BC089 - Five Mixes: June-July 2024

Recent sets that finish with a twist

NORA, via Rinse FM

The newer mixes have been short on the ground over in this precinct—not least because new isn’t always the point around here, listening is. I like how the title of Will Hermes’ new joint puts it: New Music + Old Music. Some of the old music I cover has come from the John Darnielle interview—I’ve now played through three of the titles with real pleasure. I have plans for the anonymous Pine Walk tape from 1979, and note fondly that DJ2tee’s Dance Floor Jazz 2 from this March is delightfully heavy on sixties Latin jazz. The one I eyed most greedily, Krish Raghav’s Play That Afrobeat, Mr. Raaja, from last year, is very indie but also not like anything else I know. I finally got to ir after one of the newsletter’s readers, Randall Roberts, was nice enough to write Beat Connection up for In Sheep’s Clothing Hi-Fi. He highlighted it along with four other selections from as many other entries. And people are responding positively—a number of new readers have come aboard as a result. Welcome and thanks! And please let me know of any sets you think I should hear. As you’ll see below, I find some of the best stuff that way.

You can hear all five sets on this SoundCloud playlist.

MadAlba, The Lot Radio (June 29)

A latter-day Tresor resident, this Berliner plays the way you’d want/expect/hope: hard, clanging, crunchy. But also tangy and ethereal, throwing in some electro or house to leaven the sawtooth waves. Then there’s the old-school sleaze she concentrates in the latter third. First, the black-exhaust grooves are overlaid with a British dominatrix commanding “you” the listener to lick her boots, et al., in the primmest manner imaginable, so blatantly reading from a script it’s hilarious. Then she follows up/finishes off with the original Euro “Self Control,” which plays as wryly as it reads.

DJ Marcelle, The Lot Radio (June 29)

I’d been hearing things about DJ Marcelle shortly prior to this crossing my path, and I’m glad I did—it helped prepare me for anything. Here, that means fast, heavily tweaked-out tracks from across the globe and timeline—footwork, Arabesque jams, train-track drum machine pitter-pat, African choirs over Detroit din—that don’t so much form the set as form its spine, because there’s always something on top, or just underneath. Usually it’s voices, mixed low but persistently, often spoken or seemingly overheard, not so much in synch with the rest as indifferent to it and thus even more beguiling. Sometimes it’s just feedback, which the DJ keeps on standby here, like a Gerhard Richter splotch. Not to mention her similar usages of delay. This one ends similarly to the MadAlba set, only with a fitness record. That, too, is just buried enough to be menacing.

DJ Fuckoff invites NORA, Rinse FM (July 5)

Let’s see: Fuckoff’s b2b with Narciss at Whole Festival made my top five last year, and Nora’s guests spot on Lyzza’s NTS show from March 2022 showed up on that year’s top ten. Any guesses how this one turns out? Tempos leap around, linearly enough (not like Marcelle above), but the rushes generated by each successive build add up—the momentum doesn’t let up, the tempo for the whole hour is well into the red. That doesn’t mean the whole thing blithers by; the tracks are sometimes startling in their clarity. And when the blithers do come they’ll sweep you along with them. P.S. Fuckoff’s follow-up episode is a pretty fun dub reggae special.

AceMo b2b DJ Swisha b2b Kush Jones b2b MoMA Ready, The Lot Radio (July 10)

Pretty irresistible, as you’d figure—four for the price of one, only it sounds like one thing, each DJ proffering the most tweaked-out and adaptable stuff in their respective arsenals—or, as noted in more than once voiceover, a gaggle of exclusives. Lots of rapping, too, but that feels more circumstantial than directional.

Cory Simpson, A Mile High and Rolling (July 16)

When Peter Wohelski, the former Astralwerks A&R man and Beatport chief, alerts me to a DJ mix, I listen. He did so last week on Facebook, writing: “This reminds me of more experimental, heady days of the mid-late 90s, Mills, Rob Hood, Bandulu, Space DJz, Steve Bicknell, UK parties like Lost and Burundi, and when techno was about pushing boundaries and the future.” Peter had also been the person who alerted me to a Dave Clarke interview featuring this potent quote: “Now is definitely the end of techno, right. Techno is done. It’s turned into ‘Disco Duck.’ Very cool artists are still making good music but as a genre of credibility, it's finished.” Since this is mainly about the way “mainstream” “techno” is being proffered and not the actual records that people in my immediate orbit often play at events I attend, this is something of a nonstarter to me, but if you’re looking for a rejoinder, you won’t have more fun than with this item. When it ends with a familiar classic vocal, it’s funny and a lift, and also unsettling, like a Smiley whose mouth is fraying at the ends.