Mixes on repeat this week: August 3, 2026
Marlon Hoffstadt
Marlon Hoffstadt is having a better time than everyone else, and he would like you to join him. The Berlin DJ records as DJ Daddy Trance, a name that comes from fatherhood and from a wholehearted love of the genre, and his sets bounce between trance, hard house and nineties eurodance without ever settling. He is entirely serious about the music and not remotely serious about himself.
The Lofi set in Amsterdam gets gnarly fast and stays there, an outdoor floor running trance melodies over hard house kicks and hooks nobody needs introducing. He is unapologetically committed to sending a crowd home more alive than it arrived, and you will not see more hands in the air than this.
Live @ Lofi, Amsterdam (2026)Justine Perry
Justine Perry works at the fast end of techno without letting it turn brittle. The French-born, Berlin-based producer builds from trippy texture and forward momentum, deep enough to sink into and quick enough to keep you alert, and that sound has carried her through Berghain, Tresor and Radion. She holds a residency at Kalt in Strasbourg and puts real work into queer parties and into leaving floors safer than she found them.
Her hour for SECTION. in London arrived the same month as Transit Motion, her second EP and her first for X/Y/Secret, four tracks with nothing spare on them, and the set runs on the same instinct. It moves early and keeps moving, hypnotic in the way a long drive is, where the repetition is the point and only the scenery changes.
SECTION. (March 2026)Dual Pistols
Dual Pistols holds a residency at KHIDI in Tbilisi. His techno is raw and unyielding, hypnotic and threaded with tribal percussion, built from repetitive grooves that gather weight instead of resolving. It sounds like the club itself, which makes sense, since he is one of the people shaping what that sounds like.
This is the fourteenth Night Cuts, KHIDI's own series, recorded on their floor last February. It is a three-hour journey that unfolds slowly, the same grooves coming round again with more force behind them each time, until the floor has gone somewhere it did not plan on.
KHIDI Night Cuts (Feb 2026)Disguised
Disguised is Alvaro and Domenik, two producers from southern Germany who met at a techno party in 2014 and have worked as a pair out of Berlin ever since. They make techno that is fast and melodic at the same time, driving drums beneath hypnotic lines that keep climbing toward a peak. They run Inherit Records, started in 2020, and have made RSO and its Robus floor something close to a second studio.
This is their closing set on OPAN, the outdoor floor at RSO, on the Sunday of the fourth Heisss birthday in July 2026. Closing out a birthday weekend is its own discipline, since everyone still standing is there on purpose and the only thing that will hold them is honest momentum. They play it accordingly, melodic where it counts and relentless everywhere else.
RSO, 4 Years HEISSS (Jul 2026)NXN
Nadia and Natalie had each made a name across Europe before they became NXN in 2022, and the partnership suits them. Their sets run warm and organic through house, afro house and tech house, carried by samples that arrive from nowhere and a bassline they refuse to bury. Their floors are open to anyone, and they have built them that way on purpose.
Their hour for HÖR in Berlin, from an Apolonia Invites show in March last year, is deep and afro and a good deal more playful than that suggests. The grooves roll, the thing keeps tipping euphoric, and their enjoyment of it is the most contagious part.
