Reeko –

Mental Disorder

Juan Rico, also known as Reeko, considers his birth as a DJ to have taken place around 1997, while the start of his professional career can be traced back to 2002 with his first production for the Swedish label Emergence. From his early moments in the music scene, Reeko has been acclaimed for his visionary approach and his ability to create soundscapes that transcend imagination.

Firmly established within the techno elite, his early collaborations with renowned record labels such as Emergence Records, Theory, Integrale Muzique, Palicavonzvreca, Planet Rhythm, Symbolism, Inceptive, and Rxxistance clearly represent his initial steps in the industry. His best works from that era were showcased on his own label, Mental Disorder, founded in 2003.

In 2010, Reeko further expanded his sonic spectrum by creating a new project/label called Architectural, where he showcased his more sentimental, luminous, and at times introspective and dreamy side. This project sparked great curiosity within the deep-focused scene, as his sound was strongly influenced by jazz, with psychedelic brushstrokes inspired by the surrealist art of Dalí, René Magritte, and Giorgio de Chirico, among others. All of this led him to release works under this alias on major labels, apart from his own, such as R&S, Music Man, Semantica, Ellum, Non Series, and Wolfskuil.

His sets, laden with intrigue, emotion, hypnotism, and a very distinctive sound design, have led him to perform at renowned clubs and festivals such as Fabric London, Robert Johnson (Frankfurt), or Printworks, and have taken him on tours across Japan, India, and South America.

As part of the Spanish collective PoleGroup from 2010 through 2020, Reeko released several important works on that label. In the early part of the decade, he also released an EP on Soma and two EPs on the avant-garde Avian, positioning Reeko within the realm of intelligent, conceptual techno.

More recently, Reeko has opened himself up to new styles and experimented with different rhythmic structures. A clear example of this experimentation is his collaboration with the English producer and techno legend Surgeon, with whom he released the EP Scoundrel on Mental Disorder, a co-produced work that explores different styles in each track. His recent EP on the drum & bass label Samurai, as well as his new EP on R&S under the alias Architectural, demonstrate that Juan Rico continues to find new ways to experiment with his sound.