The last couple of weeks have been light on mix listening for a few reasons, one of which was writing this feature for Carbon Sound (part of MPR) on the life (not death) of Liara Kaylee Tsai, a Minneapolis electro-acid DJ who, as I note, exuded personality on the decks, musically as well as in person. Her January 1, 2023 set from Minneapolis’s Red Sea, in particular, provided the soundtrack for much of the time I spent drafting the piece. But more of that time was spent listening to the people who spoke to me—letting what they said resonate and settle. Liara’s death was deeply disturbing: the MPR report here, also linked in the Carbon Sound piece, is very unsettling in places, fair warning. Liara’s music, and the Red Sea mix, is the opposite—positively rave-utopian—and so was her outlook, even when the going was rough, which is a perspective I can learn from.
Here is a SoundCloud playlist of the first four sets below.
Dani Whylie, SWU.FM (Bristol; June 1)
The tag is “House & Techno,” which seems prosaic enough. But when you listen to it, the tag seems almost droll—because much of the time it is clearly house music and it is also clearly techno at the same time. For example, @ 18:00, the familiar piano line and vocal shout of “Where Love Lives (Classic Club Mix)” canter over sizzle-hats and thick kicks that wouldn’t be out of place on, oh, a Marco Carola/Adam Beyer EP from 1999. It’s also like @ 33:00, with heavy drums overlaid with R&B vocals a la UK garage, not a typical admixture. And the vocals come more consistently from hits as it plays. It doesn’t sound programmatic, though—just fast, active, and stupid-fun. A find.
BEIGE, RA.939 (Resident Advisor; June 2)
It wasn’t until I played Dani Whylie and this one back-to-back that I realized that both are doing similar things in terms of tempo and omnivorous nonchalance. BEIGE is from Detroit but this mix doesn’t traffic much in the kind of aural touchstones often associated with that city—the techno is brutal but not particularly starry—even if the deftness of the DJ’s touch does. Yes, even when Skrillex gets re-edited. And especially when, per RA’s write-up, “a 150 BPM version of ‘Energy Flash’” appears. “Joey Beltram Is Playing at My House,” it’s called; it’s self-explanatory, hilarious, heartwarming. And when things stop very suddenly, the drama is fully earned.
Analog Soul, Live from Genosys, Glastonbury 2023 (UK, June 22, 2023; uploaded June 20)
Felix Dickinson, Live from Genosys, Glastonbury 2023 (UK, June 25, 2023; uploaded June 20)
It was tempting at first to assign an entire post to the six-mix playlist that Block 9, the sponsor whose festival stage yielded these sets, thoughtfully put together almost exactly a year after they were performed. But I played through them and only half really caught—and of those, only two really stuck. (Sorry, Moxie.)
The sibling duo Analog Soul are liable to play anything at all; it’s always good and it’s always surprising. Here, they veer toward disco samples but also toward fine-grained minimalism, sometimes both at once. Many of these tracks are both bare and flourishing; the one based on a single string chord from a very familiar bestseller, for example. Juicy flutes flashing against dank greyscale—it’s a painting. The last half hour meshes those poles into something lush but still alert—something Detroit, you might say. The British DJ Felix Dickinson’s hour is closer to what I’d expect from a Glasto stage—wormy acid and supple bass lines guaranteed to work for large crowds without pandering to them, heavy on sampled and dappled vocals without them turning into songs.
Rumpel, From the 80s—Rap Songs Made by Non-Rappers (June 29)
A coda to my interview with John Darnielle—the day after we spoke, he sent along this gem. I was hesitant at first; the Rappin’ Rodney image had me fearing the worst. But no—the tracklist, annotated here, is a serious and overdue concept.
For context, try this Greil Marcus quote from December 1981: “The conservatism of mainstream radio doubled back on itself in 1981, and the proof was that rap . . . was heard principally in the form of soft-drink commercials. That is, Madison Avenue admen knew they could catch the ear of the public with this stuff, but program directors didn’t believe it.”
As this set illustrates, something similar applies to a whole lot of musicians right around then. Quite a number of them were aghast that these kids—with no musical training, humph—were simultaneously leveling the playing field and making their finely tuned musicianship seem old hat. Infamously, Chaka Khan detested her own 1984 hit version of “I Feel 4 U” because it featured hip-hopper Melle Mel, and rap, to her, was “the pits. The lowest thing you can do from an artist’s standpoint,” she told Smash Hits that fall.
But lots of others, at least for a few minutes of studio time, disagreed with her. Quite a few musicians cut rap songs of their own—LP filler, bandwagon-jumping, genuine enthusiasm for the new form, it’s all there. Lots of R&B bands taking a turn on the mike, of course—P-Funk offshoot, O.G. talkers taking the mike back such as Millie Jackson, savvy new wavers like Captain Sensible and (duh) Blondie. There’s only a dab of comedy, saved for late. “Somebody Else’s Guy” is a stroke and a half, so to speak. It’s missing “Crosseyed and Painless”—David Byrne has said the “Facts are similar, facts are straight” part was a take-off on “The Breaks”—but you can’t have everything.