BC081 – Five Mixes: May-June 2024
Helena Hauff summarizes an epoch, Boo Lean stretches things out, and more!
Helena Hauff, via Ninja Tune
I’ve been doing so much other writing lately! A couple weeks back, I looked at Brats, the new documentary on Hulu, for Observer. For Mpls. St. Paul Magazine, I went long on the local culture of 1984, a huge Twin Cities year even without Purple Rain. Speaking of which, The Current sent me to First Avenue for the Revolution’s first show of two in front of the Celebration crowd.
Speaking of greatest-artist-ever candidates, I played two hours of Duke Ellington and related music for my Particle FM show, Needles in the Haystack. (If you want to skip my intro, logically enough, jump to 1:25.) The tracklist is viewable here. (It won’t be on Mixcloud, I’m sure—they have a two-track limit on repeat artists.) All episodes of Needles in the Haystack can be heard on this SoundCloud playlist.
And speaking of SoundCloud playlists, here’s the one for the five mixes that follow.
Boo Lean, Live at Good Room (Brooklyn; May 17)
A three-hour set that truly goes places. The shuffly-cloudy-dubby techno that opens is there almost ancestrally; it’s a precursor to what follows, not a model. That comes when the breaks enter, within fifteen minutes. She lays it all out like a timeline, a virtual clinic on London-bred bass house—speed garage, 2-step, grime, the latter complete with guest MCs. What makes it rich is in how gradually it plays out—it has a compositional quality, a deliberateness of method, really a thesis brought to life in real time.
Joyce Muniz, Groove Podcast 419 (May 24)
I recall a particularly stupid argument about Italodisco I had with two friends on my Facebook wall. I explained that I wasn’t particularly a fan of it as a listener even as I understood its historical implication and was always up for hearing the right DJ play it. One asked the exact same question twice and then got huffy when I only answered it the first time; the other demanded that I start actually liking it based on its historical implication or else. Eventually the one began mansplaining to the other and I finally had to delete the entire thing. Good times, great oldies.
Italo is the secret to this ingratiating hour. Muniz, a Brazilian in Berlin, kicks it off with a perfect eighth-note-bass-line, leather-gloved pout, and keeps things nice and cobwebbed for the first half. There’s more range here than that implies: acid lines, unashamed big-room remixes, even a dab of Afrobeats. But even then, the vocals always have that saucy bloodless undertow.
Kiara Scuro & Tech Support, XXX Podcast 037 (May 28)
I first mentioned Kiara Scuro here a couple years back, for their Truants set. That one I compared to a Global Underground series title; how times change. This one, a collaboration with Tech Support (I think that’s the one?), cuts a far rawer line. For the first third or so, I think of it as a post-punk set; even though the beats all line up, waiting to be blended, there’s a rawness to a lot of the electronics here that’s redolent of that earlier era. Then the 303s arrive and things really start moving.
Helena Hauff, Carhartt WIP Radio June 2024—Tresor (May 31)
Gee—one of the great techno DJs playing through one of the great techno catalogs. What part of this wouldn’t work? What I hadn’t counted on is the upbeat tack. Many of Hauff’s picks are celebratory; it’s not hard to sense their collective excitement is what hooked her in the first place. (It did me, too.) Even when things get merely steely in the back half, the glow remains strong. I also like how she drops in the spoken sample of “Drugs Work” without actually playing the track (even though I always love hearing the track).
DJ Disciple, Mixed Sessions June 2024 Rest in Peace Chuck Roberts (June 9)
Speaking of people I’ve written about here before—or at least, about his signature recording—I dedicated an early post to sets that utilized Chuck Roberts’ classic a cappella from Rhythm Controll’s “My House” (1987) in notable ways. I was less familiar with Roberts’ more recent work, something this hour rectifies. I do mean recent: Roberts’ contributions here all date from 2018 to 2022, and they give the set real cohesion. Naturally, Roberts was frequently employed to reiterate his greatest hit in some fashion or other; gathered together, what’s noticeable is the audible relish he took in the work.