Kellerkind’s catalogue stretches back to the mid-2000s, but the German producer’s sound has aged gracefully into the warm, organic-house territory that Bar 25 Music has championed since the label grew out of Berlin’s legendary riverside club. The World Beyond, his new two-track EP, arrives as the 145th release on Bar 25’s roster, and it’s a tidy statement of intent: hypnotic percussion, warm melodic pads and an Eastern-tinged palette that sits comfortably alongside the label’s best.
Title track The World Beyond unfolds across six and a half minutes of rolling, hand-crafted percussion. The kick is soft and round—four-to-the-floor but never insistent—whilst shakers and woodblock textures chatter around it. A plucked, sinuous melody drifts through the upper register, and warm pads swell in and out of the mix with real patience. There’s no big drop, no dramatic reveal; instead the track builds the way a sunrise does, slow enough that you only notice the light when it’s already all around you.
Dhol takes its name from the double-headed Indian drum, and the reference is apt. The B-side is driven by a deep, woody percussion pattern that anchors the groove, the kick rolling beneath layers of hand drums that give the track a distinctly earthy, organic character. The bassline is rounder and the mood a shade darker than its predecessor, though the Eastern flavour remains in the floating pads and the occasional sustained drone. At six minutes forty it’s the more head-down of the two—a hypnotic chugger built for the small hours.
It’s a compact release—two tracks, fourteen minutes—but The World Beyond makes the most of its scope. Neither cut overstays its welcome, both lock into their grooves without fuss, and the EP hangs together as a coherent pair rather than two stray ideas. Bar 25’s 145th release is a confident, characterful addition to the catalogue, and evidence that Kellerkind’s touch has only grown surer with time.
