Midweek Mixes (05/01/22)
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.
New year, same me, so we’re back with another set of Midweek Mixes. Over the holiday season I mainly listened to Nick Kagame’s KMA mix, which I’m gathering the confidence to write about soon. Before that, there have been a few other things filling my earspace while I had covid/recovered from covid/went to London for NYE/recovered from going to London for NYE. So here they are!
Ouissam - Carpet Music Series #008
I wrote about Ouissam’s mix for Honcho last April (here), saying that you can hear his experience as a club resident coming through in the selection and meticulous technique. The same is true again with his mix for Carpet & Snares: a sure and steady build from pumping italo and boogie through to dreamy house, allowing for track-to-track fluctuations in mood and energy but never losing sight of the overall trajectory. Up! By the time we reach the opening vocal ecstasies of UBQ Projects’ ‘When I Fell In Love’ it hits like a double dropped pill.
Ouissam was kind enough to answer some of my questions about his work at Savage club in Hanoi, which also operates as a record store and cafe (Pond Records). You can read the interview here. I like his story about ‘pacing out’ the dancefloor with slower or ambient things - like ‘Antiboudi’ by Fantastic Man - even at peak time. This is something I rarely have the confidence for, but whenever I do it usually ramps up the energy even more. Proper DJing innit.
Livwutang - Live @ Sustain-Release Year 7
I see this recording as a companion piece to Nick’s KMA mix. To me, both sound like the DJ pushing themselves to be their best for the crowd, keeping it tight but also taking risks, plotting paths that the dancers and maybe even they themselves aren’t completely sure of going in, but are 100% convinced of on the way out. Livwutang’s selection is in general a little dryer than Nick’s, using texture and space as a tool more than relying on bangers. That’s not to say there aren’t any bangers though - of course some patented Livwutang Maurice Fulton freakouts make an appearance, and there’s also a remix of Roska’s ‘Pree Me’ (a highpoint shared with Nick’s mix, though he plays the original).
In general, when polyrhythms are involved - e.g. the opening 25 minutes or so - I absolutely love the set. In the stretches where things are more down the line, I can get a bit antsy. But it’s also easy to imagine this being part of the natural wax and wane of the night itself - and if you were to drop me into the middle of the Sustain dancefloor for this set, you can be sure I’d be losing my shit for two hours. Judging by the comments from those who were there, that was exactly what happened on the night.
Completing this week’s constellation of artists who have performed at Honcho Campout in Pennsylvania, we have 5 hours of fire from The Carry Nation. Honcho has been releasing recordings from last year’s festival on their soundcloud and it’s a goldmine for anyone like me who wants to live out the Campout experience from far away. Of the several sets I’ve listened to in recent weeks (Mike Servito, Dee Diggs, Brown Amy), it’s this one from the NYC crew The Carry Nation that went the extra mile: it got me home from my New Year’s day gig at The Pickle Factory. I stuck it on once I’d got on the overground at Cambridge Heath, and it lasted me all the way back to mine in Lisbon that night.
Over these five hours the duo cover pretty much all of the areas of dance music I love, doing so with flare and focus. If sometimes it gets a bit linear for my liking, they soon bring it back with a switch into disco or something deeper. Some highlights include: the rushy transition from an almost cheesy tech house tune into bumping classic vocal house at 1h17m; the insane chopped-up ‘Baby Boy’ remix slamming out of nowhere at 2h08m; an INCREDIBLE disco banger after the 3h mark, whose “I’ll make it hot for you” lyric I have categorically failed to track down…
And towards the end, an extended classic house remix of ‘Nothing Fails’ by Madonna, acting as a reminder that I used to listen to American Life a *lot* when I was a teenager, and yet until this mix I hadn’t even given it a thought for at least ten years. This is what the best sets are about for me, and is maybe a common thread running through these mixes: the bringing together of the familiar and unfamiliar, the nostalgic and the new, and all of it so unerringly personal. It’s what I aspire to and I simply love hearing it come through so clearly from other people.
So yeah, about Nick’s mix…