BC170 - Five Mixes: 2026 Q1
The status quo still sucks; plus, a collage
Recently, I’ve been seeing in a few places, for various reasons, talk about “the golden age of Twitter.” This would have come as a huge surprise to anybody on Twitter during this so-called “golden age.” I suspect the proof of one is that people were lamenting it while it happened; if not, it’s a settled matter that nobody cares enough to argue about, and who even remembers those?
Four of the sets below can be heard at this SoundCloud playlist, which also contains links to the fifth.
Sexy Lady Massive, DJ Mag Artists to Watch 2026 (DJ Mag, January 21)
Why yes, I do love old-timey jungle, thanks for noticing. What makes it old-timey? I recognize the samples—the source material is unobscured, the way it was early on, when most of it was available in editions of a thousand on pressings nobody expected to ever see again. That’s not unusual now, either, but it isn’t as widespread. The DJ Mag write-up is almost word-for-word the same thing you’ve read a thousand times whenever an all-woman crew enters the picture. No surprise: the status quo still sucks.
Olga B, Untitled 909 Takeover @ Lithium Radio (Paris, February 22)
Souzo, Untitled 909 Takeover @ Lithium Radio (Paris, February 22)
Just in case it looks like I ride for every single thing Untitled 909 issues, the full playlist of six from this daylong excursion plays pretty windy to my ear. But these two jump out from the pack and sustain standing alone—although I do tend to play them back-to-back, so there’s still some sort of collective vision at work. The Olga B builds from enticingly cloudy to engagingly wind-stormy, the bass lines more pretzel-like as it goes, overheard voices adding traces of definition. It finishes with a semi-anonymous Brit woman rapper—incongruous but enticing, like raspberry candy following beef bourguignon. The Souzo has much the same cast, minus the bonbon but with more clicks + cuts coloring. Remember when laptops were mysterious and ooky? Float on.
Sofia Kourtesis, DJ-Kicks (!K7, rel. March 29)
Once upon a time, even I might have found putting “Flim” at number two almost too easy a move. But with ahistoricism in the midst of a hostile takeover of not only our lives but our tastes, it’s not only a tonic to hear in such a setting, it’s also the keynote to this monument to beat-first listening music—carefully arrayed, gorgeous before anything, an early candidate for mix of the year. Even when it moves acid-ward and vocal-wise, its turn-of-nineties utopian rush codes as determined more than nostalgic. It puts me in the mind of specific people who discovered techno in the 2020s and think it all needs to be “hard.” These people can make out with my taint.
Lone, Mind Apple Music (NTS Radio, March 31)
Right, “the songs that inspired the album” sets tend not to inspire me to listen to either. But exceptions are exceptions—especially Matt Cutler, whose work has been consistent forever, not that I always pay close attention. But this isn’t simply a mood board, it’s a collage, every edge melting enticingly into each other, however far-flung the sources. And that’s why, as it played through, I decided to make a collage of my own. Here it is, and there’s your “review.”
