RA.819 Maher Daniel

Over three hours of ambient and rolling rhythms from a master of minimal. Since his early days as a resident at the legendary Montreal afterhours club Stereo, Maher Daniel has been a stalwart in the world of minimal-leaning house music. It was there that he learned and mastered the foundations of his style: deep melodies, rolling beats, extended mixes, all put together with a wash of psychedelia. Following a move to Barcelona, the Palestinian-Canadian DJ more firmly struck out on his own, appearing on Lee Burridge's world-conquering All Day I Dream label before starting his own, The Other Side, in 2016. The Other Side has become an important outpost for a kind of dance music that blends old-school microhouse sensibilities with the rolling basslines and three-dimensional sound design of Rominimal, notably through a series of collaborations with Ricardo Villalobos with the Changes EP trilogy. During the pandemic, Daniel also started dipping his toes into ambient music, which starts off this epic, three-hour-plus mix before it plunges into rolling rhythms. He takes the time to stretch out here, mixing plenty of his own work with tracks from Jesper Dahlbäck, Cristi Cons, Dexter and, of course, Ricardo Villalobos, ending with a stunning custom breakbeat edit of Global Communication's ambient techno epic "14:31."