V/A – In The Pocket: The Sound Of Welt Discos
Joe Delon is the kind of DJ who comes across as a fan first and a professional second. Bedded into the Lisbon scene through his work at the Outra Cena club, locked into the global gigging cycle — and now ten releases deep running his Welt Discos label — the UK-born house and techno obsessive has a sincere, music-first attitude you can discern quickly from his much-loved newsletter. Musically, Delon taps into a branch of 4/4 that diverted from tech house when DJs like Nicolas Lutz and Binh started digging for hidden treasure beyond the boundaries of minimal. On Welt Discos, he indulges in that sphere of sound where electro angles, disco sizzle and trance undulations can all mesh into one consistent groove, with plenty of colour splashed on for good measure.
For Welt Discos’ tenth release, Delon presents a macro vision of his taste across 21 tracks. ‘In The Pocket’ is also an authoritative primer on the latest waves being made within this particular pocket of dance music, tipped heavily towards emergent names; consider it a fresh scene survey, with a vibe to match. From the reggae drum fills that open Will Hofbauer’s patient, airy ‘In Stone’ onwards, the tone is set for a smart balance of playful and sincere production with a modernist sheen and plenty of melodic warmth. There’s plenty of choppy, bleepy gear to tickle the brain, from Dana Kuehr’s ‘Rare Candy’ to Eli Verveine’s nimble ‘What Frank Said’, where you can hear the ghost of mid-’00s minimal whispering in the ear of the crafty, modernist grooves. But Delon offers more space to snappier electro formations that crop up early doors — check Billy Jack’s ‘Godo Bee’ — which noticeably peak in the compilation’s latter stretches with the likes of Xiaolin’s rubbery ‘808dreamstate’ and Go Dam’s ‘Waang’.
The latter features the sort of giddy synth flourishes you may well have heard spilling out of SFV Acid’s prolific output if you happened to be tuned into that cult pocket of 2010s machine funk. The Welt Discos world also has space for unabashed chunky house — a sound that seems to exist out of time, simultaneously stuck in the ’90s and able to adopt modern production polish. Peter Pressure rides filtered piano and pop vocal snatches with glee on ‘Morning Wood’ and Saint Guel makes light work of sensual, bumping deep house on ‘Naughty Boy’. Pediment serves up the standout strain of this sub-strata of the compilation on ‘Yes, Yes, No, Yes’ thanks to the track’s rugged, MPC-esque drum shuffle and winding, dreamlike narrative.
It would be strange if there weren’t some curveballs thrown on a compilation of this size, and DJ City serves up one such delight with the subtly wave-tinted, bleep-techno workout ‘More Than A Woman’. The vocoder hits somewhere between sleazy Europop and electroclash, and works a treat in the context of such a lively collection. Elsewhere, Lotéricas RJ has such a wild amount of reverb on the snare pounding out through ‘Alerta De Ofertas’ you can’t help but sit up and pay attention, while the ‘Summer Madness’-esque synth alarm drills straight into the centre of your frontal lobe.
As a tribute to the traditional mix CD format, Delon offers up his own blended version of the compilation for those who want to sink into the vibe undisturbed. What’s striking is how distinct grooves — from sprightly swing to staccato throb — gel together under the same richly musical umbrella he’s curated. It’s a protest against tracky functionality, prioritising character and quirkiness over seamless uniformity. As such, all the tracks stand well on their own, pointing forwards, backwards, left and right in a giddy, unpretentious celebration of some of the most fun, elastic, engaging gear pinging around upfront dance music right now.