HÖR Live Set (Mar 2025)The carousel
Sources
Marlon Hoffstadt (Berlin; he/him) — https://www.insomniac.com/music/artists/marlon-hoffstadt/ + https://metalmagazine.eu/en/post/marlon-hoffstadt (Apr 2026) + https://www.amsterdam-dance-event.nl/en/artists-speakers/marlon-hoffstadt/2050829/ + https://lofi.amsterdam/about/, verbatim: - (a) Not-serious framing (p1 opener): Metal Magazine, his own words: "I don't think DJs should be taken seriously. As a matter of fact, I think DJs take themselves way too seriously." ADE bio corroborates the register: "Some say it's trance, some say it's hard house. And again others say its just dad noises." - (a) DJ Daddy Trance = fatherhood + trance: Metal Magazine biographical note, "Also known as DJ Daddy Trance (named after being a father and loving trance music)." ADE: "Berlin's first dad with a buggy full of bangers." - (a) Refuses one lane / trance + hard house + eurodance: Metal Magazine, his own words: "I'm more interested in making music that refuses to belong entirely to one specific sonic world" and "The emotional core of trance and the energy that Eurodance had in the '90s, that feeling of intense emotion and release, is still something I connect to." - (a) Serious about the music, not about himself (p1 close): https://www.insomniac.com/music/artists/marlon-hoffstadt/, verbatim: "Dead serious about what he does but never taking himself too seriously." → paraphrased as "He is entirely serious about the music and not remotely serious about himself." This closer also does defensive work: it keeps a joyful slide from tipping into reading unserious about the music, which voice-dna.json warns against ("Do not let playful become meme-cringe or unserious about the music"). - Sourced but OFF-SLIDE from the same page: "'There is no guilty pleasure,' he says. 'Only pleasure.'" (drove the p1 closer through two drafts; the paraphrase "a pleasure needs excusing" read stilted and was replaced) and "an anti-purist dance floor hero, too poppy for the underground, too ravey for the mainstream, never really fitting in, and never really caring." - (a) Unapologetic dedication to making a crowd feel more (p2): Insomniac, verbatim: "A man dedicated to the simple mission of making you feel more than you've ever felt, Marlon is and always will be unapologetically Marlon." → paraphrased as "He is unapologetically committed to sending a crowd home more alive than it arrived." (Note: an earlier fetch truncated this sentence mid-word at "unap…", so the "unapologetically" framing was only recovered on a second fetch. Worth re-fetching a page when a quote runs to the edge of what you captured.) - (a) The set's energy: Insomniac, verbatim: "The DJ sets, of course, are just as electrifying, an explosive burst of pure energy every time." → basis for "gets gnarly fast and stays there." - (c) OWNER-ATTESTED (Shiwei, 2026-08-03): (i) the set is gnarly — he asked for the word specifically, since Marlon drops a remix of KATSEYE's "Gnarly" in it (verified as a real track: released 30 Apr 2025, lead single from Beautiful Chaos, #5 on NME's and #2 on the NYT's 2025 songs lists). The track and the remix are deliberately NOT named on the slide at his request; "gnarly" stands purely as a description of the set, with the pun left as a private joke for anyone who knows. (ii) It was an outdoor set. Corroborated: lofi.amsterdam's own about page lists events "on our courtyard," and Marlon has a TikTok titled "Lofi Courtyard Amsterdam." An earlier draft said "outdoors in daylight"; "in daylight" was cut as over-specific. (iii) "You will not see more hands in the air than this" is his read, consistent with Marlon's own "raise your hands and sing along" and Insomniac's "fists pumping." - (c) Musical detail generalizes. "Trance melodies over hard house kicks and hooks nobody needs introducing" comes from his verified genre range (trance, hard house, eurodance) plus the pop-hooks-into-club-music line, not from a tracklist for this specific upload. 1001tracklists logs his Lofi appearance as Dance, Electro, Pop, Trance and Hard Dance, which fits, but it is user-generated and was never fetched. - Sourced but OFF-SLIDE from this passage: the track names ("his breakthrough version of Kid Cudi's 'Day n' Night'", "It's That Time") — drafted in, then cut at Shiwei's request to keep the slide on the room rather than the discography; "the singalongs they inevitably inspire" and the physical detail "fists pumping, sweat flying" — both carried earlier p2 drafts (as "records people shout back at him", "drenched and hoarse", "hands up") and were cut when Shiwei rejected the hoarse/drenched framing; "Feel everything… raise your hands and sing along"; and "tracks like this influenced a young generation of producers and pointed toward a new direction for European dance at large" — deliberately never used, since it is a promoter writing about their own booking and is a much larger claim than a set-rec slide should carry. - (a) His test for a record: Metal Magazine, verbatim: "If something feels good, emotional, or simply fun, that is reason enough for me." Sourced but now OFF-SLIDE — the Insomniac guilty-pleasure line says the same thing more vividly and replaced it in the second copy revision. - Fetch note: