The fabric 76 tracklist is one of the few spaces in dance music where high-profile artists like Thom Yorke sit comfortably alongside militantly mysterious newcomers like Greg Beato. And that's how Deetron, the Swiss stalwart responsible for the mix, enters into a discussion about the many exclusive taste cultures within electronic music—even if he didn't mean to. In recent months, Skrillex, Laidback Luke, and Billboard have advocated for and end to the rivalry between mainstream EDM and its underground counterpart, while Seth Troxler lambasted America's festival culture. Fabric 76 takes on a more nuanced and specific side of the same issue: the boundaries and stratifications within the indie sphere itself.Of course, Deetron didn't intend to make any statement on the matter, and in fact, he doesn't care about it. "I don't even think about that at all," he said over Skype from his hometown, Bern. "It doesn't ever touch my mind, because it just takes up time and wastes energy. I just pick the music that I like, and I don't care if it's a pop record, if it's a house record, or if it's underground or overground."Yet, it's precisely because he doesn't care about genre distinctions and taste cultures that his contribution to the fabric series matters. Albeit inadvertently, Deetron's mix points out that the issue is more complex than a simple binary between mainstream and underground. Fabric 76 doesn't touch the mainstream, but it traverses taste boundaries nonetheless—it's a bit hard to imagine Ondo Fudd (Call Super's alias for the heads-y label The Trilogy Tapes) busting out a Caribou track."I hear unlikely pairings between artists who are far apart from each other in terms of genres, but for me, they had something that I thought would really click together," Deetron explained. "I just thought that there were links between these tracks that are maybe not so obvious."Although it's hard for him to describe the criteria he uses to identify the mysterious elements that unite seemingly disparate tracks—"That's what I was trying to figure out, why that happens and how," he says—he has less trouble describing the process of putting together this particular set. He started by making an expansive list of tunes he hoped to include on the CD, which was cut down in the licensing process. When a few of them were cleared, he started to structure a few key tracks in the mix. "I had in mind where they would be in the mix—in the middle, or in the beginning, or towards the end," he explains.This level of premeditation is unparalleled for Deetron, who usually follows a more improvisational approach in his podcasts and live sets. But mixed CDs demand foresight and planning than online mixes or DJ sets because commercial releases need to have longevity in order to be viable on the market. "You have to put more effort in to make it last for a longer time," Deetron says. "It's meant to last for a longer period because it's something that will act as your business card."If fabric 76 is his business card, it seems that Deetron earns his keep off the strength of his unwavering intuition and keen ability to spot the hidden connections between antagonistic musical worlds.Pick up your copy of fabric76 on iTunes
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