World Of The Waking State is the third album from Steffi, a longstanding member of Ostgut Ton both as a producer and resident DJ within the label's associated and much famed Panorama Bar. World Of The Waking State follows in the wake of a devastating Fabric mix, her split 12" with Redshape for our Green Series and last year's brilliant collaboration LP with Martyn as Doms & Deykers.
Having already marked her place in 2017 with the celestial Fabric 94 mix, World Of The Waking State compounds the deep space electro of her Fabric CD with the sort of track that has made her a go-to artist for a taste of the other side of midnight sounds from the Detroit, Rotterdam, London and Berlin schools of techno. A sound that she has been subtly sculpting out a high up place within as a DJ, producer and label-head for the past decade-plus.
Much like Nick Höppner's recent Ostgut Ton album Work, World Of The Waking State finds Steffi offering up a different avenue within the usual canon of house and techno that those unfamiliar may expect. Making a much-welcomed stray away from the almost standard formula of a "DJ making an album", World Of The Waking State in fact features some of the most emotive ambient acid you are gonna find in 2017.
Opening with the crunchy night sky swirl of Different Entities, Steffi carefully lures you into her soundworld with an echo-laden drumbeat that crawls across a dancefloor littered with the remains of the Sunday-before's remains. Before the snare bounds in, we are treated to some Porter Ricks style industrial-dub barrelling, while the snares are gonna have those in who know Plastikman's immense Pakard gurning with joy. The slowing down tempo continues through the blue-core electro of Continuum Of The Mind and All Living Things, adding a tear drained touch to this most excellent just out of reach DJ fuel. Throughout the album, Steffi rarely strays from a sort of tired eyes raver formula that is as heavily indebted to early 4hero as it is Metroplex, yet much like her previous work, it carries a strong love of AI-era Warp within its guild. The dubwise Kokkie could be Double Figure if it was made for the expansive minds of her regular audiences within the Berlin powerhouse that she inhabits as a selector, while Mental Events transmits some serious whipcrack snares that quicken the pace, before the ghost in the machine rears its head on Mental Events, the sickly otherworldly feeling crosses the border between Der Zyklus's Biometry and B12's Interim.
