Welcome back to another select bag of mixes, trawled from the four corners of the internet.
This month has brought with it a diverse range of mixes, with some of the world’s finest DJs presenting sets that make you want to dance, cry or look out across the sea with deep creases in your brow. These include trips to South Africa and Colombia, as well as the aftermath of the future heat death of the planet. They also include trips to Unsound Festival and The White Hotel in Manchester. However far you fancy travelling, there’s something here for you, we promise.
Violet
Selectors Podcast 24This column’s favourite mix of the month comes from Lisbon’s Violet. It has basically everything we love in recorded sets like this: repping an area, loads of left turns, imaginative mixing, undeniable bangers, and a strong sense of the artist’s personality. Slow-burning foot-stompers give way to hypnotic (literally) spoken snippets; one of Marfox’s batida classics bowls you over when it comes in, and the crescendo will add a couple mph to your stride. Absolutely killer.
Simon 2 Bridges
Blowing Up The Workshop 108If you know anything about 2 Bridges in New York City (the music and arts shop, not the area of Chinatown in which it is found), you’ll know that founder Simon Gabriel Greenberg has an impressively curatorial mind, stocking the shop with a treasure trove of disparate but undeniably complementary sounds and sights. For this edition of Blowing Up The Workshop, he utilizes that skill to collate a gorgeous, mind-expanding array of music from South Africa, specifically by the minority ethnic populations such as the Tsonga, Bapedi and Xhosa. Find the full tracklist on Soundcloud.
Pooja B
Discwoman Mix 72Discwoman’s mix series is one of the finest around, introducing new DJs with a fresh and vibrant take on club music with every entry. Pooja B juggles a job as a flight attendant with DJing and runs the The EQ Way with Nephra DJ. This mix evokes a big, hazy main room, with a gnarled vibe to get lost in. Hints of the microtonal melodies found in the Indian musical tradition appear sparingly, and by the end it’s straight to the warped techno that threads so much of Discwoman’s output.
WIDT x Christoph De Babalon
Unsound Podcast 52Christoph de Babalon was one of the more enigmatic figures during the arguable heyday of leftfield drum’n’bass, and his seminal album If You’re Into It, I’m Out of It was revered as a paragon of slippery and menacing beats. A recent resurgence in interest after the record’s re-release in 2018 has seen him emerge from the shadows once again, and this project, an abstract opera called TEYAS made with Polish duo WIDT, is a fine example of why this is cause for joy. Haunting and beautiful, dark and transcendent, unsettling and ultimately cathartic: this live recording is many things, foremost of which is essential listening.
Scratchclart (Scratcha DVA)
Dummy Mix 558Scratcha does what Scratcha does best (wrecks yer heid) with his Dummy Mix. This time he does it with a dizzying dose UK Gqom, a blend of the distinctly London sounds of UK Funky and Durban’s frenetic Gqom. It’s an interesting quirk of history that the two sounds emerged at around the same time completely independently of each other and sit together so well. You might read it as the result of a global musical consciousness unbound by distance or separation. You might not. Either way get set for this one, an unrelenting blast.
DJ Fart in the Club
Melbourne Deepcast 226Was it Fart in the Club or Bus Replacement Service that did it? Either way, they deserve respect for taking lo-fi house’s chummy naming convention to its logical conclusion and (hopefully) burying the whole sorry episode… Anyway, that’s beside the point, which is that this mix is stunning: moody atmospheres, sentimental melodic swells and so many champion basslines make for a set that starts out washing gently over the listener before one of its hooks sink in, and you’re hopelessly dragged along for the ride.
Lychee
Siren Mix 14Another stellar entry for Siren’s burgeoning mix series. Lychee is a Brooklyn-based DJ and resident at Distrikt1 at Bossa Nova Civic Club, Bushwick’s ever-impressive dive bar / moody techno club. Their mix lives in the mirrored halls of techno’s trippier side, and much like DJ Fart in the Club’s mix in this round-up, they straddle a pumping impetus to dance and a forlorn wistfulness. It’s a high-concept set, conceived as a journey through ‘near-future climate fiction’ in which harmony becomes struggle, struggle ends in death, and death is lamented.
Marea
NOTT Collective Special for DJ Mag Latin AmericaMedellin’s NOTT collective saw a lack of representation for womxn in their local electronic music scene, and decided to carve out that space for themselves and their peers. The results speak for themselves. This set from one of the founders, Marea, is tough, dark and punk, while remaining undoubtedly fixated on the dancefloor.
OK Williams
PPG Mix 53Yet another up and comer emerges from southeast London. Through her radio shows and impressive gigging schedule, OK Williams has in a short space of time rifled through many of the DJ rights of passage in the capital and beyond, playing Corsica Studios, Fabric and Love International. Listen to her mix for Pretty Pretty Good and you’ll see why. A blend of current club favourites, her own forays into production and a gleeful disregard of genre, it’s another gold standard mix from a future headliner.
Finn B2B India
Live at The White HotelMore party goodness from Finn, this time joined by longtime friend and b2b partner India Jordan, whose recent debut album was unanimously adored on release back in May. At Manchester’s finest mechanical-garage-turned-warehousey-club The White Hotel, the two go about the business of making people dance as hard as possible. The noise of the crowd going wild every few minutes tells you all you need about how the party went down.
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