- It doesn't have a name, but it's definitely a movement. The post-genre, internet-fuelled, club-ready underground on display at Panorama Bar last Thursday started with Fade To Mind and encompasses GHE20G0TH1K, Janus and NON Worldwide among others. Stockholm's Staycore are the latest addition to the family, and this showcase, thrown by the people behind one of Berlin's premier festivals, CTM, at the city's most famous club made their arrival official.
If you're not familiar with this scene, it might have been hard to differentiate between the night's blends of rap, ballroom, dem bow, reggaeton, kuduro, R&B edits and other regional club sounds. But in fact, each DJ had their own style. Staycore co-founder Dinamarca was the roughest in the mix, but her evenly-paced set was full of earworm synths and syncopated Latin rhythms. Berlin resident Mechatok had all the latest dubs: new tracks by M.E.S.H. and Endgame sounded great, but it was his own instrumental, "Fix Up," that sounded the freshest. Mechatok also knows the power of R&B vocals—by playing them next to Lorenzo Senni edits, he underlined the epic emotionality of both.
Toxe was arguably the most interesting act of the night. With her dissonant, hard-edged juxtapositions, she was prone to throwing the dance floor off course, but that's expected in a scene so full of dramatic gestures. The night's highlight, though, was the previously unknown Alx9696. His impeccable selection of reggaeton, African electronic pop, Brazilian baile and other polyrhythmic dance music was full of energy and swing, winding down with dirty Dutch house and a track by the Janus artist Kablam.
The crowd at Panorama Bar was noticeably young, which isn't surprising given who was playing. Toxe is 18, Mechatok is 19, Alx9696 is 20. In their late 20s, Staycore founders Dinamarca and Ghazal are the veterans of the crew. Before his set, Alx9696 told me one of the things that drew him to Dinamarca and Ghazal as a teenager was a shared sense of otherness—all three are children of immigrants in Stockholm. It may not have a name, but this strain of club music is proving itself a sanctuary for outsiders.