Crystallmess curates a playlist ranging from high-energy heaters to introspective cuts

Welcome back to Selections, a series of artist-curated playlists from those in the know.

Crystallmess is a name you might recognise from Frank Ocean’s Coachella performance last month, during which the Paris-based producer played a DJ set. However that’s just one string to the multidisciplinary artist’s creative bow.

In addition to being a DJ and producer Crystallmess – the moniker of Christelle Oyiri – is also a writer and mixed media artist. Having self-released her debut EP Mere Noises in 2018, the following year saw her release a split EP with Toxe as part of PAN’s white label series.

Behind the decks and on her productions, Crystallmess harnesses a raw energy, taking a narrative and textural approach to her sets and music. Informed directly by being a club kid, her work favours a varied and polyrhythmic style drawing particularly on abrasive dancehall, Afrofuturism, techno and trance. In addition to playing out at parties for Hyperdub, Berghain’s Janus, Yves Tumor’s Terms of Endearment party and Parisian event CONCRETE, she has also worked on sound design for fashion houses including Kenzo and Paco Rabanne.

Ahead of her set at We Love Green Festival (taking place at Bois de Vincennes, Paris) the NTS resident and former SHAPE artist curates a playlist that encompasses the energy and eclecticism of her own sets – ranging from high-octane baile funk, techno and breaks to more pensive tracks with an emotive openness coursing throughout.

“I made a playlist going from the most club-centred and nervous club tracks to more introspective and meditative songs,” Crystallmess says of the selections here, “because my sets are about peeling the thick armour, putting everything in motion to get to the core emotion”.