BC110 - Five Mixes: January 2025
A farewell to Daisychain, and more
Leesh, via The Daisychain Club
January was a busy month—did some work for Observer (American Symphony won, boo), for Racket (I went and had a good time, aside from an asshole bartender who seemed to think he was back being a Juggalo again), and for Carbon Sound. I also got a lot of pleasure from these sets. You can hear all five at this SoundCloud playlist.
Deep Creep, pi pi pi (The Lot Radio, January 2)
This is a radio set, not a live set, and you can tell—the DJ lets the tracks trail out a bit more than a moving floor might allow for. That roaming feel gives this hour its specific heft—the grooves are both taut and relaxing. It’s easy-flowing minimalism with some creepiness around the edges, more decorative than defining. The percussion works like a temple massage as well as an enticement to limbs akimbo.
Lauren Flax, Dammit Janet (The Lot Radio, January 2)
This came into existence less than forty-eight hours after I saw Flax throw down in Minneapolis on New Year’s Eve, at a party in a warehouse. She was sensational, though I was ready to head home before she was done—it was me, not her. (OK, it was some of what I’d heard before her, too.) Back in Brooklyn, her taste for vaulted-ceiling climaxes still takes off, albeit a shade or two calmer—not at the same pitch as what she played on NYE, but this isn’t New Year’s Eve. Entreaties as to whether the listener is or is not, in fact, house are always welcome, and Flax utilizes these really well, here and elsewhere.
upsammy, RA.970 (Resident Advisor, January 6)
As with deep creep above, upsammy is another minimalist; maybe the lowercases give it away. But the deep creep above reminds me a lot more of the last upsammy set I discussed (BC101) in its pinwheel-in-motion pitter-patty flow. Instead, it gathers itself gradually, the breaks kicking in well before ten minutes is up. “I wanted to make a mix with a narrative,” she explains in the podcast’s accompanying profile. “Something that slowly builds up in intensity, towards a more ravey moment and then also the melancholic moment afterwards.” That’s the motion, all right—and what makes it uniquely hers is the mix’s secret weapon, an FX pedal, whose use gives the whole thing an aerated ir-reality.
DJ Python, Kindred (January 10)
More slo-mo-roll stuff—Python’s selections are start out straightforwardly dub techno before diffusing into other equally fetching abstractions. Midway through the rhythms grow more intricate, the reggaeton Python is known for certainly among them, though I hear lots else too. There’s a head-clearing playfulness about the whole thing; it’s even cute in places without being dewy more especially melodic. You can credit an FX unit for those too, though those seem to have been on the recordings to being with.
Leesh, Daisychain 360 (January 17)
This is the final edition, at least for the time being, of Buffalo-to-Chicagoan Leesh’s seven-years-strong Daisychain Podcast, spotlighting female and nonbinary DJs. It’s also the first of them that Leesh has actually spun—number 360, a full trip around the sun, a deeply thoughtful gesture. The mix is filled with ideas, too—it proceeds with a sure-footed and carefully considered series of arcs, building and building from minimal and arresting parts. It plays a little like dance-music version of an Esquire “What I’ve Learned” column, except instead of each answer being cut to the nub, they flower into full paragraphs that digress with ease. And you don’t need to make a map of other Daisychain mixes and connecting the dots therein, Charlie Day-meme style, in order to hear plainly that this offering is a sum total of what came before it—not in terms of tracks chosen, but in terms of where a mix can go, the kind of adventure you can offer the listener. As Leesh’s notes point out, many of the best DCPs offered unique vistas and combinations; hers has a lot of aerial views and a lot of things you don’t ordinarily hear together, even if you listen to mixes a lot.