Midweek Mixes (13/04/21)
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.
Ouissam - Honcho Podcast 94
I’ve been a fan of Ouissam’s since the Sheung Wan mix he did for Honey Soundsystem a few years back. It’s a classic warm-up of a set that brims with pent up feeling, so that by the time you get to the closing moments of Andy Hart’s ‘Vienen’ you feel like the party is right on the cusp of something unique. That’s what warm-up sets are for.
His new Honcho podcast puts me in a more mid-afternoon mood, but not a lazy one. It has all the things I love: boogie, Italian dream-house, hi-NRG, tough rhythm trax, big vocal house, and the kind of floating, sway-back-and-forth closer that I look for at the end of mixes, however cliché it may be.
The technique is also superb – perhaps it’s my imagination, but I feel like you can hear when someone has had weekend after weekend of experience playing to a regular crowd, like Ouissam does at his club Savage in Hanoi.
Sedef Adasi - Maricas
Another DJ I count as a must-listen every time she puts out a mix, which happily is quite often, is Sedef Adasi. She runs a party called Hamam Nights in Augsburg and before the pandemic started was touring around the world.
While her DJing style can be quite linear and, for my taste anyway, almost over-clinical in terms of timing and phrasing, this contrasts to great effect with her selection, which is adventurous and regularly fabulous. This mix is a great example – the vibe established in the opening section is clean and not a little austere, but then when it gives way to deeply funky 80s-/80s-influenced electro it’s simultaneously logical and exuberant.
Her own track, ‘Turbo Ride’ (played at 26 minutes), which is apparently out soon on Public Possession, also encapsulates this combination of logic and exuberance. The effect, if you look at me at least, is the appearance of the broadest smile.
Kyle Hall & Jay Daniel - Live @ Marble Bar, Detroit, 2018
This mix came on after a Moodymann radio show from 1995 that I was listening to on youtube, and I just had to let it play all afternoon. Over three hours of Detroit-centric house, this recording wanders unhurriedly between bright and joyful vocals, more reduced beatdown, and the versatile sound signature of Hall and Daniel’s own productions.
Around the halfway mark there’s a sort of unholy mash-up of three of their tracks – the overdriven drum attack of ‘Bubble Cougar’ and ‘Spoof’ leading into the disco soul of ‘Crushed’, which then gives way to a grooving Karizma tune as if were nothing. It’s the kind of DJing I wish I heard more of (or any of, at the moment, let’s be honest).
It looks like Turtle Bugg also played at this night, so it really must have been a party and a half. Check out his fantastic Truants mix and interview if you haven’t already.