Sovereign Spinna Mix 001: Kadek Suparta

Our first commissioned mix comes from Ubud-based DJ and producer Kadek Suparta — seventy minutes of Afro-inflected deep house, recorded live at his studio in the hills above Ubud on a Sunday morning, while the rice fields outside were still covered in mist. He describes the recording as 'a Sunday feeling, stretched out.'

Suparta has been a central figure in Bali's underground for the better part of a decade, but his reputation has started to travel further afield in the last two years. A stint as a resident at Klymax Discotheque brought him to the attention of the broader Asian circuit, and he's since played in Tokyo, Singapore, and Seoul. His style resists easy categorisation — Afro house and deep house are the closest terms, but they don't quite capture the patience of his mixing or the peculiar melancholy that runs through his track selection.

The mix opens with twenty minutes of slowly unfolding percussion — talking drums, shakers, patterns that feel distinctly West African filtered through a distinctly Indonesian sensibility — before the bassline arrives and everything clicks into a different register. From there it's seventy minutes of continuous movement, the tempo barely shifting, the mood deepening.

We asked Suparta about his process. He doesn't prepare setlists. 'I spend the days before listening,' he says. 'Not planning, just listening. By the time I sit down to play, I know what needs to come next.' He records everything, and most of it never gets heard. This one he was willing to share. We're glad he was.