Hey loves,

I am long overdue one of these.. I won't apologise this time because the main reason I haven't written in a while is that I've just been having too much fun. Back to the grind next month tho, when I move to Reading and start my PhD*, so I'm committing right here to making this a monthly thing.

*Manchester pals I wanna see you all in the next 3 weeks! London ppl I'll be seeing much more of u :)

Keeping personal chat to a minimum this time bc I have loadsss to share with you!

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Peste Sunday Service 28th August

Leading the congregation at Peste all afternoon this Sunday, for any stragglers seeking salvation in the midst of bank holiday decadence. It's listed as a Sacred Sunday Service. This is because Peste were early adopters of the Half Edge double cassette, which some of you will know involved some pretty sacrilegious blends of 12th century plainsong with (very profane) noise and industrial records. There'll be plenty of this (and plenty more). I have a passionate but very ambivalent relationship to sacred music, which I might go into another time, when I have the space. But in very broad strokes, high church music gave me some of my earliest transcendent affective experiences and taught me what music can be capable of - it holds an essential role in the continuum of psychedelic music that informs my approach to playing records. It's also intrinsically tied to decades (millenia) of fear, shame, and power. There's been an interesting synchronicity in the last couple of years between me beginning to play with the affective powers and aesthetics of this music in a DJing context, and dissecting some of the lasting grips fear and shame have had in my life. Doing this right in the middle of a long weekend seeing friends play Pride events (my first year out on this weekend), feels kinda pertinent..

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Club Mixes

I hadn't recorded a club mix for radio in nearly three years before this summer and dropped two in quick succession over May / June :)

This was a real treat to put together. I've been following Pseudonym from the label's beginnings, as I knew of Sam and Sam from their previous work as Slacker and heading up Orson Records, respectively. My interest was piqued especially when I saw borderlandstate on their first VA EP, one of my favourite producers of recent years and someone who I asked very excitedly a few years back if I could release some of the dubs he'd sent me. Thankfully (for him) he declined and soon after got them out on Exit, TT and Pseudonym. I've been super impressed by their output, the sound is weird, technical, but fully optimised for the dancefloor and fully slamming.

I got free reign over the 2 hours, taking things from a whisper to a scream. A nice slow build over 40 mins before getting into full shell out mode, edging up from 160 to 180bpm, with a few half time breathers dropped in. Very much representative of how I like to play in the dark and twisted late hours in the smoke.

I was really stoked to do a guest mix for friends and faves, and Manchester bass-bin connoisseurs, Left, Right & Centre. I met this crew not long after moving back from New York, when they booked Bruce, who helped me launch Half Edge later the same year.

I took a singular focus with a broad view in this one, piecing together a paean to weird 140 music from the last 40 years. Wubby subs, clattering drums, and unsettling textures, setting early industrial tape bits beside 90s steppers, old grime white labels and contemporary club mutations.

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Radio Guests

This summer has involved a new foray for me in inviting guests to take over my Narr Radio show. The last year in general I've been slowly shedding a lifetime of anxiety over control, which often manifests in music more than anywhere else. I tend to flit about different concepts and ideas for different mixes, but from the start I've approached the Narr shows with quite a singular and particular vision. So it's been joyous and humbling hearing my friends submit mixes that are unmistakably theirs, but which, unbidden, have fit so sensitively (and differently!) into the little world I've been trying to build. There'll be more of this to come.

I've revisited this one endlessly over the last few months, it's a very special mix, absolutely gorgeous and I couldn't recommend it more wholeheartedly.

I know Raph from uni days and over the years we've shared music, ideas, and often bafflingly irreconcilable differences of opinion. But quite quietly he's developed the thing I'm drawn to the most in all my favourite DJs: a sound that's wide-ranging, hard to pin down, but instantly recognisable. It's also a sound that's nice. I'm drawn to the ecstatically beautiful and the ethereal, but these things appear to me as flashes of brilliance, all the brighter for the general malaise of an angst-ridden, terrifying world. I quite rarely feel compelled by DJs that have a generally positive sound, though the small handful of exceptions are people I listen to obsessively - Leif, CCL (sometimes!), and Nick Kagame spring to mind. Raph is amongst these exceptions and I think it speaks to a fundamental difference in our personalities. He has a (seemingly uncomplicated) love for life that's completely infectious and totally honest. Not the forced fun of Shoreditch cocktail bars and disco tunes in trainer ads, but a joyfulness that comes from the heart.

