Anna Malysz: The ‘Shine A Light On’ Mix

5 Minute Read

Music

A classy assortment of dubbed out downtempo, deep house and ambient soundscapes from the Leipzig based DJ.

It’s always good to know that music is in safe hands. From time to time the relentless pace of social media and its affect on dance music ‘trends’ can lead us to forgetting what it’s always been really about.

Anna Malysz is a key figure in the German underground, working in numerous capacities hosting dj workshops and as a member of various collectives and projects including the DRIVE series at the recently closed Institut fuer Zukunft, as part of the local club culture network “Livekomm Leipzig” and in the curation of ambient music as part of the Nachtdigital Festival programme.

A keen DJ, she has played at the likes of Paloma, Watergate, about:blank and Golden Pudel and is well versed in a broad array of styles and sounds.

This mix sits at nearly three hours long, demonstrating the far reaching taste Anna has built up. It’s a heady assortment of sounds which lends itself perfectly for the headphones and comes highly recommended.

Listen below:

Please introduce yourself… Who are you, where are you and what are you?

My name is Anna, when DJing Anna Malysz. Based in Leipzig, I’m part of the DJ collective nice4what. I’m passionate about various music genres, and have been booking concerts, club nights and am currently part of a team booking a festival. Other than that, I’m a sociologist working at an University for Art and Design. I like to learn new tools and techniques and to immerse myself in some random rabbit hole of knowledge. At the moment, I’m preparing some interactive visuals for a Nachtdigital club event and working on some coursework including Blender and TouchDesigner.

Where was the mix recorded?

It’s a recording of my warm up for Cosmo and Map.ache at Neue Welle, Leipzig in January. Warm ups are my favorite slot to play. It consists both of digital and vinyl tracks, as you might hear on some I’m a fan of Cosmo’s since her set at the Giegling Party at ADE, so I was preparing my set even more than usual. I aimed for a deep, steady ambient-to-house warm up, but with interesting sound patterns and textures. I’m a big fan of Map.ache anyways and thankful for the invitation and his support.

What’s your favourite recorded mix of all time?

“Finest Mayday” by ATEQ. Shoutout to 50PHIE who showed me!

What was your first DJ set up at home and what is it now?

Our first set up were two Reloop-4000 players Marlene (DJ: enelRAM) and me purchased Kleinanzeigen (german equivalent to Gumtree). The vendor didn’t pack the turntables safe for shipping, he included no turntable covers and only secured it with two sofa pillows, so when it arrived, both tone arms were snapped off. We fixed it by putting toothpicks inside the tone arms as stabilizators and glueing the tone arms together again. They worked well actually and we alternated the set up between her flat and mine.

Now I share a set up with my partner Konsti, who does the “Music for human people” series: Two Technics 1200MK2 and his Omnitronic TRM-202MK3.

If it was an animal what would it be?

I love this question. It’s actually a game Marlene and me are playing sometimes at parties. If this track was an animal, which animal would it be? For this mix, i’d say: A blue hyacinth macaw during dawn, slowly waking up (it took some research to find the right animal).

The mix has both ambient and house parts, it’s colourful but still deep, and the dubby basslines remind me of a parrot cooing.

One record in your collection that is impossible to mix into anything?

One record by Firecracker Records from Edinburgh, on their sublabel Unthank. Its called “1234567” by Lemme Kno. Great tune, but (sadly for beatmatching) it’s in 7/8 time. I bought the record during my first or second year into learning how to DJ, and I’ve been trying to mix it without success. Funnily, I realized just now that the clue is even given in the track’s title.