Various - Balance 027: Magda

Balance Records: 2015

The only reason I'm reviewing so many Balance mixes, this. Yeah, I've said I kept tabs on the series, but wasn't inspired to look back either. Magda though, I'm always on the look-out for more mixes from her, so when I heard she'd been tapped for the venerated prog and tech-house brand, you bet I double spit-taked. Ms. Chojnacka's aesthetic is so outside the traditional Balance wheel-house, it may as well be on a different planet. I suppose one could made a distant connection to Joris Voorn, in that they've both done Hawtin-esque ultra-mixes, but that's about it.

Maybe Balance felt the need for another change though, having used up just about all the prog veterans to this point. Perhaps Danny Tenaglia's heavy techno outing had the Balance staff feeling that pull (which would explain why this was followed by Stacey Pullen). Or supposedly they realized they'd never had a woman do a mix for them. With an utter dearth of prominent lady jocks within prog circles, however, they had to reach beyond the genre aisles to make amends.

So this doesn't come off like a typical Balance release, instead seemingly celebrating Magda's own history in the commercial mix domain. The cover art is like a scrapbook of her prior outings (open mouth for Fabric 49; creepy doll/mannequin from She's A Dancing Machine). As such, the music within adheres to no past trends within Balance canon, no established genres carried upon. This is a Magda set through and through, and if you only come to this series' style of prog and tech-house, you're gonna' have a bad time.

Yet I feel so hypocritical enjoying the weirdo minimal and odd-ball nu-jazz of CD1, because isn't this the sort of stuff that soured me on Agoria's set? A little, yeah, but Magda just does it better. Really, she does better what a lot of her peers do (for sure a lone bright spot during 'mnml's suffocating dominance), and its a crying shame she never got the due others received, but perhaps appearing on Balance would help endear her to a fresh audience. Or not, her quirky selections being a bit much for the prog faithful. Heck, some of the 'tunes' toward the end of CD1 were a bit much for me, and I'm usually more than willing to take the ride on whatever strange road Magda drives us on.

Anyway, CD1's traditionally the 'indulgent' set in these Balance releases, but does the clubbier CD2 deliver in any shape or form? If you like your stripped-down tech-house and acid boogie, most definitely! It's more straight-forward compared to Magda's older commercial mixes – no super-dense mash-ups of four minimal techno tracks at once, or something – but gets my shoulders shufflin' and my bottom wigglin' in my chair just the same. Once again, Ms. Chojnacka remains one of the few who delivers exactly what I like to hear in this style of music. To be fair though, it's been a very small sample size.

Various - fabric 49: Magda

Fabric: 2009

No, I'm not indulging in another Fabric On A Budget run. I bought this because I actually wanted to have it, hear it, and most likely replay it at some future date. There's tons of Fabric mixes like that out there, though many aren't budget-conscious friendly (UK importing's killer on the finances, even when the disc itself is less than a buck/quid/pig's foot). If I'm buying a Fabric mix on a not-so-budget, why this one in particular? Why not one of the cooler names that have graced the franchise's DJ mix series, like Weatherall, or John Peel, or LTJ Bukem, or Global Communication, or (namedrop, namedrop, ad infinitum)? Heck, why settle for fabric 49 for that matter, when the nearby, milestonic fabric 50 is so much more very important? Alright, I admit it! I got a crush for Magda. Le'mee alone about it now.

Seriously though, seeing the cover of her contribution to the Balance series got me reflecting on her other mix CDs – er, all two of them - and whether they stood up now that minimal and simmering tech-house isn't as popular as it t'was a decade past. I’d long known she had a different approach to the sound, one not so hard-focused on gazing into the microscopic lint of techno’s navel. She had the foresight to see Hu-Man Friend Hawtin’s wacky minimal branding for the malarkey it was, one of the first of the M_nus camp to go their own way. She even established her own label with Troy Pierce and Marc Houle, chaps who both shared her sentiments in the way minimal was going in the back-half of the ‘00s (re: wrongly).

