Hey :)

I wanted to shout about this much earlier but I've been juggling deadline frenzy and moving house (to Hulme!) at the same time. By the end of this week I should have a completed first half to my PhD lit review, all boxes unpacked and furniture in the gaff, and a fully loaded USB, just in time for...

Half Edge with Clemency

Half Edge is back in the smoke this Friday, returning to SOUP for the first time since the ram out dance in April with Brooklyn linchpin, Significant Other. I'm joined this time by a local guest DJ I've hoped to book for years.

The first time I heard Clemency play was at a boygirl party at SOUP in 2018, actually the night before the first ever Half Edge party, with Bruce. A later boygirl set, closing Partisan's NYE party the same year, was quite formative for me. Already a fan of tempo-hopping, contrasting dynamics, and genre-fuckery, it effectively lit a fuse under some foundational assumptions, rules, and hangups I hadn't quite shaken off from the dreary and inhibited 'diggers' scene that had been my intro to DJing. I remember that set through an ecstatic haze - intense, expressionistic, euphoric, and unsettling, even a bit intimidating, with the full crew crowded behind the decks, exuding a kind of anarchic gravitas. The dizzying selections embodied controlled chaos, veering from sensory overload to pure tranquility, with a mastery of energies I can still only equate to magic.

Needless to say, I'm a huge fan of everyone involved in that crew (and the adjacent Mutualism and YCO) and the many directions they've taken since, but Clemency especially has remained one of my favourite DJs in the years since, and a brilliant producer as well. Her sound palette really resonates with me: often dark and psychedelic, sometimes subtly unfurling, at others demanding and abrasive. I've revisited her mixes endlessly: an old Limbo show with the still underrated production genius Akiko Haruna, a flawless contribution to a mix series I'm lucky to share a spot on, run by our pals across the sea, Club Night Club, and more recent tearout sets for Fact and Boiler Room.

Hope to see you there,

Mike xx