{"id":2857,"date":"2026-04-07T16:52:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T16:52:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/2857\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T16:52:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T16:52:22","slug":"sofia-kourtesis-dj-kicks-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/2857\/","title":{"rendered":"Sofia Kourtesis: DJ-Kicks Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sofia Kourtesis<\/a> knew she was in love with Berlin after running into her dentist in the darkroom at Berghain. Out clubbing the night before she was scheduled to get her wisdom tooth removed, she spotted a naked man and realized he was the same one who would be cutting into her mouth a few hours hence. \u201cWhat are you doing here?\u201d she asked him. He waved off her bewilderment: \u201cWell, this is Berlin, darling.\u201d The procedure the next day went fine, and she knew she was home. \u201cThis could never happen in Peru,\u201d she said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Berlin has been Kourtesis\u2019 home since she moved from Lima at 17 to study film. She\u2019s said<\/a> she has a Latin heart with a German motor, evoking Germany\u2019s world-renowned automotive industry as well as the four-on-the-floor beats of the capital\u2019s techno scene. As she came of age musically, the tension between the two places came to define her art. She struggled with the loss of her father and her mother\u2019s illness, pouring those emotions into records like Fresia Magdalena<\/a> and Madres<\/a>. She wove samples of her father\u2019s voice into nostalgic evocations of their time together, and paid tribute to the surgeon who extended her mother\u2019s life with a house banger named in his honor<\/a>\u2014and an invitation to go clubbing at Berghain. (\u201cHe really loved it,\u201d she said<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

Kourtesis applies a similarly nostalgic lens to her entry into Berlin label !K7\u2019s DJ-Kicks series. The mix offers a road map through the sphere of influence that has shaped her perspective as a musician and DJ, gathering recent hits and new exclusives from friends and contemporaries along with four new originals. The scope reflects Berlin\u2019s international influences, featuring artists from across Europe, Asia, and the Americas, and toys with ambient IDM, Detroit techno, French touch, Afro-Peruvian rhythms, and various flavors of house music. Kourtesis considers herself a \u201cfrustrated filmmaker<\/a>,\u201d and it\u2019s not hard to hear the soundtrack to her own biopic in her mix; the swelling crescendo that opens her new version of Jon Hopkins\u2019 \u201cHome Station\u201d feels intentionally cinematic. Dawning with the optimism of a young queer girl fleeing the Catholic oppression of her hometown for the unbridled hedonism of her new one, the mix drops her newest tracks in between waves of euphoric 4\/4 thumps, swirls of off-kilter syncopation, and blissed-out chords.<\/p>\n

The tracks she\u2019s assembled reflect her ethos of \u201cless perfection, more coraz\u00f3n\u201d: Each selection seems to highlight artists that embrace imperfections, either in rhythm, texture, or structure. Her mix of Avalon Emerson<\/a>\u2019s \u201cOne More Fluorescent Rush\u201d into Logic1000<\/a>\u2019s \u201cHer\u201d plays their contrasting approaches off one another, gently blunting Emerson\u2019s relentless, mutating synthesizer groove as it gives way to Logic1000\u2019s Tresor-coded 8-bit synth melody. A mid-mix run from Axel Boman<\/a>\u2019s \u201cRock Top\u201d to UK duo JOY (Anonymous)\u2019 \u201cJOY (Look Up Now)\u201d is stitched together by her new track \u201cTexas Changing,\u201d a sun-drenched 4\/4 thumper with a garbled vocal sample that sounds filtered through analog tape, transforming it from a merely soulful performance into something that feels more like found footage. The effect evokes her track \u201cWinWin San,\u201d a highlight of the 2018 compilation Studio Barnhus Volym 1<\/a> that turned heads even alongside chameleonic virtuosos like DJ Koze<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sofia Kourtesis knew she was in love with Berlin after running into her dentist in the darkroom at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[3048,18,3049],"class_list":["post-2857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-berlin","tag-albums","tag-berlin","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}