insomniac.com 403s WebFetch and a Chrome-UA curl, but returns 200 to a Safari UA plus Referer: https://www.insomniac.com/ — the same trick that unlocked the RA bio for NXN (see that block). mixmag.net stays blocked either way (Cloudflare, not DataDome), so the Mixmag cover feature was never used. - (a) The set IS Lofi Amsterdam, ~3 hours: the SoundCloud upload (/marlonhoffstadt/lofi, duration 10,387,045 ms = 10387.045 s = 2h53m) is byte-for-byte the same recording as his own YouTube upload titled "Marlon Hoffstadt Live @ Lofi Amsterdam" (channel "Marlon Hoffstadt aka DJ Daddy Trance", lengthSeconds 10387, uploaded 2026-06-18) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USfhu927Sxw. The durations match exactly, which is what licenses adding "Amsterdam" to the SoundCloud title's bare "LOFI 2026". - (a) Lofi = converted bus garage, free-spirited ethos: https://lofi.amsterdam/about/, verbatim: "An old bus garage transformed into a club: LOFI was created with the aim of breathing new life into Amsterdam's free-spirited (night) culture." Sourced but now OFF-SLIDE — Shiwei cut the venue description in the second copy revision. The slide names Lofi and Amsterdam only, which the set title already carries. - (a) The feeling he writes around: Metal Magazine on his track "Breathe," his own words: "Breathe reminds me of those endless nights with friends; that coming-of-age feeling where you are completely in the moment and, somehow, it feels as though it could last forever" and "The song is about freedom and those last breaths of your teenage years, when time feels infinite." Sourced but now OFF-SLIDE — carried p2's close through two drafts, cut in the second copy revision when the Insomniac dancefloor passage took over p2. - NOT claimed: the age he started DJing (Metal Magazine says 17, other write-ups say 15 — conflicting, so it is off-slide); the specific party/date behind the Lofi recording (1001tracklists and djguide.nl both place a Marlon Hoffstadt "Daddy's Summer Rave" at Lofi Amsterdam on 2026-06-07, which fits the June 18 YouTube upload, but neither the SoundCloud nor the YouTube title names the party, so the slide carries no date beyond "2026"); EDC Las Vegas 2025 and Tomorrowland 2026 (sourced but off-slide); sobriety (off-slide, not ours to lead with).
Justine Perry (French-born, Berlin-based; she/her) — https://www.awakenings.com/en/artists/justine-perry/295942/ + her own SoundCloud profile bio (soundcloud.com/justineperry) + https://dynamicreflection.bandcamp.com/album/intuition-ep + https://justineperry.bandcamp.com/album/transit-motion, verbatim: - (a) Origin, base, sound, venues: Awakenings artist page, verbatim: "French-born but Berlin-based DJ & producer, Justine Perry proposes a timeless sound of fast-paced, deep and trippy grooves that have gained the likes of many key venues in Europe such as Berghain, Tresor, Rex Club, Khidi, IFZ or Radion to name a few." Her own SC bio agrees and adds the list "Berghain, Tresor, essaim, Fuse, K41 and Radion." → the slide names only Berghain, Tresor and Radion, the three both sources share. - (a) Kalt residency + queer/safer-space work: Awakenings, verbatim: residency at "Kalt, a respected Strasbourg nightclub"; as an LGBTQIA+ community member she emphasizes "building diversity and a safer environment in music." Her own SC bio: "A resident at Strasbourg's acclaimed club Kalt, she actively supports emerging artists and is engaged in the LGBTQIA+ community, contributing to safer and more inclusive spaces through her involvement in queer parties." → paraphrased as "puts real effort into queer parties and into making floors safer than she found them." - (a) Debut EP = Dynamic Reflection, 2024: https://dynamicreflection.bandcamp.com/album/intuition-ep — "Intuition EP," Justine Perry, label Dynamic Reflection, released 14 November 2024; label copy: "Dynamic Reflection is proud to present the debut release of rising star Justine Perry." - (a) Second EP = Transit Motion, X/Y/Secret, March 2026: https://justineperry.bandcamp.com/album/transit-motion — "Transit Motion," label X/Y/Secret, released 13 March 2026, four tracks (Collapse Signal, Illusion, Hollow Bounce, Groove Station); label copy "Four lean, driving techno cuts built for momentum." → paraphrased as "four tracks with no spare weight on them," deliberately reworded to avoid copying "lean… built for momentum." - (a) The set is SECTION. in London, March 2026: her own SoundCloud set description, verbatim: "Stream at SECTION. London recorded in March 2026. Here is the stream: https://youtu.be/pkJJGupq5v8". The SECTION. YouTube channel's upload is titled "Justine Perry | Techno DJ Set | SECTION. | March 2026," published 2026-03-31, lengthSeconds 3408 (56m48s) → the slide's "Her hour for SECTION." and "arrived the same month as Transit Motion" (set = March 2026, EP = 13 March 2026). - (c) "hypnotic the way a long drive is hypnotic" — our own image, built off the verified "fast-paced, deep and trippy" descriptor and the EP title. Not from any source. - NOT claimed: her real name (unpublished); Rex Club / Khidi / IFZ / essaim / Fuse / K41 (sourced, off-slide to keep the venue list to three); the Blue Hour and Vault Sessions compilations (her SC bio only, not independently verified).
