Julian Muller & CAIVA – “Without You” (Live From Earth Klub) [April 29, 2022]

Emotionally fueled throwback techno the Belgian way, listening to Julian Muller & CAIVA “Without You” released on Live From Earth Klub takes you back thirty years to a less cynical time in music.

There is a wonderful tension in this “Without You” collaboration between the techno kicks Julian Muller flies at you like baseballs in a batting cage and the almost sensual breathiness of CAIVA’s vocals, like an Air album on speed. 

Euphoric melodies with enough heft to take up all the airspace in a warehouse interact with cheerful arpeggiations of acid on the title track. “Without You” is undeniably catchy; a techno throwback endowed with a rare earwormy hook. The production is smooth as butter, with the enigmatic cool of early Belgian trance. Percussion shimmers with an icy sizzle overtop the breathy, dreaming vocals. There’s even a smooth selection of blistering liquid jungle which compliments CAIVA’s voice even better, like an unexpected dance remix of a dreamy pop ballad.

Overtop the music, one imagines a flashy montage of gorgeously lovelorn people forgetting it all in some sumptuous Parisian nightclub on the Seine. Muller’s roots as resident at Belgium’s legendary Fuse club introduce a wonderful old school trance sensibility, the shameless euphoria of late nights lost in transformative rhythms.  

“When All The Lights Go On” is a perfectly nostalgic banger that would have been a radio smasher in the European nineties. The baseline blinks with stroboscopic energy under the cooling melancholic vocals.  It’s a deeply uncynical and genuine mode of songwriting that eschews trendy brutality to capture those delightful serotonin (natural or otherwise) filled moments of club floor emotion, which is a lot more interesting and fun to listen to than the alternative. The closer is pure non gimmicky techno, a buoyant kick, her voice redeployed as a lethal understated rhythmic weapon. 

-Winston Mann

Check out Dirty Epic music recommendations here.
Listen to our podcasts here.
Find out more about our events here.

Subscribe
Stay up to date on the latest music from around the globe