Sultry low-end grooves from a rising house enchantress.
"What kind of music do I actually want to play?" Every artist asks themselves this at some point in their career. What is a sound? And why do we personally identify with it? For Lea Lang, AKA dj sweet6teen, this question is the guiding force behind her RA Mix.
Born in Aachen, a German spa city close to the border with Belgium, Lang found her musical feet in the vibrant student hub of Cologne. It was while studying social work at the Technische Hochschule that she fell into the nightlife scene.
Finding her sound wasn't an instant process. Lang cut her teeth on breaks-heavy house and prog (think Angel D'Lite), traces of which you can hear peppered across RA.1004. But as she explains in this week's Q&A, the pandemic years were, musically, a turning point.
"High BPMs and short-lived trends became very dominant and I realised I couldn't stand the pace anymore," she writes. "That's when my sound naturally shifted into something more minimalist and timeless."
Nowadays, you'll find Lang in Berlin during the week, and on weekends… well, take your pick. A busy touring schedule means she's on the road almost constantly —this summer she's debuted at Horst Arts & Music, Butik, Dimensions and Panorama Bar (to name just a few).
And her RA Mix? It oozes charm from the jump. Buoyant with gyrating low-end, it's hard to think her sound was ever anything else: vocals twirl around analogue basslines, material à la Eddie Richards and Terry Francis's historic Wiggle parties, as well as the kind of bongo action that wouldn't feel out of place in an Apollonia session. Call it waft, wiggle, smooch house—whatever it is, we like it.
@djsweet6teen
Find the tracklist and interview at https://ra.co/podcast/1022