Dual Pistols (Tbilisi; he/him) — https://soundcloud.com/khidi/nightcuts-dualpistols (KHIDI's own episode description) + https://www.acheron-booking.com/khidi-showcase (KHIDI's booking agency), verbatim: - (b) Tbilisi, KHIDI residency, sound: KHIDI's Night Cuts description, verbatim: "The fourteenth recording of the KHIDI Night Cuts series features Dual Pistols, an emerging artist from Tbilisi's electronic music scene, a KHIDI resident and team member. Deeply connected to the club's vision, he delivers an uncompromising, raw, and hypnotic sound shaped by tribal elements. His sets unfold through powerful, repetitive grooves that build and shift with intensity, pulling the dance floor into a deep, evolving journey." → paraphrased as "raw and unyielding, hypnotic and threaded with tribal percussion, built from repetitive grooves that gather weight instead of resolving" (p1) and "a three-hour journey that unfolds slowly, the same grooves coming round again with more force behind them each time, until the floor has gone somewhere it did not plan on" (p2). - "team member" NOT claimed (Shiwei, 2026-08-03). KHIDI's copy calls him "a KHIDI resident and team member" and earlier drafts used the staff role as p1's hook ("works on the team that runs it… a rare view from both sides of the booth"). Cut at Shiwei's request. The slide now says residency only. The surviving line "he is one of the people shaping what that sounds like" is about shaping the room's sound from the booth as a resident, not a staff role. - "emerging" NOT claimed. KHIDI's word, held off the slide under the voice rule against phrasing that exposes how new or unproven an artist is. - "journey" used at Shiwei's explicit request. voice-dna.json lists "took us on a journey" under promo filler; a three-hour journey as a plain noun is the milder form and was the requested framing. Flagged here so a later pass does not silently "correct" it. - (a) Residency corroborated independently: ACHERON (the agency that books the KHIDI showcase) lists Dual Pistols under "KHIDI RESIDENT ARTISTS AVAILABLE FOR THE SHOWCASE" — a second source for the residency beyond KHIDI's own episode copy. - (a) KHIDI opened 2016, is a Tbilisi landmark: ACHERON, verbatim: "KHIDI is a techno club and underground art space in Tbilisi. It was opened in June 2016 and has become a landmark of the city's southern pier of Vashusti Bagrationi Bridge." Sourced but now OFF-SLIDE — carried the club's framing through earlier drafts; dropped when p1 was cut back to the residency line alone. The slide now names KHIDI and Tbilisi only. - (a) The set: Night Cuts #14, recorded 20 Feb 2026, 3h22m: KHIDI, verbatim: "The recording is an excerpt from his set at KHIDI on 20th February, 2026." SoundCloud duration = 12,158,601 ms = 202.6 min = 3h22m → the slide's "More than three hours of it" holds. Series name and "fourteenth" both come from the sentence quoted above. - (c) "The loops turn and turn, shifting by degrees rather than announcing themselves, until what felt like patience reveals itself as pressure" — our own image, built off the verified "repetitive grooves that build and shift with intensity." Not from any source. - Avatar: soundcloud.com/dualpistolz (avatars-UGL6W9TgnhmKLtTq-HT8mTA) — the handle KHIDI tags at the end of the episode description (@dualpistolz). A near-empty soundcloud.com/dualpistols also exists (0 followers, no avatar) and was NOT used. Prod DB row c7065553-2de2-4934-9038-9fc05908aabd has imageurl = NULL, so the SC avatar is on the slide; the DB row still supplies the artistid. Its city: Queens / country: US field is SoundCloud default junk, same as Disguised, and is ignored. - NOT claimed: the word "emerging", which is KHIDI's (voice rule: never phrase momentum in a way that exposes how new or unproven an artist is); his real name (unpublished); RA lists him at KHIDI's 10th Anniversary and at a SMUT Athens x KHIDI night with Phase Fatale, but ra.co returns 403 to every fetch route tried, so neither is on the slide; KHIDI's queer/safe-space programming (sourced via ACHERON, off-slide, not his to carry).
