Midweek Afterparty Mixes (15/09/21)
A special afterparty edition of Midweek Mixes, focussing on the sets we listened to at home on Saturday in Berlin after Gwenan and I had played the late morning slot for The Ghost at Hoppetosse.
One thing I’ve learnt from these past two weeks of travelling is that, now that the gig machine is starting up again, I need to be more organised about my posting on this substack. Gig reports for Berlin and Dimensions Festival in Croatia will follow, as will the summary for last week’s Flamingo. Please be patient with me!
“Vibe- vibe- vibration” says the man at the start of this set and it’s a suitable motto for the following hour. With each of her online mixes Malika has transmitted her own particular vibration between house, broken beat, downtempo and the warmer, jazzier regions of electro, garage and beyond.
Her mix for Dimensions is heavy on timeless bumping house but always with a little twist or slant: already in the first 10 minutes we have Solid Gold Playaz segueing deftly into Aleem-sampling broken beat. I’ve recently been doing a Q&A with Malika (coming soon) in which she talks about how this return to classic sounds feels like a bit of a reaction to the pandemic. In difficult times we look for reassurance and warmth, and that desire for connection and joy is palpable in the records presented here. You can imagine how pitch-perfect it was to kick off a relaxed daytime afters once we’d got back from the Hoppetosse boat.
If you’re not already a fan, check out her mix for Polyswitch’s Astrofever show on Worldwide FM (which I wrote about here), her ‘influences’ session for the MUDD Show, or her lockdown special High Seas for more.
Who is Rama NYC? The King of ‘not on discogs’, he’s an enigma wrapped in a mystery wrapped in the body of an Electrical Engineer from Brooklyn. He’s done mixes for Timeless, Slow Life and Yay, and on his label Stillwell he released two delicately offbeat EPs by Chavez and Rub800 that, true to form, seem to barely exist. His long-term side-hustle dealing records through his mother’s New Jersey residence has helped many a DJ travelling to the US. I once met him at Los Tacos No. 1 in Midtown, where he told me about his plans to move to Europe.
In this set for Desyn’s Faciendo series he traverses the outer reaches of genre and mood, hitting a vibe suitable for an afterparty gradually making its inevitable descent from civilised to decidedly wonky. Some moments may feel intense but they’re always mitigated quickly by a dose of lightness or even levity: like the transition at 30 minutes where a round of applause (or is it screaming?) signals the arrival of a bright and funky electro groove.
So who is Rama NYC? I’m still not sure. Last I heard he had moved to Tbilisi, one of the only places in Europe with a language as singular as he is.
Slagbat - The Untold Adventures Of Captain Vibes
Slagbat aka Ben Thomson moved to Tokyo about 5 years ago and just before he did he recorded this absolute blinder of a set. My friend Sophie has now played this to me twice at afterparties, once in London and now in Berlin.
This is a brand of deep housey-techno that I confess I very rarely reach for myself, whether in a record store or when looking for something to listen to in the kitchen. But in certain circumstances – say, laid out on the floor wondering what you’re doing with your life – it’s the perfect salve, the opening section giving you a gentle lift before things zoom into heads-down feet-moving locked-in groove.
It’s the perfect antidote to that moment when the afterparty is in danger of sliding off a cliff, with warm basslines and hopeful pads signalling that there’s still much joy to be had before bedtime – whether that bedtime is at an entirely normal hour, as it was in Berlin, or at an entirely normal hour just the next day, as it was in London. I suggest you save it for just such circumstances and make the most of the journey.