Azi Chuicho @ UMI (24/01/25)
Last Friday I played from 01h30 to 06h30 in the upstairs studio room at UMI in the centre of Brussels for the Azi Chuicho crew
For some reason (no I’m not getting married) I have the age-old wedding rhyme “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue” in my head, so I’m going to claim that this is a suitable metaphor for a good DJ set. It’s really not that far-fetched. A good set is a meeting point for tunes that each have very different personal stories behind them, but are all united by the fact those stories converge on a single point: you, the DJ-to-be. With the auspicious inclusion of these different record bag elements — old faithfuls, new finds, recommendations from trusted friends, some nuances of emotion (my interpretation of ‘blue’ here) — a set is given the opportunity to tell the dancefloor something of the DJ as a person. I wrote about just such an experience after the second time I played at Pbar, here.
Of course, for jobbing DJs, sometimes a gig will just mean playing the latest things to come across your desk (promo inbox), but such routine preparation doesn’t exactly lend itself to proper meaning-making. External conditions — short sets, bad sound systems, disinterested dancers, tour burnout — don’t help either. But when the external conditions are right, the DJ can then really take the opportunity to lay something of themselves out through the music.
Well, Friday night in Brussels I found myself in a setting where the conditions allowed me to do just that: a five hour set, both opening and closing a cosy room with a fabulous sound system in Brussels, the city of engaged crowds. There were a couple of other relevant factors: the four-week gap since my last gig meant I had some things to say, and for once I decided to take an almost respectable number (30) of records with me, records of course bearing much more figurative, as well as literal, weight than files. Strangely, too, I think it helped that none of my close Brussels crew attended the party, which in hindsight was quite a freeing thing.
Here’s a selection of those old/new/borrowed/blue tunes, in more or less chronological order through the set, and the stories behind them. It’s these stories that contribute to the satisfaction and pride I’ve taken from those five hours on Friday.
Crane A.K. - ‘Monostatic’ [Force Tracks, 2000]
Before starting my set I had soundchecked briefly using James S Taylor’s ‘Vegetables’, figuring it was a suitably sparse and bass-heavy tune to make sure everything was in order, but forgetting that it’s a full-side tune pressed at 45 on pretty hefty vinyl. I know I should always soundcheck with my flimsiest four-a-side 33er, but I guess I’m just rusty. Sure enough, once I’d actually started playing and stuck on my first record, Crane A.K.’s ‘Frau Schmitt’, there was immediate significant feedback from the left hand deck. I felt mortified: while it’s the club’s job to make sure things are operating properly, it’s also my job to check thoroughly, ideally before things get underway. Luckily the club had a prompt and committed sound manager who was able to smooth out the frequencies over the course of a few selections, so by the time I returned to the Crane A.K. EP for ‘Monostatic’, an iconic cut from the early minutes of Richie Hawtin’s DE9: Closer To The Edit, the feedback was gone.
Playing this Crane A.K. EP first was a bit of a statement on my part. First, to acknowledge the current steady return to minimal, which is the setting in which I started listening to this kind of music. G often played the Closer To The (R)Edit 10” back when we learnt to mix, and those pads from ‘Monostatic’ are etched into my memory from repeat listens to Hawtin’s mix on CD. Second, I also felt like proving to myself yet again that I can actually mix two records together, because with tunes as clean and precise as these there isn’t really anywhere to hide. Luckily for me, and in spite of the issues with the feedback, the statement paid off and gave me confidence for the rest of the set.
(It also helped, around this moment, to read a really nice message someone held up on their phone about my Mix For Tracy. I don’t like reading phone messages because they usually say something like “play harder” but this time it was the sweetest thing.)
Saint Guel - ‘After That’ [More Rice, 2024]
One of the first times I met Saint Guel was in Panoramabar and I decided to tell him I’d played his tune ‘Still Life’, from More Rice’s 2020 Harvest Vol. 1 compilation, at Cocktail the week before. He was somewhat aghast: the track no longer represented where he was production-wise, so although he was glad I was playing his tunes, he wasn’t glad I was playing that tune. It was a funny lesson in people’s relationship to their own music, and how sometimes what you think is a compliment might not land as such. I’ve since become a little more circumspect when it comes to saying these things to producers. But here we are two and a half years later and I’m playing his latest tune, the gloriously carefree modern-classic house banger ‘After That’ on More Rice’s recent 7 year anniversary compilation and well I HOPE YOU’RE HAPPY MIGUEL, I HOPE YOU’RE HAPPY.
