Whether you’re prepping for the weekend or still recovering from the last, dip into our latest collection of the finest mixes committed to digital tape.
Another month, another deluge of stellar blends of the tracks you need to hear. As ever, we’ve striven to deliver a wide-ranging mixture of moods and motifs, be that reputation galvinising mixes from modern staples like Sassy J and Moxie, slick acid from Sybil or DJ Persuasion or something altogether stranger (we’ve got plenty of that). Whatever mood you’re feeling, grab the aux cable, scroll down and plug in.
Death is Not the End
Blowing Up the Workshop 95One of the finest musical archaeologists on the airwaves, Death is Not the End’s NTS shows crackle and hum with the weight of history, sharing old and often forgotten gems from the annals of recorded music. For his entry to the conceptual mix series BUTW he turns inward, crafting a collage of tracks and broadcast snippets from the heyday of Bristol’s pirate radio. The result is an audio essay and love letter to the time and space of his youth. The endearingly sincere adverts and phone-ins add an extra layer of nostalgia to the choice selection of dub, ragga, jungle, hip-hop and whatever other connective tissue makes Bristol’s musical output so vital and fresh.
Sybil
Femdex Podcast 17Siren’s Sybil recorded this mix after coming back from a festival in Kent. The party must have been a good one because the set is an inspired, hypnotic blend of breaks and acid. In other words, a restrained yet and simultaneously hardened ode to the classic woodland rave. The melodious section at the end in particular seems to capture the afterglow from the freest parties. Siren’s DJs have received a lot of love on these pages, and rightly so when their output continues to be this good.
Eris Drew
Mixmag In Session (Thundering Goddess Mix)Eris Drew flies the flag for old-school rave sounds perhaps more than any other DJ on the international circuit. It’s only this year that her schedule has exploded outside of her home turf of Chicago – suggesting that dancers pine for the honesty and looseness afforded by dance music’s infancy (and loads of new records drawing on it for inspiration). Her set at Field Maneuvers this year was criminally fun at a festival that’s hardly known for chin-stroking, and this mix is a seamless distillation of what makes her sets pop with so much joy.
The Orb
Hyponik Mix 359Veteran champions of the chillout room The Orb spread out with this mix for the ever-impressive Hyponik series. With the surefooted calm of a master, this set breaths with so much space as to feel genuinely meditative, and snippets of mellifluous audiobook readings carry a warm sensation of home. It’s only at the very conclusion of the mix that any semblance of a beat is revealed, by which point you’re rested and ready to be dragged upwards from your horizontal position.
DJ Persuasion
Air Mix 18 (88-89 UK acid)This is the third of DJ Persuasion’s period-specific mixes for Bristol’s Happy Skull, and each one has been absolutely killer. We even covered the second in a weekly version of this roundup a year ago. Here, he threads choice cuts of peak-era acid into an insatiably driving set, one for getting shit done or equally getting down. This has been on the stereo more than anything else this month, so infectious are the bleeps, bloops and gargling bass sounds. Importantly, none of these tracks feel dated at all.
Moxie
Resident Advisor Podcast 642As a radio voice and curator, Moxie’s reputation has swelled in line with that of her home station, NTS. But what is sometimes missed is just how good a DJ she is. Here she offers something of a retrospective, sharing some of her formative favourites as well as new and unreleased cuts from some of the finest labels releasing tracks today (including her own). Ending on Mala’s Alicia is a well-trodden move, but here it lands with the seductive power it must have carried in the halcyon days of FWD>> and DMZ.
Patrice Scott
Truancy Volume 225An honest lesson in house music from one of the realest to come out Detroit. Scott’s Truancy volume pulls off the tricky merger of depth and soul with proper dancefloor energy. The tracks are all on point, driven by interesting percussion and groove, with a healthy dose of the cosmic energy of Detroit’s finest and even some electro and disco thrown in.
John T. Gast
Bus (UVC Roots and Destruction)John T. Gast spins a set as murky and opaque as his own reputation, built around a left-field palette of steppa gems. Dubby, jazzy and always weird, the latest Bus session is a window into the whims of a fascinated mind. The overall effect is one of both warmth and discomfort, and darkness has never sounded so inviting.
Sassy J
Live at Dekmantel Festival 2018Dekmantel are slowly releasing the recordings from this year’s festival, with the main stage sets landing a few days ago. The pick of the bunch is this from Sassy J, who plays a classically building daytime set peppered with bizarre left turns. One thrilling section at around the half-hour mark sees horror score strings slice through the analogue warmth of Legowelt’s Eternal Flux before she segues back into Cheshire Cat disco.
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