Collective Spotlight: Alchemystica
Alchemystica sees the dance floor as more than a place to escape. For the Ecuador-born, Miami-evolved record label and event concept, it can also be a space for connection, reflection, and a deeper relationship with sound.
Founded by Ecuadorian DJ and producer Sebastian Ponce, better known as, Bastiansé, Alchemystica began as a personal artistic vision before growing into a wider platform for releases, hybrid performances, curated events, international collaborations, and immersive storytelling.
Developed between Quito and Miami, the project brings together underground electronic music, original artwork, and thoughtfully designed environments.
Music has been central to Bastiansé’s life since childhood. His father taught him to DJ with vinyl when he was 11, and by 13, he was already playing extended sets. Those early experiences taught him how to pace a room, build tension, and let a musical story unfold over time.
A pivotal moment arrived in 2016 at Coachella’s Yuma Tent, where sets from artists including Jamie Jones, Patrick Topping, Josh Butler, Carl Cox, and Nina Kraviz drew him further into underground house and minimal music. Since then, Bastiansé has spent more than 15 years behind the decks, performing across Miami, Quito, Ibiza, Prague, and Nepal while developing his own production style.
His music moves through organic and progressive house, minimal, rominimal, dub techno, indie dance, and hypnotic techno. Analog textures, deep grooves, and Phrygian tonalities form a recurring thread, but the label is not designed around one tightly defined genre. The connection lies in the mood, pacing, and emotional weight of each release.
Photographed by @nawhual
That philosophy carries into Bastiansé’s hybrid performances, which can bring together vinyl, analog effects, live instrumentation, and modular textures. Rather than separating live performance from DJing, he treats each element as part of the same continuous experience.
Photographed by @nawhual
The catalog has already produced notable results. The Quad EP reached No. 1 on Beatport’s Minimal / Deep Tech chart, while “Tu Corazón,” featuring Ponce, climbed to No. 2 in Afro House.
The Anima & Animus EP, featuring Michela, reached No. 3 in Minimal / Deep Tech. Bastiansé’s work has also received support from Black Coffee, The Martinez Brothers, John Summit, Nicola Cruz, and other leading selectors.
Yet Alchemystica is not defined only by its releases. Its larger identity came into focus at Garbicz Festival in Poland in 2023. Surrounded by music, nature, art, and a closely connected community, Bastiansé saw how each part of an environment could work together without the experience feeling forced.
That realization helped establish the guiding idea behind the project: integrate and elevate. Instead of building isolated events, Alchemystica is conceived as a takeover concept that can live within existing festivals, venues, and cultural gatherings. Each edition can combine selectors, live performers, visual art, lighting, spatial design, and careful attention to how people move through a setting.
Photographed by @nawhual
Photographed by @nawhual
The intention is not simply to place a logo above a stage. It is to shape the feeling of the space from the inside, creating an experience in which the music, artwork, and surroundings feel closely connected. Long term, the concept is interested in cultural settings associated with projects such as Garbicz Festival, Cercle, Gates of Agartha, Café del Mar Ibiza, Burning Man, and GOAT Community.
Photographed by @nawhual
Photographed by @nawhual
One of Alchemystica’s most personal elements is its visual identity. All of the label’s artwork is created by Art by Muni, the work of Bastiansé’s mother. Her art gives its releases and events a shared visual language while grounding the project in a family relationship that predates the label itself.
Even the Alchemystica symbol reflects that sense of connection. Its circle represents the environment in which an experience takes place. The geometry within it points to alignment between internal and external states, while the eye suggests perception and awareness. At the center sits a single dot: a point of focus and realization.
As the label enters its next chapter, Bastiansé is putting greater focus on consistency. More than 130 unreleased tracks currently sit in his archive, with plans to release one project each month. It marks a move away from endless refinement and toward letting the catalog develop through regular output.
That period also includes SADU, a reimagining of an earlier collaboration featuring Michela’s vocals. The new version takes the original emotional idea into darker, more driving techno territory, connecting Alchemystica’s past with the sound it is pursuing next. Look out for the upcoming release on Bastiansé's birthday, July 20th.
A new remix series further expands that direction through trusted collaborators from several corners of the international underground. Contributors include London-based Dimitris Karellos, SĂ©ance Sounds founder Gianni Cerri, Dutch-Miami artist and sound engineer Mick Jerome, DJ and engineer Erik Viera, Miami vocalist and sound artist Lilyana, Alchemystica co-founder Juan Fernando Ponce, and artist Rodrigo Bianchi.
Together, the series reflects what Alchemystica has gradually become: a meeting point for musicians, engineers, vocalists, and visual artists linked by shared creative instincts.
Photographed by @nawhual
Alchemystica may have begun with one artist’s relationship to music, but its story now reaches far beyond the booth. Rooted in Ecuador, shaped between Quito and Miami, and connected to a growing international circle, the label is building a world where underground music is not simply heard. It is felt, interpreted, and carried forward.
