Secret Thirteen Mix 136 - Cosmin TRG

Photo by Björn Jonas

A cinematic and poetical music journey across the corners of dramatic parallel worlds

The author of the mix is Cosmin Nicolae, better known as Cosmin TRG, a Romanian electronic music producer and DJ, now based in Berlin, Germany. Cosmin is globally known for his ground-breaking dubstep and polar techno works that immersed many clubbers into the state of trance and complete bliss.

Almost a decade has passed since Cosmin’s first debut release “Put You Down” for the dance music label Hessle Audio in 2007. These years were quite fruitful for this talented artist as two full-length albums “Simulat” and “Gordian” were released on Modeselektor's 50Weapons label and numerous singles/EPs on such notable labels as Tempa, Bleep, Running Back and Hemlock. Moreover, Cosmin’s works were included in !K7, Rush Hour, Fabric and Ninja Tune musical catalogs. His recent 12" “Repetitiv” was released by his own brand-new Fizic platform, an auteur-driven record label which seeks to deliver unique, high-quality audio-visual products of his individual work.

Growing up on the melodies and rhythms by such electronic music pioneers as Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Orbital and Jeff Mills, and taking cues from 90s era leftfield electronics, warehouse techno and minimal film scores, Cosmin TRG has created his own brand of modern, textural sonics in a contemporary context. By cultivating mixture of hypnotic house, techno and dub music, Cosmin built his preeminent DJing technique that lead him to present his skills at the world leading dancefloors ranging from Fabric, Berghain, Boiler Room to Sonar, Trouw and many other venues across the globe. His broad and observant approach to house and techno standards opened him slots on podcasts for Resident Advisor, XLR8R, Fact Mag or CLR among others.

“Secret Thirteen Mix 136” is a scrupulous collage mix by Cosmin TRG where author reveals himself as a music collector and DJ. This mix isn’t directly following any of his previous works and it definitely enriches the portrait of his personality, showing him as a diverse and creative musician, who continuously examines the sound and expands the ideas, concepts and does not allow himself to stuck on the same musical level, which is a mistake that many artists do these days.

The whole recording includes 27 kaleidoscopic and accurately cut records originally released in the last 3 decades. Works by such prominent and characteristic artists as Mitchell Akiyama, Delia Derbyshire, Deaf Center, Porter Ricks, Roly Porter, Demdike Stare, Autechre or even Marcel Duchamp allows the listener to predict how diverse and contrasting this mix could be. However, Cosmin’s precise, patient and thoughtful mixing of tracks erases the boundaries between these works of different techniques, styles and time periods. Cosmin is creating the continuous wholeness that could easily stand as an imaginary soundtrack for a slow plot drama film. Only in this mix you can hear an inspiring and harmonious collision between Delia Derbyshire’s & Barry Bermange’s recording “Running” and Mica Levi’s “Death”, which is actually a soundtrack of “Under the Skin”, one of the best mystery films of the year 2013. Cosmin constantly forms completely new formations, leaving the mind positively confused and obsessed by these beautiful architectural sounds. There is no doubt that this mix could be a life changer for many of you, the true mind voyagers of the new age.

Cosmin TRG about his mix:

This piece of audio was constructed in a hypnopompic state. It consists of compositions laid out one after the other, or superimposed in a very simple manner. The sonics in this collage are at the border between the non-linear logic of dreams and the concrete, abrasive onset of reality. They perpetuate patterns and textures that belong to something more ancient than memory, a syntax older than words. Largely sophistic, these arguments are to be taken lightly.

Thank you for the opportunity to present these sounds.

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Tracklist:

01. Howlround - Cantonese Subs / Fog At 5am [The Fog Signals, 2012]
02. Ursula Bogner - Uranotypie (1978) [Faitiche, 2011]
03. Delia Derbyshire / Barry Bermange - Running [Psychic Sounds, 2014]
04. Mica Levi - Death [Milan, 2014]
05. Marcel Duchamp - Air De Paris [Philips, 1986]
06. Eric Holm - Stave [Subtext, 2014]
07. Thomas Köner ‎- Novaya Zemlya [Denovali Records, 2012]
08. Deaf Center - Low Field [Miasmah, 2006]
09. Joe Jones - Solar Music Hot House [Slowscan, 1994]
10. Greg Haines - The Tired Diary [Miasmah, 2006]
11. AER - Take Off Your Clothes [Sub Rosa, 1998]
12. Valanx - Encrypt/Decrypt [diametric., 2012]
13. Mitchell Akiyama - Strategies For Combatting Invisibility [Sub Rosa, 2005]
14. Demdike Stare - Hashshashin Chant [Modern Love, 2011]
15. Anthony Pateras - Burton [Editions Mego, 2012]
16. Toshirō Mayuzumi - Prelude For String Quartet (1961) [Deutsche Grammophon, 1968]
17. Oren Ambarchi - Murmur [Touch, 1999]
18. Delia Derbyshire / Barry Bermange - Falling [Psychic Sounds, 2014]
19. Unknown Artist - Distors Util 003
20. Roly Porter - Gravity [Subtext, 2013]
21. Lilith / Scott Gibbons - Stone.Crystal [Sub Rosa, 1994]
22. Ryoji Ikeda - Test Pattern [Raster-Noton, 2008]
23. Klangkrieg - Korpus 1 [N D, 1996]
24. Porter Ricks - Port Of Nuba [Chain Reaction, 1996]
25. Five Times Of Dust - Missile Logic T [Minimal Wave, 2013]
26. Pansonic - Toisaalta [Blast First, 2000] + Fragment 28.10
27. Autechre - VLetrmx21 [Warp Records, 1995]

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