Midweek Mixes (08/05/24)
This is the first Midweek Mixes in five weeks. It’s tempting to make light of this and say I’ve just been slacking, but that’s not exactly the case. As I mentioned last time, I’ve been travelling intensively over the past month, and that tends to affect my mix listening habits. I’ve also had all sorts of ideas for things to share in this newsletter but I’ve been struggling to follow through with them. There are several reasons for this, but chief among them are:
First, as I alluded to in my last newsletter, my Asia tour was very exciting and fulfilling but also brought up some conflicting thoughts about life as a DJ-performer-artist-person, about what I’m giving and what, in turn, I am taking. These questions are pretty fundamental ones to do with identity, self-worth, privilege, the point of it all...i.e. not that easy to get down in a pithy online missive, especially when you’re exhausted from five weeks on the road.
Second, these day-to-day DJ dilemmas pale into insignificance compared to much more pressing ones out in the world — the lurch to the right in the recent Portuguese elections (uncannily timed to cast a shadow over the 50th anniversary of the 25th of April revolution) and the seemingly inexorable obliteration of Gaza among them. Doubts of mine about the value of what I do as a DJ in times like these have recently been matched by doubts about the value of what I write. Not that I ever claimed to be a proper writer — there are plenty of other places you can go for that — but the almost entirely self-centred focus of this newsletter, these opening paragraphs included, does start to seem a little gauche given the wider circumstances.
I find it easier, then, to take the focus off myself a bit and return to one of the things I enjoy the most and feel I can do wholeheartedly: bigging up other DJs. On Midweek Mixes, and on my ongoing Kiosk residency (archived here), I get the chance to share my unbridled enthusiasm for other DJs whose craft I admire. And in fact this might be something that helps keep my enjoyment of the form alive, even as I doubt my own contribution to it. This past week these mixes have helped me manage my various preoccupations and made me smile to think of the friendships they evoke. For that reason they’ve got me back to writing this today.
Cola Ren - Third Place on Balamii (April 2024)
I wasn’t expecting to meet Cola Ren on my recent Asia trip, but the Chinese transit visa rules system conspired to bring us together when I was denied boarding for my flight from Hong Kong to Chengdu. I was escorted from the gate and ejected back through the border to landside, leaving me no choice but to get the Airport Express back to the island. I knew that Xiaolin was hosting an EP launch that evening at Mihn club, so I thought I might as well go to that on my way back to the hotel. And Cola Ren was doing the warm-up.
I’d been a fan since her Hailu EP was released in early 2023 (mini review here) and I’d been rinsing the Will Hofbauer remix of ‘Heart Shaped Mole’ throughout my tour, so this was a fanboy moment. Unfortunately my memory of what Cola played at Mihn that evening is pretty patchy, thanks to the fact I spent most of the set desperately trying to book new flights to Chengdu the next day. So much for living in the moment. But that’s why I was so happy to see this recording for Will’s Third Place show on Balamii surface soon after. The percussion-forward 80bpm/160bpm vibe of the Hailu EP is present and correct, though it amps up pretty smartly into more incisive dubstep and psychedelia in the middle section, before a closing half-hour of gorgeous dub.
(Note: Cola Ren’s shimmering next release, the Forest Drone EP, is out soon on QEONE Records.)
At the risk of this becoming a Sam PV cheerleading account (who am I kidding, it’s been that since his Best Of 2022 radio show), here’s his latest winner of a mix for High Hoops. It opens with a second-wave Chicago house bumper that straight away sets the tone for the ensuing procession of garagey slammers (including a track from the next Welt Discos release around the 25 minute mark). He then turns into breaksy bassy territory, most of which I like except for a particularly aggy and off-beat sample of the vocal from Soulsearcher’s ‘Can’t Get Enough’.
Luckily Sam feints out of this into Baalti’s ‘Wedding Season’ (reviewed here), resetting the vibe for the next sequence of exuberant bangers. The final mix out of Matthew Fit’s angular ‘Split Pillar’ into what sounds like an Aphex Twin-meets-Orbital take on ‘Don’t Go’ is a triumph. (Sadly I also have issues with the way this final track uses Alison Moyet’s iconic vocals…but since there’s another newsletter in the works that will be all about how vocals are used in remixes, I’ll spare you the complaints on this one.)
CC:DISCO - BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix
Radio 1's Essential Mix - CC:DISCO! - BBC Sounds
CC:DISCO! mixes up two hours of sun-kissed house and disco.
I could write a much longer essay on this mix, and maybe one day I will, but for now I just want to include it here already because it’s only up on the BBC website for a fixed amount of time.
Take the five-hour recording from Kala Festival that CC:DISCO put on her own soundcloud last year (which I wrote about here) and distill it down into two hours for radio and you kind of get the vibe, though that doesn’t do justice to the extra work CC has done to imbue this Essential Mix with deeply personal meaning: from the Deadmau5 edit she made and played at a homecoming Pitch festival-closing set in Australia, to the trippy new remix she’s done of fellow hometown band Midlife, to the story about meeting Dee Diggs while trapped in a lift, to that multi-movement Jennifer Paige mini-opera anchoring the mix at its core…it’s a lesson in baring your soul and life story through DJing.
I’m gonna stop there otherwise I really will write that essay. Another time…