The SOS Balance 013 mix warrants your attention today as much as it did in 2008…
José Padilla, the “Father of Balearic Chillout,” once described Balearic as “music that feels like a sunset unfolding before your eyes.” If that’s the case, then Balance 013 mixed by SOS is the inversion of that: those final rays of sunlight dissapating into a new night filled with hedonistic potential. It’s audio seduction spread across three discs.
Desyn. Omid. Demi. Three musical ships in the night who, for a moment during the mid-to-late 00s, tethered for a solid five years to spread a triadic Gospel of New Balaeric Prog. On their own, each were a force to be reckoned with.
Desyn Masiello, label owner of the high-flying Sex On Wax and Alternative Route imprints, already claimed one of the most delicious Balance compilations to date (Balance 008); the omnipresent Omid Nourizadeh (under his 16B moniker amongst many others) was well-established progressive royalty, and Artemis Hajigeorgiou AKA Demi was making waves with in-vogue productions and his Deeper Substance events (check his Deeper Substance remix of David Bowie‘s ‘Lets’ Dance‘ – a total precursor to his SOS experiments.)
The Balance SOS supergroup
Together, they were a polyphonic force transcending their individual parts to create a new frequency. A sell-out SOS on the Thames boat parties, world tours, Pioneer Pro DJ sponsorship deals, a three-hour BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix… For a minute there, they felt like the closest thing the underground prog scene would get to a legitimate supergroup.
Their brand felt box-office. It is against this backdrop that their Balance announcement grew, generating a new kind of excitement not previously seen in progressive circles. And they did not dissapoint.
Balance 013 was created during a time when CDJs popped up in clubs like mushrooms and Sasha introduced prog to laptop DJing. It’s in that environment that the London trio harnessed the emergent technologies to seamlessly combine, edit, and fuse entirely disparate worlds into a cohesive whole.
Still, it takes a bold vision to feature the chamber pop of 80s goth-rock icons like Bryan Ferry, Cocteau Twins, and The Cure with the European tech and IDM of Kollektiv Turmstrasse, AFX, and Speedy J, or melt sublime electro from Aeroplane with Queen samples (The Real Life) before banging in Meat Katie-style breaks (Sugar Caine Pres. Bionik Phunk – Once In A Lifetime [Dub – SOS Edit]).
Yet, SOS figured it out, and they manufactured a musical Bifröst between the melancholy haze of 80s pop and the sleek, shiny pulse of modern dance music. The audacity to seamlessly fuse disparate worlds lies at the core of what makes this 3-disc affair so magnetic.
Balance 013 captured a wavelength filled with the eternal spirit of the Balearic, and turned it into an avant-garde transmission that made sense in San Francisco as it would at Cafe Del Mar, Ibiza.
Fast forward to the present and that frequency still resonates, one still capable of seducing today as much as it did in 2008.
👉🏼 Rediscover this timeless classic on our YouTube, Soundcloud, or Apple Podcasts channels.
🚨 FUN FACT: The below photo was taken in San Franicsco during the Balance 013 USA tour feat. Desyn Masiello with DJ Dory on the decks at that moment… Spot anyone familiar? 👀
