Midweek Mix: KMA Special (16/11/22)
A run-down of some of the mixes and radio shows that have been soundtracking my existence – from the box-fresh to the tried-and-tested – all guaranteed to brighten up your week.
On Saturday night, after playing at the RA Anniversary party with Gwenan, we had a slap-up pasta dinner before wending our way to The White Hotel for Kiss Me Again x Pumping Velvet. I was a guest at KMA in February 2020, just before Covid, and PV is run by my good friend Sam Ashton, so it’s fair to say that the ingredients were there for a beautiful family affair.
The recipe delivered. Antoin and Dave from KMA warmed us up with Womack & Womack, freestyle, Missy and more; Sam followed through on the promise of his 2022 round-up with a smasher of a set that made full use of TWH’s sound system. As my friend Tom said, it felt like we were wearing a 1cm-thick bodysuit of bass as Sam rolled out Doechii, Chico Blanco, soca, UK funky, Bree Runway (at which point one person scaled the front of the booth and screamed with pleasure), Pépé Bradock and a whole range of other fun-and-serious party music.
Many of us commented on how the club is one of the best in the country: just the right size, good sound and lights (though as always I could do with less flashing/strobing), comfy places to chill out and, on a good night like this one, a cool and considerate crowd. We flailed and fangirled right through Sam’s set and into Sofie K’s as she took us on an energy-filled journey through chug, hi-NRG and booty house into trancier techno territory, though I admit I lost my wind a little when it came to Alice Deejay. (Yes it was me that said back in July I would kill someone if I heard that tune again…well, luckily for the people near me when it came on, I was able to control myself and take myself out of the room.) Luckily Sofie made up for that with a Tiffany finale.
Matthew KMA came on for the final stretch and was playing fast and hard music that made me think of gay parties in the late 90s even though I never went to any. The place was still pulsing but our legs were telling us to head home, so we did, gratified and excited.
In tribute to Kiss Me Again, and to mark the one-year anniversary of this mix coming out, I’m finally doing a Midweek Mix write-up of Nick Kagame’s Kiss Me Again recording from Autumn 2021. Thinking back to this past weekend it’s easy to draw a line between Saturday night and that party a year ago at Soup Kitchen - friends playing the best music with no boundaries, and playing it goddamn well. Nick’s mix has been a staple of mine ever since, soundtracking Berlin afterparties, snowy drives over the Pennines and, most recently, my queue at the Portuguese border last night. I feel like I know it inside out - almost to the point where I can pretend I was at the party itself - so here are my top 10 moments from this astonishing mix.
Nick Kagame - Live(ish) @ Kiss Me Again (October 2021)
1. Those opening statement drums
If there’s a better way to announce yourself as the next DJ starting your set than HUGE IMPERIAL DRUMS then I’m not aware of it. The opening track of this set establishes that what’s to come will be presented in widescreen, and that it will be percussive, polymetric and pummelling. Nowadays when I stick the mix on, the voice-like elements in this track and the next one sound like thousands of subjects expressing approval of their great leader as he takes to the stage (that’s you, Nick).
2. The 4/4 drops
The first big 4/4 drop comes with Violet’s ‘Togetherness’, a kind of tribal tech house tune that feels like it would sit happily with the Frankfurt school of 2008 but which, with the addition of breaks, avoids that sound’s thinness. The casual drop of its 4/4 kick is all the more effective for Nick cleverly matching the basslines of the two tracks in the mix - both supple pitch-bending cadences, the first going 1-2 and the second 1-2-3 - so that, in combination, the seam between the two tracks is almost entirely masked. Nick repeatedly uses the transition between breaks and 4/4 to inject energy into the set and he does it spectacularly - indeed, the very next track fits what seems like about four different sections of electro, breaks and techno into one record.
3. Kamohelo’s ‘SO’
The arrival of ‘SO’ by South African artist Kamohelo is something of an emblematic moment in this mix, being the first of several vocal expressions of dance music from Africa and the African diaspora. I’ve written before about how Nick weaves these tracks in with styles that are - to me - more familiar, but as I was writing this paragraph I reflected that this probably only really looks like ‘weaving’ to me because I’m not immersed in those music styles. Unlike (I presume) for Nick, they are far from being a part of my identity, sitting as they do outside the narrow, predominantly white musical landscape I spend most of my time in.
This gives them an element of novelty or the exotic for me - which I find problematic but also a kind of basic fact. So when I do occasionally play a track like ‘Bashiri’ or ‘Mission Complete’ it feels like an exciting step out of my comfort zone and I pat myself (again, somewhat problematically) on the back for making it work. I rather doubt that’s how Nick feels playing ‘SO’ - I assume it’s a string in his bow like any other, and he deploys it and similar tracks in this mix as just another tributary of his onward creative flow.
The supposed distinction between what you might call the identifiably Black music in this mix and the other - to me, more familiar - genres like house, techno, bleep and UKG is doubly artificial, since those latter styles are all ultimately Black music or derivations thereof. So the separation, the desire to categorise and exoticise, is more about me imposing my own narrow learned perspective than it is about the music itself or its history.
