Busy times of late—look for more vault goodies like last week’s go-round with DJ Funk (cf. BC122) in the immediate future. Some of that has to do with other work of various sorts, like this feature for Racket about the DJ sound systems at Minneapolis’s Powderhorn Park on MayDay Sunday, a newly evolving tradition that has its roots partly in the post-George Floyd uprising; one of my favorite pieces I’ve done. I’ve got more up-to-date listening to share with you when I’m able, as well. But I also have a manuscript due in a few weeks and a lot still to do, and relative lateness on new sets, plus a lot of older ones, seems forgivable. Besides, most mixes of any age are still new to most people, myself included.
sddp, SORRYMIX39: 100% Brandy: An Exploration of Bootleg and Edit Culture (March 1)
Sets like this one, which I garnered from Michael McKinney’s March round-up at Passion of the Weiss, I tend to love more in principle than I like in aural fact, and that applies even when I like it plenty in aural fact. This is a good example, because I find it well made even as I don’t imagine I’ll go back to it all that much. It’s academic, in a good way—it illustrates not only the sheer amount of Brandy vocal sampling by dance producers over the years, but also the breadth of those producers’ work. Her voiceprint decorates a large range of material here: UK garage, spangly filter house, screwed-and-chopped, juke, D&B. Brandy doesn’t always sound like Brandy on these tracks; often she’s pitched way down, which seems right given her throaty low notes. It’s also an appropriation minefield; I’m happy to credit any takedown of the very fact that this thing even exists that anyone wants to send me.
Logic1000, DJ-Kicks (Studio K7; rel. March 28)
There are so many DJ-Kicks volumes by now—this is the 84th mix in the now-thirty-year-old series—that they can be measured against others in the series without it feeling like a cheat. I hear the Logic1000 installment as a cross between Erlend Øye’s (gurgling-whirlpool sonics, indie as fuck), Henrik Schwarz’s (a broad range winnowed to a single finely shaded lane), and Hot Chip’s (indie as fuck). Only it is way pokier than any of those—almost an ambient set, or, to quote again (but differently) Michael McKinney, Logic1000’s DJ-Kicks plays “like a survey of contemporary ‘listening music.’” Its languidity is consistently fetching, though—as, in their very different ways, are those of the two directly below—and it means something that the peak cut comes from the DJ herself.
Anastasia Kristensen, NTS Radio: Season Finale (April 10)
basic chanel b2b OL Drift, Untitled 909 Podcast 220 (Live from Ormside Projects) (rec. December 2024; uploaded April 11)
These did not arrive into my view as a pairing, but they spoke to me as one even before chronology-within-post made it so. Kristensen I was alerted to sooner but heard later; I had the idea of playing through a month’s worth of Untitled 909 Podcasts. I have plans for at least one of other title, but when this one drifted in it took little time for it to take this spot.
Shifting gears is what Kristensen’s NTS finale is all about. It does so sharply, curiously, provocatively, casually—its tonal and musical shifts begin to feel more predetermined with every play—a gradual frosty ascent, then more bass-led and growly, and more beat-forward pieces to finish. It all plays as one thing, though; everything coheres into something that’s both modest and bigger than itself.
As indicated above, the Untitled 909 Podcast has been a consistently good bet, actually for a while now. I first grokked it five years ago, with Foul Play’s Podcast 36 (April 2020)—if there is a way to my heart, Steve Gurley is likely to be involved. This time around, we get an ur-opening set, ninety minutes of gradual ascent. basic chanel is the DJ moniker of the woman behind the podcast and its accompanying newsletter, as well as a PR firm; OL Drift is previously unknown to me, but I can attest that the moniker means something in this context. Their wayward drift has real breadth and depth; the selections are involving individually and in the way they shift balance. She didn’t need to put this set out for me to think of Chanel as an MVP, but it certainly doesn’t hurt.
Plastician, Edible Beats Radio Mix—Boogie, Italo & Disco Spesh (aired August 5, 2022; uploaded April 13)
In 2015, my favorite DJ set of the year was Plastician’s All the Right Moves, sixty-four minutes of ur-eighties R&B-plus/minus that I will actually be dealing with in a near-future post (foreshadowing alert, or is that flashback alert?). It’s clearly one of his sweet spots, and he explores it again here, seven or ten years later, only this time around he’s going for a steady stream rather than pulling out the stops. Of course not—the material isn’t as instantly or eternally classic. But any fan of early-eighties boogie, as it were, will want to play it through and see where it catches—a few places, for sure. For his finale, he reaches deeper in every way—it’s apposite but also perfect.