John Talabot

The Barcelona house that takes its time

The sound of John Talabot is recognizable from the first beat: a warm, somewhat dusty house, with echoes of disco, spacey synthesizers, and a groove that is in no rush. From Barcelona, he has built one of the most personal voices in European electronic music, just as credible on the main stage of a summer festival as in a small club at six in the morning. The alias comes from the school he attended; the discretion, from a work ethic that prefers the record to the anecdote.

Hivern Discs and the impact of ƒIN

In 2008 he founded Hivern Discs, a label that takes the Catalan word for winter and has released music by Pional, Marvin & Guy, Margot, and Talabot himself, in addition to hosting nights and stage takeovers across Europe. Before that, he DJed and produced as D.A.R.Y.L., with a residency at The Loft. The maxi My Old School (Permanent Vacation, 2009) and the single Sunshine (Hivern Discs, 2009) paved the way; the EP Families (Young Turks, 2011) and the album ƒIN (Permanent Vacation, 2012) put him on the international map. ƒIN —abstract house, disco, and contained emotion— received five stars from The Guardian. That same year he toured North America, with his own dates and as an opening act for The xx.

Remixes, duos, and the all-night booth

His installment of DJ-Kicks (!K7, 2013) is a 75-minute DJ letter, with Sideral —the first piece by Talaboman alongside Axel Boman— at its center. The duo released The Night Land (R&S, 2017) and, in 2023, new maxis on Night Land Records. He has remixed The xx, Jamie xx (Loud Places), Sfire, and Shit Robot. The track Voices (2016) was featured in the Chanel spring-summer 2017 haute couture campaign. As Koraal, he recorded La Casa del Volcán (Nous'klaer Audio, 2020) in Lanzarote. With Arnau Obiols (Velmondo), he develops Mioclono, whose Cluster I (Hivern Discs, 2023) was born from annual sessions at Angel Sound Studios. With Maria Arnal, he composed ARIA for the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale (2021). Since 2018, he has hosted the show Music For Days Like These on NTS. In 2023, he was a resident at Phonox in London and Rex Club in Paris. Hivern nights and programming at Primavera Sound or Nuits Sonores, along with dates at Sónar, Moog, Pickle Factory, or the Kelvingrove in Glasgow, define an artist who is still in no rush: his second solo album, he has hinted, will be the sum of those aliases and a continuation of ƒIN.