Disguised (Alvaro and Domenik; southern Germany, Berlin-based; they) — https://hoer.live/artist/disguised/ + https://mutual-rytm.bandcamp.com/album/nightrun + the set's own SoundCloud description, verbatim: - (a) Members, formation, 2014 meeting, 2015 duo: HÖR artist bio, verbatim: "Disguised emerged in 2015 when Alvaro and Domenik, both from south of Germany, joined together as a Techno Producer and DJ Duo after meeting at a techno party in 2014." - (a) Berlin base: Mutual Rytm (Nightrun, released 8 May 2026), verbatim: a "German-born, Berlin-based pairing." - (a) Sound: Mutual Rytm, verbatim: "driving drums and hypnotic melodies that build up to intense dancefloor peaks." HÖR: "a unique blend of rapid and melodic techno with influences from Driving and Hypnotic Techno." → paraphrased as "quick and melodic at once, driving drums under hypnotic lines that keep gathering toward a peak." - (a) Inherit Records, founded 2020: HÖR, verbatim: "In 2020, Disguised and Daniel Heinrich launched their independent Techno Record Label, INHERIT, which gained recognition with Beatport Top 10 chart-climbing releases." Mutual Rytm confirms they "operate their own imprint called Inherit Records." - (a) RSO / Robus floor: Mutual Rytm, verbatim: they are "closely connected to their favourite club RSO and its Robus Floor, where most of their musical inspirations happen" → paraphrased as "have made RSO and its Robus floor something close to a second studio." - (a) The set: their own SoundCloud description, verbatim: "Recording of our OPAN (Outdoor Floor at RSO) closing set on Sunday, July 12, 2026, celebrating the 4th Heisss Birthday." ("our" is why the slide reads them as a duo throughout.) - (c) "Closing an outdoor floor at the end of a birthday weekend is its own discipline: everyone still standing is there on purpose" — our characterization of a closing slot, no factual claim. Deliberately makes no claim about daylight or crowd size, neither of which is sourced. - Possessive note: the slide reads "the Sunday of the fourth Heisss birthday," not "Heisss' fourth birthday" — the s-ending possessive rendered awkwardly, and this phrasing is also closer to the source ("the 4th Heisss Birthday"). - NOT claimed: Daniel Heinrich's alias; the "INHERIT presents" series and the Anomalie / PAL Hamburg / Club Ost bookings (sourced via HÖR, off-slide); C115 (sourced via Mutual Rytm, off-slide); the Suara / ISARN / Deadline / Akronym label list (off-slide); real surnames (unpublished). The SoundCloud profile's city: Queens, country: US field is junk metadata and is ignored.
