Glenn Astro

Glenn Astro, a Berlin-based DJ and producer, started with hip-hop roots yet declines to confine himself to one style, merging house and broken beat instead with infusions of jazz and disco. His work tends toward dense, open-ended grooves that nevertheless emerge fractured, whimsical, and hallucinatory. The 2016 full-length The Yard Work Simulator, a Ninja Tune release created with Max Graef, serves up absurdist club mutations, while Turquoise Tortoise, a 2018 Apollo album made with Hodini, turns toward reflective downtempo material. From 2015 to 2018 he co-ran the vinyl-only Money $ex Records imprint with frequent partners Graef and Delfonic.

Beginning to produce and DJ at age 13, Glenn Astro first concentrated on hip-hop before gradually incorporating house, soul, jazz, and disco. After moving to Berlin he assembled a tight group of associates, among them Max Graef, Delfonic, and IMYRMIND, who earned notice as electronic scavengers reluctant to respect conventional genre lines. His first dance-focused EP, Colored Sands/Hotel Groove, appeared in 2011 on Big Bait Records in tandem with Lee Webster. Over the next four years assorted EPs surfaced on Odd Socks, Box Aus Holz, Wotnot Records, and Tartelet, the last of which issued his debut album, the broken-beat-oriented Throwback LP, in 2015. That year Astro also founded Money $ex Records with Max Graef and Delfonic; its opening release was a joint EP by Astro and Graef. A further collaboration yielded the 2016 double LP The Yard Work Simulator on Ninja Tune. The 2017 jazzy mini-LP Even, recorded with Ajnascent, came out on Money $ex. Apollo released the full-length Turquoise Tortoise with Hodini in 2018, the same year Astro placed solo EPs on Mule Musiq (The Taurus EP) and Tartelet (C.I.W.). Money $ex closed at the end of 2018, yet Astro stayed with Tartelet for the 2019 EP Naturals.