Decoded Magazine’s Mix of the Month competition invites DJs from around the world to submit a mix for a chance to be featured in the magazine. August’s winning entry came from Urbik, a Prague-based DJ, promoter and audiovisual artist who has spent the better part of a decade carving out space at the darker, more experimental edges of drum & bass, jungle, halftime and bass music, with occasional journeys into slower electronics.
Active as a DJ since the mid-2010s, Urbik founded the Dark Atmo Breaks and BrainStorm nights and has built a reputation across some of Prague’s most respected venues, including Cross, Chapeau Rouge, FAMU and K7. Career highlights include opening a Metalheadz night at Cross Club alongside Bredren, Philth and SCAR, an interview for Shadowbox on Radio 1, winning the LiR Winter Warm Up DJ contest, and a selection by the YEAH initiative for Ravekjavik. His mixes have found homes on Syhda Music, Vykhod Sily, Dub Logic and Radio Punctum, and away from the decks he develops audiovisual performances through his generative visual project Eraser, which has been presented at Vidiny festival. His selections move between modern jungle, psychedelic broken rhythms and atmospheric experimentation, and that spirit runs through every minute of this winning entry.
Urbik is no stranger to the competition, as judge Ben Clifford explains: “Urbik is yet another artist who has been a runner up multiple times before, always with extremely high quality entries, and this latest entry definitely ticks the winning ‘X factor’ box. It’s a deeply personal and emotional piece of work… extremely creative and feels like it really pulls you into his world, using music as a powerful means of self-expression. A true journey into the outer reaches of the mind.”
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To find out how to submit your mix to the competition, go here for more details.
How did you approach your mix from a creative and technical standpoint โ what story were you aiming to tell, and how did that influence your selection, sequencing, and transitions?
The mix is a special edit I made for the Decoded competition, based on a longer mix called Eraser which I originally recorded about 12 years ago. Itโs the most personal piece of music I’ve ever created, and also the most refined one. It tells a story about insanity, about the time of my life I was uncontrollable, when I lost my will to live and ended up in a psychiatric hospital. I wanted to share something about this experience and help raise awareness about how schizophrenia can affect people.
The original Eraser mix was divided into 3 sections – beauty, pain and void – whereas this Decoded edit excludes the void, leaving beauty, pain and then relief, as I would like to remember that part of my life more positively now. I picked tracks that genuinely interest me and create the most intense feelings.
I want to mention this ElectronicExplorations mix by Consequence which originally inspired the mix, and also two fine art prints named VLP and wolv which I discovered later but help to capture how I felt at that time.
Were there any particular production or mixing techniques you used to maintain cohesion or enhance dynamics across the mix?
Although I usually prefer long transitions, the music in this set suited faster blends and I needed to find ways to do it smoothly and naturally, despite the speed. As there is no real โvoidโ sequence in this edited version, unlike the original Eraser mix, I feel the mix is more cohesive overall. I used Virtual DJ with four virtual decks, and no controller or console.
There is also a visual side to Eraser. Years after making the original mix, I reused the name for a generative visual project that explores some of the same ideas through moving images – beauty, distortion, tension and the gradual transformation of recognisable forms into something more abstract or unstable. You can watch it on YouTube here. I wanted the visuals to work as an independent audiovisual expression rather than simply as decoration behind a DJ set.
I later presented Eraser at VIDINY, a visual arts festival in Tลeboล, where it made much more sense in its own right as a visual work. The festival focuses on contemporary visual and performative art and includes VJing, video projections, installations and interdisciplinary projects, so it was a natural setting for showing that side of my work outside the club context.
How have your musical experiences and influences shaped your sound?
I came to electronic music through drum & bass in the early 2000s, initially through artists like High Contrast, Pendulum and Spor. Over time, though, I became much more interested in its darker and less conventional edges with early / experimental dnb sound from the likes of Alix Perez, Stray, dBridge or Noisia. Halftime was a big turning point for me, and from there I moved deeper into modern jungle and experimental 170 through artists like Overlook, Loxy, Last Life, Presha and Quartz.
