snap to them, and
Seinfeld's own "Triangle Echoes" has a rolling jungle bassline. The mix's most defiant inclusion is "Take Me" by California vocalist Chela Una, who accuses "You tried to screw me, right now!" over a storming electro rhythm. Shedbug's "Ambroxitil" is more of a deep space sci-fi blast in the vein of
I-F's "Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass." The mix comes back down to Earth with the rainforest-like new age chill of Lou Karsh's "Seep." Nothing in this mix seems blown-out or saturated the way
Seinfeld's initial recordings did (he's claimed to have moved on from the lo-fi style), and more noticeably, these tracks generally aren't as brazenly emotional, either. While DJ-Kicks doesn't quite have as much personality as those prior releases, particularly Time Spent Away from U, the mix proves that
Seinfeld isn't interested in being pegged as a one-trick pony, and that his scope is rapidly expanding. ~ Paul Simpson