I hope you enjoy this mix even a fraction of how much I did, listening for the first time in the sun outside SOUP on a Sunday afternoon, still glowing from a gorgeous weekend. It's got so many of my favourite things: a sense of wistful yearning, prominence of weird and wonderful vocals, a folky, rootsy attachment to disparate times and spaces, and a deep, meditative sound world. And none of the abrasive, angsty shit I usually throw in. Bliss.

My great friend and sparring partner, Everett, filled in for me in June while I was away on a meditation retreat. As well as being an unsung pillar of the community in Manchester, behind the scenes at The White Hotel, Peste, and Annex, he's one of my undisputed favourite DJs and biggest inspirations. His selections are sprawling and limitless, but laser-focused in sensibility, and often brain-ticklingly weird.

I'm a huge fan of b2b DJing, it's the cornerstone of Half Edge events and a form that never fails to present me with new lessons and challenges, but after years and countless times playing together there's nobody I've clicked with as seamlessly as Toby. There's no tip-toeing around each other, no anxiety about how to meet in the middle, no need for compromise - just pure synchronicity and understanding. Something that spills out, over and beyond the sum of parts. Three decks playing, four hands on the mixer at any given time. Such a treat having him take the reins on this one - it's a stunning mix: emotive, esoteric, and effortlessly poised between anxiety and ecstasy. He's also back on Narr this weekend with a new bi-monthly show which u know is going to be essential.

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Narr 21/08 - Back To The Garden

I had an absolutely stunning weekend recently getting back to the garden at Fairport Convention's Cropredy festival with my lockdown housemates, Millie and Will - two years overdue. It was full of revelation and tears and some of the most profound live music experiences of my life, with a complete rendition of their 1970 album Full House, nestled into their 2.5 hour set. The album was a staple in that house, which feels a bit like an Edenic memory now: often decked out in seasonal flowers, or holly and ivy in the winter, lit up by candles with the smells of Bay and Rosemary drifting through the cosy living room, Fairport or Pentangle on the decks and Jan Svenkmeier, Kenneth Anger, or The Wicker Man on the TV.

Hearing it played back under the Aquarian supermoon through our mycelial haze - by a band that are still at the top of their game despite their advanced years, and amongst a crowd who'd been back every year, some of them since the first one in 1979 - connected the solitary times in the house, with the endless weekends at The White Hotel, and a tradition of getting together to lose ourselves under the spell of loud music, singing, dancing, laughing, and hugging that stretches back not just over decades but millenia. A few of you know I'm about to start a PhD researching the relationships between folk and demotic music forms (like industrial and rave music), subculture, land rights, and communitarian politics. From the start my shows on Narr have been a practical expression of these ideas, trying to draw the same connections in sound. One of the tensions of studying subculture for me has often been a melancholy sense of detachment, always observing but never living an idea or a movement, but this detachment dissolved entirely for me last weekend.

I wanted to try and capture some of the magic of old Albion and the centuries of wonderful sesh that we seemed to tap into for a few days. This one recalls images of merrie Englande since the Elizabethan years, including the out-of-body transcendentalism of Tallis' Spem In Alium, John Downland's more emo than emo lute music, the early 20th century pastoralism of the village-terrorising, orgy-hosting rockstar composer (and hated music critic) Peter Warlock, and plenty of 60s / 70s folk revival bits - featuring three variations on the Cruel Sister murder ballad, from Ireland, the north sea shore, and London. Gorgeous music that I really love, I hope it hits for you too.

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Phew - more to come soon and will see lots of u this weekend xx