UPFRONTBEATS

Merin turns five and continues its remit to showcase the world’s best production talent across genres’

Renaissance returning VA series has built a real following in its 18 month life; although a platform with a more experimental ethos at heart, designed to focus on exciting, emerging talent, it’s now met with the same eager anticipation as their marquee releases – and Vol.5 does not disappoint.

First up is Martin Badder, who returns to Renaissance hot off the success of ‘Another Life’ to further continue their blossoming relationship. Here he joins forces with Because of Art and Katie MacDonald to present an emotive breaks track that began life a decade ago! ‘I was in a duo called Palo Alto with vocalist Nik Walker,’ he explains, ‘we were working on a track and brought in Katie to record a backing vocal. We never finished that song funnily enough, but I developed a fixation with one of the lines she laid down and I knew I had to work with it. More recently I discovered Because of Art through his track ‘Pray’. By that point I’d finally begun playing around with the vocal and it crossed my mind that bringing BoA in for a collaboration could take things to a great place, which, I hope, it did!’

Next, we head overseas to a country that’s never far from Renaissance A&R interests, Israel. The electronic music hotbed continues to incubate some of the world’s best dance tracks and in ‘Bubblegum’, which follows in the footsteps of Millero’s ‘French On Acid’, Renaissance have another indie winner. It’s the result of 3 creative minds – Dor Reuveni, Takiru and Mosko with further input from 2030. It wasn’t conceived in Israel though, rather France as Dor confirms, ‘We all went on a two week writing trip to this small village near Bordeaux, where most of it came together in a late night sitting. But it was quite dreamy and, when we revisited it back at home, decided to take a more aggressive approach; it needed some gangsta energy, which worked a treat and finished it off nicely!’

Things then take a deeper turn with the beautiful ‘Still Life’ from Come Closer, which is the group moniker for Mike Spirit and Asaga, who describe the vocal as, ‘simple, strange and seizing’. ‘We can work quickly in the studio,’ they continue, ‘the track actually came together in a few hours and we instantly knew it had something about it. But this wasn’t confirmed till we circulated the track to friends to play out; we need to give thanks to Yulia Niko because she took it to Tulum and we suddenly started receiving messages asking when it will be released, so it’s great to finally get this out there; we are happy to be part of the Renaissance family.’

The EP comes to a rousing crescendo with a melodic techno powerhouse from Fernando Lagreca. ‘Cyclone’ sees the talented Spaniard channel his native land for inspiration, as he confirms, ‘I live in a beach town near Barcelona and usually go to the sea during winter; the track idea came after I was sitting on this windy beach staring at the sand when a whirlpool of leaves suddenly appeared, dancing in this mini vortex, hence ‘Cyclone’… I took the phone’s audio recording app and sang the small melody that came into my head, which became the main part on the track. I rushed straight back into the studio and the complete record was born.’