Human Algorithm | May Takeover

HA Takeover with Felix Desero 🎵

Sending out next week’s May HA Takeover a bit early so everyone has some good tunes to listen to over the long weekend! For those that are new to the club, once a month, Music Club spotlights a mix from a member called the Human Algorithm Takeover (you can find previous ones here)!

For this month, please welcome LA electronic duo Felix Desero who have curated an awesome mix just for the club inspired by our unusual amount of June gloom. It includes some of their unreleased tracks & songs from some of my fav artists (Barry Can’t Swim, TSHA). I definitely recommend giving it a listen this weekend!

HA Takeover with Felix Desero

Dan + Cory of Felix Deesro

How did you first get into DJing & producing? How would you describe your style?

First of all, thank you so much for featuring Felix Desero in this month’s HA Takeover! I’ve been an avid electronic music fan since I first went to Paradiso Festival in 2013, but it wasn’t until the pandemic hit that I acted on this passion and started to learn how to DJ. During the very first lockdown where everybody had to stay inside, I bought a controller and scoured YouTube for any tutorial I could find. I practiced for hours every day and really fell in love with DJing, seeing its potential as a creative outlet and a vehicle for new music discovery.

At the time, I was telling one of my coworkers, Dan Bercht, about my new hobby, and he invited me to join him at his home studio for a production session. Dan had been producing for about 5 years and really knew his way around Ableton, so he offered to teach me about production. In that first session, our group Felix Desero was born. We made a song that first night, and we’ve been getting together every Wednesday night to make music ever since. Over the past two years we’ve made about 30 songs together, played a few shows, and Dan’s become one of my best friends.

Our productions span multiple genres, so describing our style is tricky. I come from enjoying lots of house & techno, while Dan has always enjoyed melodic & bass music, so I think our style naturally is a combination of all of those genres. Our name, “Felix Desero”, is a play on the Portuguese words of “Feliz” meaning happy, and “Deserto”, meaning to desert or leave something. Uniting those two words, Felix Desero represents the happiness of experiencing something, contrasted with the sadness of having to leave it behind. That meaning is reflected in our productions, where we strive to blend melancholic soundscapes with hopeful tones and euphoric moments.

When playing shows, how much do you go into it having a set in mind vs letting the audience/setting dictate what you play?

It’s definitely a mix of both! I’m a pretty meticulous planner, so I always go into a set with a clear vision of how I’d like the set to go, and what moments and moods I’m trying to create. I also create lots of mixes, so I have tons of chunks of 3-4 songs that I know will go really well together, so I usually mix and match different chunks while I’m playing a set.

Being agile is key, though. I’ve been booked for some shows where I don’t know what kind of crowd I would be playing for, or what style of music the DJ playing before me will be playing, so I’m always ready to totally abandon my plan once I get a feel for the vibe of a party.

Any artists that you've recently discovered or have been playing a lot of that you'd recommend for the club?

The first artist is Barry Can’t Swim, whose track “Sunsleeper” is featured in my HA takeover mix. He creates an incredibly distinctive style of house music, blending Jazz and UK Garage in a genre-defying manner that is absolutely perfect for summer.

I’ve been playing a lot of TSHA lately as well, featuring her track “Dancing in the Shadows” in my HA takeover mix. She makes some really interesting emotional, lyrically driven club music. She goes super hard when playing live, and I love her versatility as an artist where she can play an after-hours warehouse, yet still has songs that can play on the radio.

What was your inspiration for the Music Club mix?

This year in Los Angeles, we've experienced an unusual amount of June Gloom, which served as my inspiration for this mix. The mix starts of melancholic yet hopeful, the way you hope for the sun to eventually come out on a gloomy, summer morning. As the mix unfolds, the fog gracefully dissipates, giving way to a vibrant tapestry of lively, summer-infused beats.

The first lyrics heard in the mix are “Waiting for the sunshine”, from an unreleased Felix Desero track. That’s followed by TSHA’s dancing in the shadows, which references dancing in the dark, but ends with a really euphoric bridge where I envision the sun emerging. Next follows our Felix Desero remix of Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September”, containing the line “never was a cloudy day”, fully transitioning us to the remaining upbeat, high-spirited tracks.

Any upcoming shows in LA this year?

We're currently heads down in the studio working on our first album. After that, we'll be targeting a few venues for a series of local shows in LA. We’re always open to new music industry connections!

Where to find Felix Desero: Instagram / SoundCloud / Spotify

Catch-Up on Music Club

🎵 Disco-Pop-Tronica HA Mix