BC189 - Five Mixes: May-July 2026
In praise of the human touch
The real world has a way of impinging upon one’s ability to, cough, “keep up.” This, then, is an overdue skim of a propitious recent-ish crop. I chose not to repeat sources (stations, podcasts) because some of them have been thick with worthwhile activity and two weeks without recommendations seemed to demand that kind of overview. The through-line, insofar as there is one, is what I’ll loosely dub the human touch. Even the most purely mechanical items feel like people connecting.
You can hear all five sets at this SoundCloud playlist.
deep creep b2b Mike Midnight, Kiosk Radio (May 17)
Twilight minimalism that coolly, gradually morphs into sunrise minimalism—I’d use “mnml,” but that term belongs to a cohort with as little use for real-world pleasure as I do for the purely theoretical version of it that the missing letters imply. Things heat up when the bass lines start intruding—like a really good dancer giving you the nod, not some glittering jerk demanding your space—and the filters skirl like a welcome breeze cutting into the air. Minimalism is seldom this effortlessly charming.
Jocelyn Romo, NTS Guide to: Armadillo World Headquarters (NTS Radio, June 1)
Sure, it’s dance music—what, you’ve never heard of the two-step? Tsk-tsk. And like so much good dance music, it’s keyed to a specific venue: Austin’s Armadillo, open 1970 to 1980, a meeting ground for what Gram Parsons (who shows up near the end of the mix) called “cosmic American music,” blues and rock and soul infusing the twang, a cocktail that gives drugs equal time with booze because club cultures are more alike than not. Put this on and try not to move—even the throwback recitative is rhythmically spry, and the one solo-acoustic number pointedly urges us to “dance like the dickens to the West Texas waltz.” A thousand times more fun (and more country) than that tedious-ass Daniel Rincon set that RA put in its Top 50 of the 2000s. And if you haven’t read Michael Streissguth’s Outlaw, add it to your list—worth it for the stories of Waylon vs. the pinball machine alone.
Mary Yuzovskaya, The Lot Radio (June 8)
Every time one of this Russian all-vinyl techno wiz’s sets crosses my path, it scores, and this one might be my favorite yet. It’s got a frosty sheen to it that’s typical of her style—the sci-fi aspect of classic techno is key to her taste—but it also connects with the low-end psychedelia I’ve valued so much of late. Whatever the time of day is, let her bring the warehouse to you.
Love Injection, RA.1044 (Resident Advisor, June 22)
I’ve mentioned this before, but one thing I’ve noticed with some DJs who’ve been at it for a while is that they have become more inclined to let the frayed edges show: a way of keeping it real, or at least anti-perfectionist, the opposite of AI. “We had a very short amount of time to put this together, so we decided to lean into that and do it spontaneously,” Paul and Barbie say on the RA page. “We just did a little shopping, organising and recorded it.” Hallelujah—it’s the key to the set’s charm. The occasional fluffs signify because the selections grab so hard and the vibe keeps cresting. The DJs’ touches aren’t mistakes, they’re excitants—they add drama and flair to vocal-heavy tracks whose arrangements teem with instrumental color even when the set winds down into dub techno. Jazzy and percussive in all the right ways, it conjures a mind’s-eye portrait that’s outdoors and intergenerational, styling and casual, the very model of a better world worth fighting for.
Martyn, Untitled 909 Podcast 278 (Untitled 909, July 1)
In the Q&A and on the SoundCloud page, Martyn typifies this less as a mix than a “mood board”—snippets that fall together to make a whole, rather than a set of songs that build a kind of narrative. In short, it’s a fast-moving collage, not dissimilar to Lone’s from a few months back (cf. BC170), only where that one’s parts were mixed, this one’s overlap and cut each other off unpredictably. Martyn made it to help focus the album that would become Music for Existing, is stately and holistic, a real work of composition. The podcast explodes those individual parts into something messier and less straightforward. It’s an aperitif, but one with complex flavor.