Delayed x Perpendicular: Pillen
Friday night amongst the pine trees. Everyone has settled in. The first few hours of setting up the cottages, catching up with friends, and exchanging welcoming hugs are behind us. Perpen feels like home again. The dark dance floor, the hazy DJ booth, the purple spotlights behind it giving the surrounding pines an otherworldly look... It feels like we never left this place.
Friday night had Espacio Perpendicular's stamp all over it. Residents, co-founders, and regulars from Madrid's holy grail took care of the music from the opening hours until the very end, moving through a wide range of sounds along the way. Today, we're shining a light on the night's coda. The conductor of Friday's finale was Pillen.
Active in Madrid's scene since 2012, Pillen has contributed through a number of projects he co-founded or collaborated with, including Espacio Perpendicular, Sables Mouvants, and Onyro. Spend some time getting to know these projects and a pattern starts to emerge: an emphasis on quality, curiosity, and forward thinking. Dig through his archive of mixes and the palette becomes even wider, covering many different shades of electronic music. Behind the decks, his love for hypnotic sounds and sustained intensity allows him to travel comfortably between styles. That's exactly what he delivered that beautiful Friday night.
The opening night of a multi-day festival has a particular kind of energy. Everyone has just arrived, the batteries are full, and when that energy is led in the right direction, it can set the tone for the entire weekend. Pillen rode that wave like a seasoned surfer.
The tension was palpable, in the best possible way. If I had to describe the shift from everything we'd heard earlier that day, I'd use a slightly strange analogy: all the sets before Pillen were “stereo.” Pillen switched everything to “mono.”
Suddenly, the dance floor felt like a single unit. It was as if we were all aboard one big spacecraft, moving steadily through different nebulae. Low and mid-end galore, hypnotic and physical, with the whole thing seemingly locked onto one frequency. And on that sound system... pffff. It was like a dream.
Another gem from Madrid's underground. Another phenomenal set. Another chance to return to that special place amongst the pine trees.