At the same time, I never wanted to stay inside one tempo or genre. Artists like Nathan Fake, Burial, Andy Stott and Kashiwa Daisuke opened another side of electronic music for me, focusing more on texture, atmosphere and unusual rhythms. That eventually led me to experiment with mixing around 127 BPM as well as 170, sometimes finding ways to move between them within the same set.
So I think my sound is less defined by a genre than by a feeling: dark, atmospheric, psychedelic and sometimes quite abrasive, but still rhythmic and made to work in a club. DJing, running Dark Atmo Breaks and BrainStorm, and later working with generative visuals have all pushed me further toward treating a set as a complete journey rather than just a sequence of tracks.
Separately from the visual work, Dark Atmo Breaks has been my way of creating a space for the kind of music I wanted to hear more often in Prague – alternative drum & bass, halftime, modern jungle and experimental 170 BPM music that sits outside the more established club formulas. The first Dark Atmo Breaks night took place at Akropolis Underground in 2023 with Romanian producers Heatwave and Ruffie, and the series later developed into collaborations with other crews and artists. One of the most important for me was Dark Atmo Breaks #3 meets Betonage at Klubovna in Prague, where we invited Italian producer Last Life alongside Cerise, Rast S, Hetflajs and Voice of User. Later editions continued that exchange between the local and international underground, including artists such as The Egg and Fuj.
Organising these nights has influenced my DJing as much as playing them – hearing this music in a club, seeing how very experimental material can still work on a dancefloor, and meeting producers behind it has gradually widened what I consider playable in a set.
Lastly, I would also like to share the lyrics from a track called Surge (Emika Version) by Amon Tobin, as itโs sometimes difficult to put feelings into words. Emika is a fellow Czech artist and her voice is so tender and fragile – it sounds like a fairy singing before she perishes. I too have been almost erased from existenceโฆ Melted by the universe, which is the one and only soul everyone shares – the ultimate all-permeating consciousness.
Nejdi rychle.
Dej si pozor.
Udฤlej jeden
krok za druhรฝm.
Kaลพdรฉ pลรกnรญ
mรก svoji cenu.
Nepลej si,
aลฅ ลพivotem neskonฤรญลก.
Toto jsou moje prvnรญ โ
prvnรญ a poslednรญ slova.
Neuฤ se od mojรญ krรกsy,
ale uฤ se od svojich chyb.
Nejdi rychle.
Dej si pozor.
Udฤlej jeden
krok za druhรฝm.
Which roughly translates into English as:
Do not go fast.
Take care.
Take one
step at a time.
Every wish
has its price.
Do not wish
for your life to end.
These are my first โ
first and last words.
Do not learn from my beauty,
but learn from your own mistakes.
Do not go fast.
Take care.
Take one
step at a time.
Tracklisting
- Kashiwa Daisuke – April #19
- Paskal – So Far (part 1)
- Amon Tobin – Surge (Emika Version)
- Kiyoko – Track 3 (live version)
- Seers – Quit Me
- Bvdub – Feel, unfeel
- FKA Twigs – Papi Pacify
- Dream Koala – Odyssey
- Akkord – Torr Vale
- The Haxan Cloak – Consumed
- Emptyset – Collapse
- Roly Porter – Giant
- Squaremeter – In The Far Distance
- Akkord – Surge
- Darkside – Golden Arrow
- Wolff Parkinson White – Mit Dem Kopf
- Kristian Eidnes & Lars Von Trier – Antichrist (Soundtrack Intro)
- Kashiwa Daisuke – Rabbit’s Quartet
Follow Urbik at:
- SoundCloud: @urbik3
- Facebook: @urbik.dab
- Instagram: @urbik3
- YouTube: @EraserByUrbik
- Booking / contact: urbik3@seznam.cz
About the Decoded Magazine Mix of the Month
Our Mix of the Month competition is open to DJs worldwide, regardless of profile or experience.
For more information, including rules of entry and where to submit, head here.
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