Magda’s a DJ whose actions have earned plenty respects from me is what I’m saying, even without taking in a huge amount of her output. Not that there’s much to dabble within the CD market anyway, fabric 49 only her second official mix disc, coming three years after She’s A Dancing Machine. Heck, if you think that’s a mighty gap, Balance 027 took twice that time to spur Madame Chojnacka back into the mixing studio (a couple promotional stints with Resident Advisor and Trax Magazine notwithstanding).

Obviously, Magda wasn’t doing another epic stitch-n-slice mix with seventy odd cuts for Fabric, but she still packs in over thirty spread out over the course of the CD, averaging about two loops/layers/mixes within each indexed portion. Artists range from old-timey weirdos (Goblin, Yello) to trendy tastemakers (Robert Babicz, Gaiser, Cristian Vogel, Jimmy Edgar), plus requisite contributions from her own close circle of contacts (Marc Houle, Heartthrob, Luciano). Of note are selections from outlier Berlin label ~scape, who I know almost nothing about. Help me, Lord Discogs!

The music mostly keeps to her realm of loose, low-key tech-house groove, with splashes of techno bleep and IDM quirk thrown in for good measure. You know what’s gone from this ‘minimal’ mix though? White noise hiss! Plinky-plonk monotony! Oh man, so wonderful hearing such a set from late-‘00s era fabric.

Magda - She's A Dancing Machine

M_nus: 2006

Magda is Madgdalena Chojnacka, a very important person in the world of techno. Because she’s a woman, see. And women don’t do techno apparently, but she does, making her important. Bunch of hogwash far as I’m concerned – the likes of Ellen Allien has long made a mark on the predominantly Boys-Only club of clubbing culture, with plenty more female jocks rising in prominence this past decade. Magda though, she had the benefit of being pals with Richie F’n Hawtin, the most very important person in the world of techno during the mid-‘00s. Despite being long time friends even before moving to Berlin, she got tagged as something of a hanger-on, also a bunch of hogwash as far as I’m concerned. So she benefited from being part of M_nus’ inner circle. At least she came out of the minimal fiasco with some integrity intact (unlike too many others I won’t namedrop).

For one thing, she never flooded the market with material, sticking to the touring circuit and letting the great M_nus hype machine do the rest. Smart idea, what with the minimal scene quickly growing flooded with plink-plonk nonsense and dry-as-dirt DJ mixes. There was always something just a little more unique about her sets though, a bit of funkiness in a typically sterile environment. Come see the cute DJ, stay because she’s got your feet locked on the floor!

When Magda finally did put her name to a physical format though, she went out of her way to challenge the norm, following in the Plastikman’s footsteps in rethinking the idea of what a DJ mix could be. She’s A Dancing Machine lists seventy-one tracks in its list, all cut, looped, spliced and Ableton’d onto a single CD. Yes, it’s minimal techno, but this is how such music is best served, using snippets, bits, and pieces for an icy cool mix. Things are constantly shifting and changing, all the while maintaining a sense of forward momentum without getting lost in monotonous effects wank. For the love of an 808, I cannot understand why so many minimal mixes don’t do this. DJs will layer once or thrice, but always in a clinical manner, seldom with the same sense of loose groove Magda employs here. I don’t doubt constructing sets of this sort takes a ridiculous amount of time, so it’s easier to just do the standard mix CD of lining up your tracks of similar genre origin. Compared to She’s A Dancing Machine though, such sets are a right bore, far too safe and predictable. Here, I’m constantly engaged by every little quick twist and turn played.

Okay, this still are mostly serious minimal techno, with all the familiar names of that era popping in. Magda’s debut mix CD won’t convince you to check this music further once you’ve long written it off. If you’ve a little curiosity over what that scene’s big fuss was though, She’s A Dancing Machine is one of the better offerings available to soak your ears in.