Belgium has an extraordinarily rich heritage when it comes to electronic music. Think of the mass raves where acts like Patrick DeMeyer and his Tragic Error project dictated what happened. New Beat was the name given to what emerged from genres such as Hi-NRG and EBM at the end of the 1980s and rumbled out of sound systems in our neighbouring country. It certainly started in Belgium’s most famous club, Fuse, which opened in Brussels in 1994 and celebrated its 30th anniversary last year.
The resident there is Diego Cortez Salas, whose sets are based on the eighties and nineties and develop a powerful, mechanical physicality – electronic body music doesn’t have its name for nothing. What the Peruvian-born DJ plays is reminiscent of the days when dance music smelled mainly of ecstasy sweat and warehouses and dropouts danced barefoot to the first progressive sounds on the beaches of Goa.
At home in the rave scene
This may sound overly romantic and clichéd, but Salas manages to translate the atmosphere of the past into the present with stylistic confidence. This also applies to his productions, which are directly influenced by his residency. He recently released his second album »To The Places I Call(ed) Home« on R.A.N.D. Muzic x Echocentric Records, which conceptually pays homage to his Peruvian homeland, but musically orientates itself towards Belgium with high-speed prog, aggressive drumming and washed-out vocoder voices. His EPs have already been released on prestigious labels such as Jennifer Cardini’s Correspondant, contemporary trance-oriented X-Kalay and Binh’s Time Passages.
What DC Salas is doing is booming: the last few years have seen a multifaceted comeback for progressive trance, which has brought the mad melodies and dizzying breakdowns back to the dancefloor with a pop-like ephemerality. He eschews the latter in favour of the rich heritage of original Belgian rave culture.