Huey Mnemonic - ‘Jack It Up’ [Bandcamp, 2024]
My bandcamp notifications are a hot mess so I rely on people like my good friend Nick Kagame to tell me when something like this pops up. To use the lingo: “New Huey Mnemonic release? I click.” And I buy. Huey was has been responsible for some of my absolute favourite tunes from the past 5 years (read here, here, here) and he’s still keeping the quality high. At a certain point on Friday night, probably about halfway through the set (I didn’t once check the time until four hours in), I decided I wanted to go a bit tougher for a stretch, and this was my route in. There hadn’t been any hint of acid or jacking vibes up to that point so this track hit like a truck and received a few woops from the crowd.
Silver - ‘Glass House’ [Parallel, 2001]
This is the kind of tune I barely ever buy on digital but have a bunch of on vinyl, and it feels good to get into this stripped back techno territory in a long session. Over the years I’ve stepped further and further away from loopy/linear territory in my sets, so I don’t think people expect it of me. I played both A1 and B1 on this release off Velocette’s Parallel Records and they went down really well — a good reminder to myself that sometimes less is more.
Paul Fleetwood - ‘Asleep At The Wheel’ [Perimeter Junk, 2025]
And some new techno to match! I heard this in Paul Fleetwood’s recent PJ label mix (covered here) and as the only tune not IDed in the tracklist I had to ask him what it was. Upcoming Fleetwood, was the answer, and here it is. OK, I admit to playing it about 15bpm slower than it was made, but it still sounds sick at that speed, and it got the biggest reaction of the night, especially when the mean bassline comes slamming back in with a reverse whipcrack after that dissociative break. Big ups Paul for a sick EP — I played two other tunes off it too and all of them sounded fantastic.
Dirty Harriet - ‘The Helium Kid’ [Lap Dance, 2002]
Every time I dig this record out I have a fantasy of how it’s going to land with the crowd, that its pure minimal-poppy weirdness is somehow going to resonate and send people into a frenzy. And every time it kind of falls flat. But that’s the joy of a record like this: you keep trying because it means something to you, and you take pride in the attempt, even if the fantasy never quite becomes real. This was a random Håkan Lidbo side-project on the in-demand Lap Dance label that never got a full release, so it’s just a white label with a sticker. I got it for $7 on GEMM (remember GEMM?) back in 2012. Do I play it because it’s so difficult to get hold of? Partly. But I also play it because it’s a fun and weird track that, in its final minutes, goes completely off the rails.
Derek Carr - ‘Improv’ [Headspace, 2004]
I’ve owned this record for exactly 11 years and I brought it with me in order to play one of the breezy house tunes on the other side, but when it came down to it I was enjoying my techno moment too much and decided, aptly IMO, to break out ‘Improv’ instead. The looong steppy intro is an advanced-level mix, but the payoff comes with those moody pads, crafty bassline and twinkling piano. You think the track is done, but then it shifts suddenly into 4/4 and adds an open hi hat, which injects a whole new level of energy for the second half. A true epic and not one you can play lightly, so I feel like it must have been well-earned.
Agonis - ‘A Well-Known Stranger’ [Amenthia, 2015]
I had been tasked with opening the club’s Studio room for the night and then closing it again before a brief break, so essentially this was an all-night set for me, even though it took place in the context of a much longer running party. That’s a real privilege — it’s not often you get to do both the warm-up and the soft landing, both things I love dearly. I knew I wanted to play this tune last when I went in, and had it sitting at the bottom of my rekordbox playlist. I had never heard it until the end of last year, when I had to write some copy about Agonis & Garçon for a party. I couldn’t believe someone had been making tunes like this in 2015 and I had missed it completely. It’s certainly a big statement and requires some care. Well, after five hours, I felt like me and the committed dancers had earned it, so I set it up and let it play out. It sounded INSANE.