Glenn Astro

Berlin-based DJ and producer Glenn Astro comes from a hip-hop background, but doesn’t stick to any particular genre, fusing house and broken beat with jazz and disco. His productions are often filled with rich, spacious grooves, but they’re also likely to be fractured, playful, and trippy. The Ninja Tune-issued 2016 full-length The Yard Work Simulator (with Max Graef) is a set of absurdist club mutations, while 2018′s Turquoise Tortoise (with Hodini), released by Apollo, is more focused on downtempo reflections. Along with frequent collaborators Graef and Delfonic, he ran the vinyl-only Money $ex Records label from 2015 to 2018.
Glenn Astro began to produce and DJ at the age of 13, at first sticking to hip-hop, but as he grew older, he branched out into the realms of house, soul, jazz, and disco. Astro eventually migrated to Berlin, where he established a close circle of friends — including Max Graef, Delfonic, and IMYRMIND — who carved a name for themselves as electronic magpies, not willing to operate inside of preconceived genre boundaries. In 2011, Astro released his first dance-oriented EP — in collaboration with Lee Webster — Colored Sands/Hotel Groove via Big Bait Records. Over the next four years, he released an eclectic variety of EPs on various labels, including releases on Odd Socks, Box Aus Holz, Wotnot Records, and Tartelet, the last of which released his debut full-length, the broken-beat-leaning Throwback LP, in 2015. The same year, Astro launched his own label, Money $ex Records, alongside close friends Max Graef and Delfonic. The label’s first release was a collaborative EP by Astro and Graef. In 2016, the pair collaborated again, releasing a double LP, The Yard Work Simulator, via Ninja Tune. Jazzy mini-LP Even (with Ajnascent) appeared on Money $ex in 2017. Turquoise Tortoise, a full-length collaboration with Hodini, was released by Apollo in 2018, while Astro released solo EPs on Mule Musiq (The Taurus EP) and Tartelet (C.I.W.) the same year. Money $ex shut down at the end of 2018, and Astro remained with Tartelet for the release of his 2019 EP Naturals. ~ Liam Martin & Paul Simpson