BC032 - Five Mixes: Miss Kittin, 2000-23

A spotlight on one of the best DJs alive.

We stan a legend: Not only has the Parisian producer and vocalist born Caroline Hervé made consistently superb recordings for more than a quarter century—her reunion with the Hacker, Third Album, was one of my favorites of 2022—she is also one of the best DJs alive. I’ve never encountered a bad set and have heard a number of great ones. And furthermore, whenever I say this on social media, it is invariably followed by a handful of amens. Prompted by the newest, I thought a brief overview might be in order. They’re chronological, as always.

Here are all five sets as a YouTube playlist.

Miss Kittin, HR3-Clubnight Spezial @ Ostermarsch—hour 2 (April 22, 2000)

Electro had been making its way back into techno for a while before this set, but this one crystallizes that moment brilliantly. As it’s the second hour (the first seems to be missing), the tracklist (MixesDB) begins here with number 22, “Electrostatic”—tone set. And the tracks alternate between the nominally techno and the nominally electro with authority—this selection would stomp in any number of settings, at any point in time. The real time marker may be that it cools down definitively at the end, with a track on Perlon, as au courant a label in that period as International Deejay Gigolos or Tresor.

Miss Kittin, Live @ Loveradio, Cafe Schönbrunn (July 21, 2001)

Over the years, appreciating music has taken on a different cast for me—instead of being hung up on a DJ’s taste (well, instead of always being hung up on it), I now pay attention more to the overall aesthetic. I get more out of it that way, but it still helps a lot when a DJ plays great records every fucking time. (It’s not like there’s a shortage.) Miss Kittin is firmly in both camps—everything she plays makes sense together musically and in terms of vision. Michael Jackson and Madonna in a techno set? Not only is that nothing Chicago and Detroit weren’t doing long before—and don’t forget that Larry Levan himself put “Thriller” and “Holiday” in his personal eighties Top 10—it’s an exact snapshot of the millennial moment when house and techno DJs, aided by huge changes in tech, started opening the gates again—and younger DJs came up for whom those unspoken rules hadn’t existed.

Miss Kittin & Savas Pascalidis, LoveWeekend, WMF, Berlin (July 22, 2001)

Yeah, that’s right, the next night, and just like the two above, it’s definitive. The tracklist (MixesDB) is irresistible, studded with classics—moreover, studded with obvious classics, played perfectly, including “Blue Monday,” a song that for many years I was so sick of that I refused to dance to it anymore. (I recently reversed that rule at a local establishment.) The opening half of the YouTube above—“Altered States” > “Love Will Find a Way” > a cover of “I Was Made for Lovin’ You” that defines the wtf-ever-ness of the Electroclash moment > “Passion” > motherfucking “Love Is a Stranger”—all put together sums up that whole zeitgeist in one jerky surge. But everything on it is a banger. It goes on even longer in version you can hear on HearThis.At. (I’ve asked Substack’s people about embedding things that aren’t YT or SC: no dice yet, stay tuned. Also, I know nothing else of Savas Pascalidis beyond this set.)

Disc 1: Perfect Night

Disc 2: Perfect Day

Miss Kittin, A Bugged Out Mix (System Recordings 2CD, rel. April 17, 2006)

They didn’t give her a double CD because they were feeling generous. Partly, it’s because she had a lot to play—then and now, it reads as a rebuke to the idea that her early-’00s fame bubble might be a mere fluke. In fact, not very much of these two and a half hours are electro at all; even “Lost Vessel” registers more as techno. But she’s still playing that identifiably Miss Kittin mix of hooky songs and speaker-melting tracks. On disc one, subtitled “Perfect Night,” she even throws in “Don’t Go (Kicks Like a Mule Mix)”—something she’d only recently begun playing (at Sonar Festival, Barcelona, in June 2005), a sign of how un-ravey the early ’00s were—and climaxes with “My Red Hot Car,” which ties it up with a red-hot bow. The second disc, “Perfect Day,” is the real surprise: Miss Kittin’s downtempo set is as frisky, unpredictable, and still hooky as her uptempo ones, with the daringly long a cappella of “Easy Lee (Cassy Lee Mix)” a bet that pays off.

Miss Kittin, HÖR London Takeover (April 6, 2023)

This one does not come across as a statement, per se—it’s a snapshot rather than a portrait. But it’s still loaded with goodies and rife with detail. Throwing in “We Are the Cyborgs” @ 5:00—clever. A soulful vocal bounding over deep kicks @ 18:00—classy. The 303-cum-scratchathon-cum-scatting Speak & Spell that follows—nutso. Sure there’s electro, but it wiggles more than stutters—hallelujah. Like that, for an hour—as usual, bless her.