BC078 - Five Mixes: April-May 2024
A tour de force from Shaun J. Wright, "old school" meaning early 90s UK, and more!
Shaun J. Wright, via RA
I’ve mentioned before that not everything I write up here is, ipso facto, a recommendation. Well, it’s usually more along the lines of: I like them all but don’t expect you to, always. That’s kind of the case here with the second selection; it’s the kind of set other writers would prefer to avoid, and it is their business to wish to. But it feels like a prevailing wind worth noting. Impurism—it’s a prevailing theme.
You can hear all five sets on this SoundCloud playlist.
Answer Code Request, Dekmantel Podcast 461 (April 8)
This starts with breaks but builds in overall shape to a smooth-synth linearity that incorporates plenty of reverb on the drums, which remain rambunctious even as they straighten out. That super-rudimentary techno (and, oh yes, early trance again) kick-snare so beloved of early nineties Brits (see below) makes a showing here, too. It’s making a showing kinda everywhere now. Hmmm. Anyway, it builds. Resonant vocal hook: “You dream of hea-ven.”
Angel D’lite b2b Aiden Frances, Rinse FM (April 17)
The tag says “OldSkool” but what it means here is . . . early Sasha! UK superclub music from three decades ago, some of it leaning toward trance, some toward hard house, all of it (as heard here) utterly secondhand—cheap and cheerful. Naturally, a lot of it is new. I am hard-wired to respond positively to the bass line from “Definition of a Track” in any use, never mind when, as here, we get to experience it as if drunk. And gradually, it becomes genuinely trippy, seriously groovy. The 303—the great leveler. I also love how, seventeen minutes from the end, we get a bunch of cut-overs from a track festooned with synths to just a kick drum—that, friends, is #OldSkool. Especially when it’s followed by mnemonic piano riffing and snare rolls for yoinks.
Kiernan Laveaux, Scene (Horst 2024 Warm-up) (Mixmag; May 8)
Yep, still a sucker for Laveaux’s opening jazz gambits: that time, Mingus; this time, a Tyrone Washington cut later sampled by Madlib. It really opens the frame; what will come next? (A: not free jazz.) Yep, big donking four-to-the-floor, executed here with an ear for seductively askew contours, aurally and rhythmically both. Laveaux doesn’t seem to like to get bored and passes it on to the listener. In places, it sounds like an old radio orchestra leeching into a globulus bass pulse like milk through shredded wheat. Everything is messed with; real instruments are plentiful, but they don’t stand a chance. Resonant soundbite, early, from JFK: “The rights of every man are threatened when the rights of one man are diminished.”
Helena Hauff, Festival le Bon Air (Refuge Worldwide; May 13)
“Super electro,” I noted to the friends who had recently trekked from Minneapolis to Chicago just to hear Hauff play—and this was just before Amtrak made the trip available for less than fifty dollars. If I’d the wherewithal, not to mention that fifty dollars (and, fine, a reasonable place to stay), I might have been tempted as well. This set is a good example why. It’s more playful than usual—the tones are distended in a cuddly way rather than a menacing one, as is her wont. Oh, don’t worry: evil 303s unveil themselves quickly enough. But even those sound have some twinkle to them. There’s even a hair’s worth of infelicitous mixing, just to demonstrate that she’s all human even as her music is all machine.
Shaun J. Wright, Daisychain 332 (May 29)
Full respect to those DJs who can fill two hours with a lot of stuff that sounds quite similar and keep me entertained while doing it. (And just to be clear, there’s plenty of variety in the sets above.) But take this one as an object lesson in the value of stylistic range, both to tell a bigger story and for its own sake. It’s a tour de force; often when a two-hour set begins, I know I’ll pause it at some point; when this one starts, I know I’m not touching a thing till it’s done. I also like how not-purist he is. There’s some glossy near-EDM toward the finish—it works, but it’s a decisive turn that suggests, among other things, a mature opening-up. Maybe not even decisive—beyond the gloss, the track is very Chicago, which fits Wright to a tee.