A box of CDs, via MoMA Ready’s SoundCloud (link below)
Last week, Hat & Beard Press released We’ll Never Stop Living This Way, a catalog and history of Ghostly International that features essays by Philip Sherburne and I, among much else. I wrote that piece so long ago that I’d thought the book had come out and I simply didn’t know it existed—glad to see that it does.
You can hear four of the mixes below (with a link to the fifth) at this SoundCloud playlist.
JD Twitch, Cosmic Selection for Joe Muggs Worldwide FM Aug 2022 (uploaded September 30)
Josh Cheon, Dark Entries: Tribute to Keith McIvor (NTS Radio, October 16)
Obviously, five sets, even ten total mentioned, is not enough to adequately cover the DJ career of JD Twitch (cf. BC138), and in fact I have another spotlight in the works. But these two put themselves in front of me as part of the daily routine—no surprise, I follow both DJs somewhere or other—and they flesh out the Twitchian ethos nicely.
The first case is recent but not exactly new—Joe Muggs’ Worldwide FM show (2018-22) is still archived, including the full version of this episode. But his re-upping it on its own in the wake of Keith’s passing is apt, because it is a real standalone work. The title is almost prosaic: “selection” because it’s not “mixed” per se, “cosmic” because it will have you seeing stars. Portals open and close; filters wow and flutter; analog synths gasp and peal; rhythms announce themselves on melodic instruments. I love the Laurie Spiegel especially. I miss the guy already.
Josh Cheon’s NTS hat-tip is deliberate about naming McIvor rather than Twitch, and scrupulous about its sourcing—Cheon’s back-announcements delineate the exact relation of each track to the man of the hour. They lean on the more astringent side of post-punk and industrial, per McIvor’s own enthusiasms, working partners, and selections from mixes. As indicated, this is structured like a radio show rather than a DJ mix, per se, but that’s precisely the appeal—the host’s context adds value, and so does his clear respect and love.
basic chanel, Kiosk Radio (October 3)
A short while back, I was commiserating with a colleague and admitted that there were weeks where I was just writing about what Chanel Kadir was either making, commissioning, or sending me. The colleague responded, basically, same. Well, there’s a reason for it, and this hour-long guest set is the most convincing example that she has spun that I’ve come across so far. (There are, naturally, already other sets to consider.) It is so laser focused it’s almost difficult to believe it isn’t just one continuous composition. There’s a lot of that snorkeling low end I keep noticing all over of late (cf. BC123, BC126) but here the undertow is rather deliciously sinister rather than just head-fucking. Perfect, then, for the spooky season.
MoMA Ready, Crosswalks: 100% CD Mix (Downtempo, Trip Hop) (October 3)
Maybe that subhead shouldn’t be “finding gold in the corners.” Maybe it should be “finding gold on the corner.” Literally. From MoMA Ready’s SoundCloud note: “I found a big box of CDs on the sidewalk that someone was getting rid of. The box was full of classic Downtempo & Trip Hop! So naturally, I had to record a mix!” What, am I supposed to try and resist this? Plenty of it is, as I put it to the DJ friend whom I knew would love this the most, “Soooo ersatz!” (“The best!” they replied) But time, not to mention the filter of enthusiastic ears, has a way of enhancing or bringing out new elements from music that once seemed bottom-line bland-o; this set demonstrates it repeatedly. “It was a spectrum of sound that took influence from hip hop, jazz, drum and bass, bossa nova and world music! So much to dig into!” the DJ enthuses in the comments.
What I hear, more than anything, are the varying degrees of “dread” that were endemic to these records’ (this genre’s) atmosphere. The title of Tricky’s album Pre-Millennium Tension (1996) basically nails it in a phrase. Some of the low-slung dub-inspired moodiness on hand here remains pure bubblegum, cf. “6 Underground.” But things turn on a corner—as when the latter tune is followed up by “The Girl Next Door,” which brings to mind The Stalker Uncomfortably Close By. Their knowing interplay, via the selector, is what makes this work so well.
Mike Gervais, Sequence (Minneapolis, August 16; uploaded October 17)
I’m sorry to have missed this event. I’m sorry to have missed, oh, every event since the Traxx headlining set I wrote about (cf. BC132). I am enduring what I long ago termed “bookjail”: With a few specific exceptions, my day job included, I am housebound, desk-bound, deadline-bound—I have a manuscript to finish, pronto, and I’m not allowed extraneous fun till it’s finished. So, this set by one of the hands-down Minneapolis techno greats makes me miss it all the more, because it hits with real force just sitting at home. You crave beginnings-middles-ends? This one has a clockwork-like satisfaction. It’s structured, obsessively so—the DJ clearly knew precisely where each track was going to go, how it would slot into the whole, how the whole would lay out, and he takes (and offers) evident pleasure in getting every element just right.