Persona Records was founded in 2001 by Stewart Walker. Born during a great moment of renewal into the dance music world, Since then, Persona aimed to define her own sound avoiding the waves of genres and subgenres cathegorizations, and getting recognition between music lovers and djs together paired with a commonly shared appreciation between electronic music producers from Europe, U.S. and Asia.
2008 represents the annouced transformation of Persona into an experience that goes beyond the music and its physical support. Persona is now a blog and a community where every aspect involved in the creation of music is documented by the artists and linked to other similar experiences around the world. This transformation involves also the way this music is distributed, taking chances to expand her diffusion and influence using the digital as the default output, and limiting cds and vinyls for special projects and collector items.
In a sharp swing back to the dancefloor, Touane returns to Persona with the whip-snap rhythms and high bpms of Toulousian Duck. Always one to confound, Touane is back in force as he expands his dark mix of dub, funk and house. 'Sitting In' has been a staple of Touane's recent live sets and the *clou* moment of them all.
'Sitting In' builds an intertwining forest of beat lines into the dark unknown. The soft, mossy bass throws the crashing hiss, like wind and rain through scraping leaves, into sharp relief and an already surreal edge is honed by bucolic shimmers rising like mist, whining synths and a plaintive sax riff at breakdown.
‘Lappa’ overwhelms with percussive power, a muscley dance track with the melancholy of a mountain landscape and the groaning horns of faraway valleys. Landscapes loom large through the spooky tension of these tracks.
With restraint, Touane builds 'Goro Goro' with pulse and vacuum, shadowy synth and rustling details to create a lusciously immersive environment.
I.A. Bericochea makes his debut on Persona with an EP of beats, guitar strings and the flotsam of lovingly home-recorded sounds; three tracks of warm seductive allure perfect for the witching hour.
Stewart Walker returns with an offering to gently entice listeners out of the darkness of winter. Behind the softness are the insistent beats of life stirring in the frozen north. Sun glints on the ice; water droplets gather into trickles to welcome the spring thaw.
Persona proudly presents the next installment of its online release series with an EP from Mexico's Signal Deluxe and New York's Dawson Baca where deep house tropes roll over cut-up rhythms and magnetic bass. After last year’s Todos Los Fuegos on Jeff Milligan’s Revolver label, Signal Deluxe debut huge on Persona with their "Mammoth EP".
Sometimes in the middle of hard work in the studio, a producer forgets how it all started and approaches music making tools to play. Like a kid. Like it's the first time. One week in spring on a bright day at eight in the morning, Touane found himself playing in a surreal space between the city and his mind. Sunny outside; in his windowless studio building Marco had to find a way to evoke the sun.
This EP's titles obliquely reflect the thinking Walker was doing as he made them without getting too specific: 'Terraforming the Sahara' suggests both the eponymous desert, and the environmentalist impulse to try and recover what truly is the largest man-made feature on the planet. 'History of Zero' reminds you that Arab mathemeticians in fact invented the concept of zero, making the modern world possible. 'Days Before Rebirth' namechecks reincarnation, particularly the idea of souls floating in limbo.
Making music is like dressing a woman, listen to music it's like undressing her.. This is the the typical sentence Andrea would use to hit on girls at the bar, nonetheless he believes that for real!
After a long wait, Touane is back solo on his beloved home base Persona. After collaborating with Nuel on Grand Theft Audio and Donato Dozzy on The Thrillers, out last month, Marco drops a single perfectly timed for the upcoming sunny season.
Persona Records next EP, “The Tropic of Cancer” was produced by three names familiar to Persona's fans. Working together as The Thrillers, Touane (Marco Tonni), Donato Dozzy, and Nuel met last summer in Nuel's studio in Prenzlauerberg, Berlin, and started working on music during what they now consider to be the greyest summer of their lives.
Persona label boss Stewart Walker returns with his first 12” release since last year's well-received album “Concentricity.” On this release he continues to seek the correct balance between power and detail in high, medium, and low intensity versions.
Andrea Sartori (aka DeepAlso) of Bologna, Italy has already made his mark in the Italian music world : First, as one of the founders of the Homework Festival and its affiliated Homework Records net-label in 2002.
Secondly, as a live performer of unmatched novelty and inspiration, wailing on his synthesizers and drum machines with the fervor of a rock god.