But here I am anyway, writing from my perspective, so I will once again say that, to me, it’s a thrill to hear Nick join the dots between contemporary Black musicians in South Africa, Sweden, Australia, France, wherever!, and those other more UK/Euro-centric genres that are more familiar to me. And each time I hear the opening words of ‘SO’ coming in over the preceding electro tune, it makes me smile for being, in my eyes, an exemplary “Nick” moment.
4 . ‘Pree Me’
I don’t have to wait long for the next “Nick” moment. (Let’s be honest, for anyone who’s had the pleasure of seeing him play live, this mix is one long “Nick” moment.) The remixes of ‘Pree Me’ by Roska featuring Nakamura Minami have popped up in various sets over the past year or two, but none compare to the barnstorming original. Whenever I listen to this recording, by the time this tune comes in I’m always already losing my shit and I have to remind myself that we’re ONLY EIGHTEEN MINUTES IN. The mix out of ‘Pree Me’ is another of those mega 4/4 drops, this time finessed in a matter of seconds. It just shouldn’t be allowed.
5 . Bok Bok’s ‘Find A Way’ edit melts into Nativ’s ‘Shifty’
A huge gospel vocal + a pounding kick + not much else = all you need for a euphoric moment. And Bok Bok’s edit of ‘Find A Way’ by SNH Foundation gives all of this to us in spades. But then Nick somehow takes everything up another notch, matching the shifting SNH Foundation’s congas with the equally, uh, shifty ones on Nativ’s ‘Shifty’. As the preacher practically yells “find a waaaaaay” an extended “wooooosh” launches Nativ’s moody bassline like a jetplane. It’s pure dancefloor fire.
(The mix out of ‘Shifty’ is just as fire but if I include every transition on this list it’ll be another year before I’m done.)
6. Squelchy, abrasive glue
A lot of the glue of this mix is made up of uncompromising instrumental tracks - techno of various stripes, breaks, UK funky, other - that bridge the gaps between the more noticeably pop moments, like Tinashe’s vocal on ‘Just Say’. This latter sits between two rhythm tracks, the first squelchy and the second abrasive, each getting barely two minutes alone in the mix before the next tune comes in. It’s crafty and exhilarating.
7. Cricket
“My girl just come stick it / Play with your bumper let me play cricket / I’m gonna throw my balls in your wicket / You get it?”
That is all.
8. UK garage hour, including a new queer anthem
OK so it’s not an hour, but you know that when Nick gets into the UKG section of any set he’s going to get into it properly. In this one he covers speed garage and El-B/Todd Edwards vocal cut ups in quick succession, before playing probably the most ridiculous record I’ve heard in the past year, a mash up of Zero B’s ‘Lock Up’ with the vocal from ‘Rumors’ by Timex Social Club, sped up beyond recognition.
I’ve written about the potential of slow/fastjammed vocals before, and here the effect of speeding Timex Social Club up is to make the protagonist of the story a woman. The narrative thus becomes a kind of queer anthem: not only is it now a same-sex intrigue being told about “me and the girl next door”, but the very topic of ‘rumours’ itself is revealed as speaking deeply to the queer experience. That it comes with an oversized helping of gated hardcore fanfares and the filthiest of basslines from ‘Lock Up’ only serves to heighten the drama.
Soon after, SH’s edit of Ojerime’s ‘Give It Up 2 Me’ wraps up the UKG section, reminding us all that it was the undercover hit of Summer 2021.
9 . A victory lap from the future
That SH edit actually ushers in what today sounds like a kind of victory lap, but at the time was fresh news: a series of tunes that would later become fixed in the pantheon of CHOONS held in common between Nick, me and many other DJ friends. Anz’s ‘Inna Circle’, Davis Galvin’s ‘Rissp’, Parris’s ‘Skater’s World’ and, in between, personal favs like Huey Mnemonic’s ‘D’Wave Zone’ (which finally got a re-release by the man himself earlier this year) and Experimental Products’ ‘Glowing In The Dark’.
The longevity of these tracks is indicative of the consideration Nick puts into all of his selections. And knowing how much I love these tracks too, I smile again - wistfully this time - thinking, had I been at this party, what state I would have been in by the end of this set.
10. The grand finale
Nick wraps things up with one of those end-of-the-world epic tunes that people wrap things up with. In other circumstances this could come off as a little self-aggrandising (speaking here, I must add, as someone who does this all the fucking time), but when you’ve just delivered 90 minutes of some the best DJing going, you’ve earned a moment like this. Zooming space noises, psychedelic acid squiggles, rushing kicks, reverberating percussion, heavenly synths - it has it all, and acts a fitting full stop for what’s gone before.
It’s taken me a year to write this and I still don’t feel like I’ve done this recording much justice. At the risk of sounding trite: just listen to it!