Via Mixmag
One reason I appreciate the RA.1000’s gigantism, even if I sometimes make fun of it (cf. BC137), is that it gives me a real before-and-after to work with. This is the before—a group of recordings I’d gotten to like prior to making time for that after it dropped. Apropos of nothing much unto themselves except that they all hold up nicely, and that they’re all repeats of folks I’ve covered before. OK, one isn’t, but the DJ has offered up so many old tapes I’ve loved that I’m counting this hour as a return.
You can hear all five sets at this SoundCloud playlist.
Jacques Greene, Rinse FM (July 10)
The sweeping house that this Canadian makes and plays has long been a favorite (cf. BC028, BC043), and here is yet another hour that reminds me why. Big, alluringly spares expanses of space are filled in largely with bass lines that knock you back and draw you in both at once; sampled vocals and FX dot the landscape. Moods vary from delighted to misty-eyed, drums skip when they don’t break, but the basic recipe holds throughout. That might make it seem monochromatic, but it’s not that at all—it’s lush.
DJextreme, Drumpoetry (NTS Radio, July 31)
DJextreme is the man behind Hardscore, the great repository of over a thousand nineties hardcore/jungle/D&B tapes (SoundCloud). His wares feature frequently round these parts (cf. BC057, BC117, BC127), but I hadn’t really grokked his own playing before. Now I will. This hour on NTS concentrates on 1993-94, and digs deep—there isn’t an obvious or duff selection here. Nor is there anything you’d have heard on a main floor even in a small scene—a lot of recognizable elements appear among them (a vocal that was also sampled in bigger tracks, god knows how many specific breakbeats) but not in this manner, every single time out. It doesn’t build-and-peak so much as lay things out richly, like a charcuterie board.
Optimo, NTS Radio (August 5) w/DJ Twitch, Synth Summer (July 2009)
Right, them again (cf. BC138), and not long before (or after) JD Twitch’s untimely passing. But this one entered the fray due to its inclusion in NTS Radio’s JD Twitch Forever playlist/page, ten picks from the station they’ve contributed to, unfailingly, for more than a decade. Some are from that regular program, some are guests sets, and some are artist spotlights selected and mixed by Twitch. I may have more to say about a few of the older ones in the future as well. But this one seemed like a gimme, and as is so frequently the case with those guys, it was.
For a start, if the first half of this show was and/or is the newest set in that conglomerate, the second half is also the oldest—a JD Twitch mix from July 2009 called Synth Summer. It was one of several sets specially made for a website overhaul, and Twitch offered it up ahead of schedule to some message-board aficionados. Could anything be more carbon-dated to that exact period? The whole thing is up at this contemporaneous blog post—now the only ready evidence of that entire message board, which is 404’ed. So, for that matter, is that version of the Optimo website, as JG Wilkes explains @ 55:30.
His present-tense half is an enjoyable radio show—some mixing but plenty of stuff that isn’t, a broad span of things, dance-oriented and avant-garde alike. It goes out on a perfect note: 303s and other analog noise makers dueling with free-jazz sax by Kovacs the Hun. Johnnie reads the intro from that blog post (or website description, if you prefer), and we’re off to the races. “It is a DJ mix but not a club mix,” Twitch wrote of this set of “synth-based music from around the planet” from “a broad time span.” He called it “a listening experience rather than for the dance floor, even though all the tracks are ‘dance’ tracks.” It’s loose, elastic, a good time in search of a crowd. I’m particularly taken by the super 8-bitted-out version of “Midas Touch,” a top tune in any environ. I am also reminded of Silent Servant re-playing an old downloadable mix for one of his final radio shows (cf. BC061)—and in general of the instant airwave archives as a repository of dead media.
DJ Fuckoff, The Mix 069 (Mixmag, August 11)
Though it’s hardly uniform, this hour of UK garage is as focused as I’ve heard the DJ thus far. With its heavy and heady hooks—a lot of this is speed garage, damn it, the chart-busting, Armand Van Helden-y stuff—it’s gleefully antic. At first it felt like a summation of the year-to-date. The year itself just doesn’t allow for anything to settle, but the mix is still unyielding in its enjoyability. Touché, as well, for following “Yet Another Badboy Tune” up with “Rare Bargain Bin White Label Type Beat.”
Four Tet, Lightning in a Bottle 2025 (rec. May 23; uploaded August 19)
A gimme, for sure—from someone who knows how to take care of a festival crowd’s needs and a listener’s. The curling, opalescent melody lines we all know and love recur as frequently as you’d figure, and the variation never lets up. It’s probably the Four Tet set I’d offer up to a newcomer—not to him, but to DJ sets—and not just because it climaxes with something everybody knows.