Midweek Mixes (12/07/23)
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.
Jeffrey Sfire - Live on NTS (01/07/23)
Jeffrey Sfire wastes no time laying his cards on the table on this NTS show warming up for London gay institution Adonis’s recent Pride edition with Index’s ‘Now You’re Gone’. All the Bigshot signifiers are present and correct: fat bouncing bassline, freestyle fanfares, Kraftwerk samples, out-of-key vocals and a b-boy break. Next is the Chicago-ed-up-John Rocca-esque sample-fest of ‘It’s In The Groove (No Games)’ by The 28th Street Crew aka Clivillés & Cole. Shana’s freestyle-meets-italo torch song ‘I’d Do Anything For Your Love’ follows before razorblade-wielder Omar Santana and Powertraxx Records’ Dennis Pino take Roxanne’s ‘On A Roll’ for a wild cut-up acid hip-house ride.
If you hadn’t cottoned on by now, Jeffrey is giving you (an average of) 1989 and he’s giving it to you hard. Jesse Saunders, Jon St James (with the girl group Bardeux), Jody Finch, Adonis (of course), Kevin Saunderson, New Generation production team UPI and, to finish in fine Pride style, Sylvester: a veritable who’s who of house’s formational folk. And peppered through this brilliant show are occasional WBMX-style mic moments from a corresponding who’s who of Adonis DJs and dancers — “You’re listening to Jeffrey Sfire on NTS!” — though some of them need to work on their hype levels if they want a future career as HotMix radio announcers. The only thing missing to complete the picture is a pre-recorded promotional spot for the night itself.
Calum describes this mix for Bikini Waxx-affiliated label Quirk as the soundtrack to his ideal queer party. He takes us from Baby Ford- and Dimbiman-style minimalism through subtly disco-fied tech house (I think that’s Inland Knights in the middle there) and finishes with Gemini at his sauciest on ‘How Can I’. In my (admittedly limited) experience, this is music you’d more expect to hear in Club Der Visionaere and other bastions of straight tech house bros/“diggers” than setting the floor on fire at a queer rave. I think we can all agree that the existence of this genre-as-shibboleth is really A Big Shame.
Just two weeks ago I heard from one gay friend in Berlin that in over 10 years in the city they have never been to CDV; meanwhile, last week, a straight promoter I know who has been putting on big parties in London for over a decade told me that he’d never once been to Adonis, despite making music with artists who often play there and indeed booking them for his own night. Of course this segregation isn’t wholly mysterious — it has everything to do with community, a sense of belonging and even safety — but it still feels frustratingly restrictive. I sometimes get the impression the separation is less pronounced over the pond, though I don’t have enough data to really tell. I heard that a straight crew in the US recently threw a Pride party with a lineup of all queer DJs. But while this has the surface appearance of the kind of cross-over I’m looking for, if the crowd was almost all straight then I’m not sure how much it would have achieved in terms of exposure and exchange between scenes.
Whatever, I don’t have any answers. But all this explains why my interest is always piqued when I hear people doing stuff that crosses these boundaries — and here Calum does it with intent and style.
DJ City - Blue Mondays @ Radio 80000 ft. E Molina & Eli Welbourne
DJ City opens up the latest episode of his Blue Mondays show on Munich’s Radio 80000 with a track that falls somewhere between a midtempo synth pop instrumental and nu disco and I am very much into it. It turns out it’s taken from a 40-track bandcamp dump by the artist Tech Support, a concept which I find simultaneously exciting and anxiety inducing. (But yes I am downloading all 2.6GB of it as I write.) DJ City continues his carefully paced vibe with a slowjammed edit of ‘Knights Of The Jaguar’ before speeding up a bit into some more jacking fare. Then he plays a track by Bawrut, who I saw earlier this year at Sonar Lisbon, and it’s reassuring to me that my impression of him playing at that festival is confirmed by my impression of this track.
Then there’s a cute interview between DJ City and his guests E Molina and Eli Welbourne, in which they talk about social media promotion for DJs. It’s a fresh and frank conversation that takes in positives as well as negatives, opportunities as well as pressures. The overall conclusion, though, is that it’s more of a trial than a pleasure, which I can definitely agree with. (I now can’t wait to hear DJ City’s new track named ‘One For The Books’.) They also talk a bit about recording a mix together, an interesting exchange for me since I’ve never recorded a home mix with anyone else. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever recorded a mix in the presence of another person.
E & Eli’s Heavenly Club mix opens with JS Zeiter’s ‘Sirocco’, which is 100% on the Heavenly Club brand, as is indeed the Heavenly Club mix of ‘Equinox’ by Code 718 aka Danny Tenaglia, which follows shortly after. The vibe is mostly dreamy-skippy-housey — Slam Mode’s ‘Detachment’, for example — but occasionally a little dark, with Reese’s ‘Just Want Another Chance’ showing that even in heaven not everything is always sugar and spice. They finish on an oddball new wave vibe that makes me wish I’d caught E Molina at the Your Love party in Pbar earlier this year.
While we’re at it, also check out DJ City’s recent set for Les Yeux Oranges here — it’s a high energy romp through jacking acid fast-chug, if I can call it that, and it doesn’t let up once in two hours.