BC023: Five Mixes—February 2023

A late start yields a historically acute smorgasbord.

As noted previously, I’ve had a busy early part of the year, and it’s not going to stop, but I am finally knuckling down on the new stuff. There’ll be a lot of old stuff as well—some of it not necessarily available online. Stay tuned. Let’s just say that when I finally got to cases again, nearly everything jumped out and demanded my attention. I love it when that happens. This is a beginning of the crop, not a culmination.

Here are all five mixes as a SoundCloud playlist.

DJ Heaven, Daisychain 263 (February 1)

Comedown music—not the kickoff to this grouping that I’d have asked for, but a useful bridge from Autechre celebrating 1992, particularly as it winds up with beats as twinkly as the curling strings and a blossoming-then-popping wordless-vocal sample they support. An early-sunrise haze blankets the proceedings, from breathy astral jazz to wafting jungle to ye olde ambiente. Save it for the next Sunday you’ll need it.

Dev/Null, The Lot Radio (February 19)

There’s a glorious world of difference between a gimme and an oh-come-on-now. The former is what I anticipated here and the latter is what I got—a jackpot. Pete Devnull comes from Boston and makes records I like, in addition to curating Blog 2 the Old Skool, the greatest repository of nineties UK pirate radio sets. Logically, his “2 Hours of Rare, Old, Exclusive and Forthcoming Jungle/Hardcore,” per the SC tag for this set, has a variability keeps it utterly unpredictable and always seething in exactly that piratical manner. So does the “rare, old” stuff, of course—in particular, a moment culminating @ 1:06:00 of a lo-fi oozy-woozy fader-riffic soul-I-think sample that I can’t identify. What is being done to it—by the producer, let me clarify, not by the DJ—is the focus here; it’s grainy, lo-fi, the technique practically time-stamped 1993 or earlier, and there’s almost no drums. It’s aleatory, the kind of music you see ghosts to, and then he turns it back into teardown central again. Soon enough things are supermodern—a time-flux history-in-action as thrilling as the in-your-face now of the pirates. It swings so fucking hard you’ll rediscover your limbs again.

Optimo, NTS Radio (February 21)

One thing that Dev/Null did not think to do was to slow “Let It Roll” down to house tempo, to pervadingly strange but hypnotic effect, throwing off the listener until he gets on the microphone to explain. Well, Optimo’s JD Twitch did, so hallelujah. The set is all over the place, just the way you’d want it. It’s just a bunch of new stuff that shows off a diffuse and also wide-open landscape that zigzags hard, with intent. Going (@ 44:20) from vocal-sliding minimal-cum-invisible African groove of “De Dwaas” into the exuberantly jittery electronics of “Playing Games with Equality,” even via voiceover, is a stroke in itself. “It’s become a bit of an anthem in Glasgow town,” Twitch tells us. It’s the only thing here that doesn’t come as a surprise. He doesn’t slow it down a little, he slows it all the way down—and keeps you going anyway.

Matt Anniss, Bleep Mix #257 (February 23)

It’s terrible—Matt sent the updated version of Join the Future: Bleep Techno and the Birth of British Bass Music to me four months ago and I’ve yet to crack it. This mix is making me ready to rectify that. Blessedly, this isn’t all bleep tracks at all. (Or even Bleep—Warp Records’ digital sales arm—tracks.) In fact, it’s similar to the Dev/Null above, mixing “bleep & bass old and new,” with “sub-heavy cuts made at different points since the nineties,” all up through our dumb century, and he doesn’t settle for mere retro—it’s an argument, not just a survey, and a consistently lively one.

Kassem Mosse, Truancy Volume 301 (February 27)

I keep thinking this assortment is random and then I re-listen and hear all kinds of connections. Around @ 10:00, a track comes in with slurping hats and a ricocheting synth line that seems close enough to, what’s this, bleeps—a track for Matt Anniss to appreciate. Ditto the burbling, slinky-squinchy 303 riff that underpins the gem at @ 27:00—et al. But enough synchronicity—this one tunnels its own path, one that communicates as homespun and minimalist even as some of it is maximal and all of it jacks.