NXN (Nadia and Natalie; DJ duo, Germany; they) — https://ra.co/dj/nxn-de/biography + https://hoer.live/artist/nxn/ + https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAr4tgoxhbk (HÖR BERLIN's own upload) + the set's own SoundCloud description, verbatim: - (a) Duo, members, formation, prior solo careers: RA biography (page title "NXN DJ DUO"), verbatim: "NXN is the dynamic DJ duo comprised of Nadia and Natalie, two experienced and talented musicians who joined forces in March of 2022 to form a powerhouse partnership. Since their debut in April of that same year, they have been wowing audiences across Europe… Prior to their collaboration, Nadia and Natalie had already made a name for themselves as solo artists, performing at numerous events throughout the continent." → paraphrased as "two DJs who had each built a career of their own across Europe before deciding in 2022 that the more interesting project was a shared one." (RA's promo register, "dynamic," "powerhouse," "wowing," is deliberately not carried over.) - (a) Germany: RA slug is nxn-de and the artist's country resolves to urlCode: "DE" in the page's embedded state. The slide says only "across Europe" and names no city, since no source gives one. - (a) Genre range + texture: RA, verbatim: "their unique blend of Tech House, House, Afro House, Melodie Techno, and Progressive House" and "known for their infectious beats, organic sounds, and exciting samples" → the slide names the three genres that fit the set in hand ("house, afro house and tech house") and paraphrases the texture as "warm and organic… samples that arrive from nowhere." - (c) OWNER-ATTESTED: the set is playful, groovy, euphoric, with infectious energy. Shiwei's characterization (2026-08-03) after listening. This overrode an earlier draft that framed the set as gentle and unhurried, which was our inference from NXN's own one-line description ("A nice blend of Afro House and Deep House ✨") and from hoer.live's "House, Tribal" tag. Neither source describes the set's energy, and Shiwei has heard it, so his read governs. On-slide as "a good deal more playful than that suggests," "the grooves roll," "keeps tipping euphoric," and "their enjoyment of it is the most contagious part." Note "contagious" is deliberately used in place of RA's own word "infectious," which describes their beats rather than this set. - (a) The bassline principle (p1 payoff): RA, verbatim: "they believe that the bassline is the heart and soul of any great track, and they go out of their way to ensure that it always takes center stage" → paraphrased as "the bassline runs the track and everything else arranges itself around it." - (a) Inclusion as practice: RA, verbatim: "they are passionate advocates for cultural diversity and celebration. They strive to create an atmosphere of inclusion and acceptance at all of their events, where people from all walks of life can come together to enjoy the music and each other's company." → paraphrased as "a room where everyone is welcome." The clause "which they mean as programming, not sentiment" is (c), our reading of "at all of their events" as a booking/curation commitment rather than a slogan. Reworded hard to stay clear of wellness-cliche register. - (a) The set: HÖR Berlin, Apolonia Invites, 7 March 2025, ~55 min: HÖR BERLIN's own YouTube upload is titled "APOLONIA INVITES - NXN | HÖR - March 7 / 2025," published 2025-03-07, lengthSeconds 3306. The SoundCloud upload (duration 3,296,486 ms = 54m56s) is the same set, ~10s shorter, and NXN's own description confirms it: "HÖR Live Set @ HÖR Radio Show on 07.03.25… Full Live Stream on YouTube https://youtu.be/LAr4tgoxhbk". hoer.live lists two NXN appearances, both APOLONIA INVITES: 7 March 2025 and 9 December 2025. "March last year" is correct (set = Mar 2025, this carousel = Aug 2026). - (b) Deep / afro character of this set: NXN's own SoundCloud description, verbatim: "A nice blend of Afro House and Deep House ✨" → basis for "it sits at the deep and afro end of what they do." Note hoer.live tags the 7 Mar 2025 show "House, Tribal" and the 9 Dec 2025 one "House, Afro House, Indie Dance"; where the platform's tags and the artists' own description differ, the artists' description is used. - (c) "built from percussion and patience rather than pressure" and "The groove arrives before you have noticed it arriving" — our own images. Not from any source. - Avatar: soundcloud.com/nxnofc (avatars-W8H6lTFTo3JQW3aZ-e0lsMg), the account that uploaded the set. Prod DB row eae516fd-67d8-4e9a-a07e-d1c3f8840042 has imageurl = NULL, so the SC avatar is on the slide; the DB row still supplies the artistid. Its city: Queens / country: US field is SoundCloud default junk (same as Disguised and Dual Pistols) and is ignored. - RA fetch note: ra.co 403s both WebFetch and a Chrome-UA curl. It returns 200 to a Safari UA plus Referer: https://ra.co/; the biography then sits in the page's embedded Apollo state. Worth reusing next time an RA bio is needed. - NOT claimed: surnames (unpublished); any city or home club; the "producing their own music… released at early 2025" line from the RA bio (no release found to verify, so it is off-slide); RA's promo adjectives; the 9 Dec 2025 HÖR show.
