Midweek Mixes (11/03/25)
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.
Back to Midweek Mixes programming with some of the music that kept me company on my trip over the Atlantic. Enjoy!
I was at Outra Cena for only the first part of this set, but I loved what I heard so much I couldn’t wait to listen back. I even sent DIDI a message afterwards saying how much I’d enjoyed it, describing one particular moment:
I only managed to stay for a bit of your set but what I did hear was FANTASTIC! Super cool deep feelings. And when you played the ‘So Emotional’ version these two boys in front of me started madly making out and then split a pill with their friends 😂 amazing vibe in that room!
The whole first half of the set is a poised build-up from tight, rhythmic tunes into more poppy ones. There’s a drum track with Kurdish instruments high in the mix, another that’s a kind of GQOM breakdown of ‘Lose My Breath’, and DIDI mixes that one into a super skippy, dubby number — as if to say, “here’s a chance to get your breath back after all”. It’s those push-pull moments in the opening half that really touched me at the time and still do listening now. DIDI does it again after the ‘So Emotional’ remix, pulling back into a spacious, techy house tune. I love it.
After that the set goes into overdrive and the references come thick and fast — ‘Tokyo Drift’, Eddie Kendricks (or Erykah Badu, depending on your vintage), The Trammps, Aaliyah, Crystal Waters, Coolio and a whole load of Brazilian funk. The energy is dialled to 11 and the moments for breathing are few and far between. Even the delightful moment 1h52m in — when the music abruptly stops, a person coughs and a piano starts wistfully playing — is revealed as a sleight of hand when the beat comes crashing back in. I’m impressed by the crazy spiral of references and styles in this second half, but it’s the playful depth of the first half of the set that I’ve been returning to.
If you’re in Lisbon, DIDI is back at Outra Cena on 28/3!
Chima Isaaro @ Revolutionary Dreamscapes (02/02/25)
“Collective restoration. Soft tunes. Cute venues. By and for Black folx 🤎” reads the description of Revolutionary Dreamscapes, and here’s the recording of a set at the inaugural event by one of its co-founders, Chima Isaaro. I’ve written about Chima’s non-dancefloor DJing many times before (e.g. here and here) and you can always rely on her to tell you a story.
Here she celebrates Black excellence in repose, from the lulling opening of the Ted Daniel Quintet’s ‘Sweet Dreams (For Your Eyes)’ to Solange’s surreal ‘Things I Imagined’ and Os Tincoãs’ ‘Lamento Às Águas’ (the session took place on the day of Iemenjá, goddess of rivers), the selection delivers fully on the organisers’ stated intentions: “In a world that continually denies us rest, we choose to claim it — fully, unapologetically, and together. Let us dream boldly and rest deeply.”
Thank you for sharing this, Chima. And if you’re Black, interested in revolutionary relaxation and in Lisbon on 22 March, check out the next Revolutionary Dreamscapes event.
Tracklist here.
Bjeor & Timmerman @ Horst Club (01/01/25)
I’m not gonna lie, when I stuck this on I expected to be disappointed. In my presumptuous imagination, Horst Club closing on NYD would be all hands-in-the-air euphoric pumpers, constant drive and drops, the kind of sound that has dominated certain strands of European clubbing (especially queer clubbing) for several years now. I figured Bjeor and Timmerman would deliver what the masses wanted — indeed I’d heard Bjeor doing just that in a closing b2b at Horst Festival a few years before — or, at minimum, the two would do that for a couple of hours before, perhaps, giving us a soft landing.
How wrong could I be. And how happy was I the moment I pressed play and heard a balearic edit of New Edition’s ‘Once In A Lifetime Groove’ cruising along at a sensible 114bpm. “Sun goes up / sun goes down” — an entirely appropriate observation for 5pm on the second day of a 24 hour party, and exactly what I’d want to hear as the final hours draw in. You can imagine the feels coming out right from that moment on and only coalescing further as the two Toons skim, carefree, through dream house, skippy pumpers (categorically different from non-skippy pumpers), bleepy jackers and, a nice surprise, my edit of ‘Wild’. When one of them layers an acappella saying “the sun can burn your skin / the tide can drag you in / and the wind can howl and blow your house down” over a disco house roller only 39 minutes in, it feels like they are not just already flowing, they’re positively gliding.
When Tony Lionni’s ‘5th Cycle’ comes in at around 75 minutes it’s the first time it really feels like they’re pushing on the ‘euphoria’ button, but by this point it feels earned. Also, that tune is so bloody nostalgic for me (Field Day festival afterparty, 2008) and also so unexpected in this set (I literally haven’t heard it since 2008, but 2008 is having a real moment), that it gets a free pass. Other personal favs that pop up here and there include Cajmere’s remix of ‘Lonely’, Nu-Birth’s ‘Anytime’ and Steve Gurley’s remix of ‘Red Alert’. There’s also a curveball alert for Nelly Furtado’s 2006 also-ran single ‘Do It’ — a deep cut, sure, but no ‘Promiscuous’. The final sequence of synth bangers, from Hercules And Love Affair to Mikki, seals the deal.
RA’s mix of the day feature described this set as “ecstatic house” but to me that’s not quite right. ‘Ecstatic’ is what I think people are chasing in those relentlessly propelling sets that pass for ‘uplifting’ these days. This isn’t that — it’s emotional house, tinged with the wide spectrum of love and longing and loss. As all the best music is.
(Note: after writing all of this, I went to check the actual timetable of the party and discovered Toon & Toon did not in fact close things down, S-candalo did. So I guess the people got their pumpers after all.)