BC108 - Five Mixes: December 2024
Keeping track, or trying, from the time of media darkout
Ikonika, via Bandcamp
Year-end obligations mean that most times, late December music of any sort tends not to factor into real-time coverage. I’m overscheduled already, so I’m only going to do this the once. That means I have honorable mentions, two of them. Not Waving, NTS Radio (December 19) (SoundCloud) is an hour of alluring outré sound, Wire mag-style—the adjective applies to both the individual tracks (well, most of them) and the overall picture painted, or collage rendered.
The other HM breaks my own dating rule, coming this side of the New Year, but fuck it: Franklin Bruno, The Manila Folder (KSPC, Claremont, California; January 2), on the Pomona College station, is two-hour all-Ellington extravaganza—a lot of it late Ellington, not unlike my own two-hour all-Ellington show from last June, but there are also a couple of V-Discs from World War II. You can’t go too wrong with that guy, you know? I’m breaking the rule because it’s only going to be available for two weeks from its airdate—just a couple days from now. I do hope Franklin can upload the whole thing sometime.
You can hear four of the sets below (plus the first honorable mention) on this SoundCloud playlist, which also contains a link to the fifth—or, rather, first.
DJ Swedish Egil, The ROQ of the 80’s (KROQ 106.7FM, Los Angeles, December 31, 1985) (Jim Hopkins Remaster) (Retro Radio; uploaded December 15)
Not really a “set” the way the others are, our HM included—this is the last hour on-air of the year-end countdown, featuring numbers twelve to one. (The full list is available, if you want spoilers. It’s NYE, so they also play Guy Lombardo.) You know every single one, don’t worry—well, you might not know “Dead Man’s Party” or “Vigilante,” or at least I didn’t. The songs themselves are part of the draw, given the station’s propensity for playing remixes to spice things up—the “Urban Mix” of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” is wild, y’all. But they’re not all of it. What’s irresistible is the overall snapshot of the station in its prime, the ambience between songs: Egil shouting out the near-million expected to hit the Rose Bowl the next afternoon in Pasadena, the European concert promoter telling the DJ and his audience to “keep on going, keep on rockin’” in the New Year. How does “Take on Me” sound better every year?
Konduku, RA.967 (Resident Advisor; December 16)
I remember feeling giddily weightless on the night I played this the first time, for reasons that had nothing to do with the music—until it seeped in, whereupon it had everything to do with the music. It’s gurgling-whirlpool-of-data techno, the rhythms skipping with purpose, the electronics signifying like traffic lights in the fog, the tone as beatific as a spa retreat and as pinpoint specific as a NASA close-up. Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space, even when the beats approximate ye olde percussion circle.
Selectabwoy, The No U-Turn Experience ’96 [2M Plays Xmas Special] (December 20)
I have myself gotten too attached to the theory of drum & bass turning to gunk around 1996. I mean, it did, but in that early techstep moment, the gunk had real style—a rainbow of greys, maybe, but a rainbow nonetheless. This 90-minute look-back is a superb reminder that this stuff also moves. It’s explosive—literally so, in terms of sound-bites deployed, but also in cumulative effect, all those subs pushing all that weight and all those breaks doing all that crunching. And that’s what made people leery at the time. Prior to 1995, this music had been almost guaranteed not to sound the same from quarter to quarter (cf. BC105 or BC017). At the time, it felt like an encroaching sameness. You weren’t going to be surprised at the dance. At the time, I balked, too. But listening back, what I hear is ground being laid, not being paved over, ground more variegated than it seemed.
Ikonika, Night Slugs Presents (Rinse FM, December 22)
Ikonika’s selections as a DJ have consistently struck me with their power and sureness of purpose, ever since her XLR8R Podcast 136 (May 2010). This set is no different, though it’s a lot more casually rendered—a catch-up more than a mission statement. For one thing, it connects ampiano (cf. BC104) with hard house, which feels like 2024 dance music in a nutshell, even though as a description of the set itself, it doesn’t fly—it’s a lot heavier on the former than the latter, but moreover there’s a high-keyed, almost blissful tension throughout that feels as much part of the selector’s DNA as the selections’. Maybe it is a mission statement.
Joachim Spieth, Pop Ambient Mixed (Kompakt, December 25)
Merry Christmas! Arriving that day was something we can all rejoice over: the return of MixesDB! Another thing that showed up in our stocking was this set of burbling icescapes, exactly what you want to hear on that blessed, frosted day. (Not “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” not “Jingle Bell Rock”—never again, please. Sorry, but I work in retail.) Pure electronics give up pure emotion after they’re impurely filtered and craftily manipulated. The occasional guitars implicitly tip their hat to Chill Out and evoke Duane Eddy serenading the ocean floor with his amp. The closest analog (har har) among Kompakt mixes that I know is Alex Paterson’s Connecting the Dots (August 2021), with ten tracks from Pop Ambient volumes setting the tone even though it takes until track five for one to appear. Spieth uses 9 out of 13 PA tracks here. Ding-a-ling, hear them ring.
Thanks to Martin Kavka and Christopher Robin Zimmerman.