BC171 - Five Mixes: The Lot Radio, February 2026
Playing selections that your cats will enjoy
DJ Slugo
Catching up, sorry not sorry. I found a lot of good listening in February. This grouping didn’t announce itself instantly, but once I was juggling other potentials, I realized: duh. It’s interesting to see how different DJs adapt to the environment of the shipping-container radio studio. As with Caribou I mean Daphni (cf. BC168) or Flying Lotus (cf. BC160), The Lot Radio can be both a place to let one’s hair down and a showcase showplace. Sometimes it’s both at once. That happened at least a couple times with these.
You can hear all five sets below at this SoundCloud playlist.
Erika, The Lot Radio (February 13)
Hashtag: #techno. Yeah sure. She’s played techno each time I’ve seen her, but that’s not what’s going on here. A pronounced dance beat does enter the picture, eventually—a few do—but those are not the point. The first couple selections glide out of the gate, suavely, but it doesn’t take long for things to go cloudily avant-garde—and hypnotic. When loops go out of phase, when pretty-but-ominous bloops and skittering dubstep snares accompany a queasy spoken SF (I think) narrative, when she drops some motherfucking shoegaze, Erika delves so deep and generously it’s still startling even when you’ve heard her do this kind of thing before, too (cf. BC048). “Erika will play selections that her cats enjoy” is the “bio” on this one. Her cats must be weird even for cats.
Kendal b2b Andi, Synthecide (The Lot Radio, February 15)
Hashtag: #trance. They’re being honest. Not the neo-psy stuff I’ve been so hot on—the stuff that filled lumpen raves and clubs back in the day. And holy shit does it deliver. It sprawls like limbs in a cuddle puddle and is roughly as sweaty. Just when I think it has to give out, the gears shift noticeably and proudly—cooler and moodier here, vocals that evoke freestyle sent through Auto-tune there, OTT percussion and crawling B-lines layered to maximum density near the end, with flitting neon synth lines throughout. “Another night at the club,” as one vocal hook goes—and some nights have more juice more than others.
DJ Slugo, Chicago Ghetto House Music (The Lot Radio, February 22)
No hashtag, none required—the title says it all. Is it definitive? While it’s playing, one hundred percent. As Windy City songs go, Slugo’s remix of DJ Pharris feat. Drama’s “Bitch I’m From Chicago,” this set’s penultimate but actually ultimate moment, is fully the equal of anything by Robert Johnson, Frankie Knuckles, Frank Sinatra, ZZ Top, or Serengeti, and better than anything (at all) by Sufjan Stevens.
Sherelle, The Lot Radio (February 23)
And sometimes she just plays jungle, though admittedly that phrase is kind of long for a hashtag. If the recently reviewed Sexy Lady Massive set (cf. BC170) is most reminiscent of D&B in its exciting larval stage, this one is closer to mid-nineties efflorescence, the sound dialing in and maturing but the early style’s essential friskiness still intact. Wafting pads, chopped snares, soul vocals broken into shards and echo-laden for maximum zing, G-funk synth whine, yard-tape yammering—classic shit, no letup, and as they say, amen.
DJ Travella, The Lot Radio (February 23)
No letup could be this one’s hashtag, too. Is it “better” than the two (cf. BC148 and BC160) I already have fallen for this year? Don’t know, don’t care—what matters is that while it’s (they’re) playing I’m distracted and delighted at the edge of my seat. Despite or perhaps because several of the weird little FX-abetted tunelets play as funhouse-mirror variations of “The Final Countdown” by—oh irony!—Europe.