Midweek Mixes (16/01/25)
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.
My recap of the Honcho Campout 2024 recordings begins here with two sets I missed during the festival itself. I’d actually call them near misses, but they were missed nonetheless, and listening back to both sets now I have plenty of regret. But that’s the way the cookie crumbles, and the Honcho Tascam Gods are benevolent and wise, so now we can revisit these moments to our hearts content. Dive in.
NAP - Live @ Honcho Campout 2024
NAP described this set as “A loose and punky amalgamate of my obsession and love for sound system culture, especifically across Dub, Cumbia and Dembow. Heady dubs into all kinds of tuh-kah-tuh-kah.” Since I was otherwise occupied while it was unfolding, I asked my friend Sam PV, who was very much present, to give us a flavour of the vibe down at Hemlock Hole on that Friday evening in August:
NAP is the alias of Colombia-born and Mexico City Based Daniel Rincon, whose own discography and that of his label Isla is marked by its dizzying diversity and consistent quality. Such diversity meant that I had no idea what to expect walking into his set on the Friday evening of Honcho Campout, as he opened the fabled Hemlock Nights. But shortly before the set commenced I was given a clue as to the carnage that would follow when, as Daniel’s artist liaison, I dutifully enquired as to what he would like to drink during his set. “Tequila, as many shots as you can line up,” he replied. This iconic request was duly followed by an iconic performance.
The set opens with the kind of swirling ambience, deconstructed Latin rhythms and dub steppers you might expect from Hemlock Nights, before lift off is signalled as Daniel ushers in MC Doguinha’s nearly entirely acappella classic ‘Vem E Brota Aqui Na Base, Vamos Fazer Sacanagem’. From then on out it was total dancefloor mayhem, as Daniel skilfully dropped banger after banger. The Pennsylvanian woods were overwhelmed with a tsunami of cumbia, reggaeton, merengue, Trax Records deep cuts and Latin edits/covers of classics by Sean Paul, Kelis and Joy Division (!). Campout’s Latinx ravers duly took over the dancefloor and collectively lost their shit. “I feel like I’m at a queer version of my auntie’s wedding,” one Venezuelan friend remarked to me. More than a simple DJ set, Daniel’s performance felt like a love letter to an entire community.
As someone who knows next to nothing about Latin music, my enjoyment of this set comes simply from the life, humour and, frankly, weird as fuck sounds that populate these hip-shaking bangers. The tune Sam calls out by MC Doguinha is an early example, or Mala Fe’s helter skelter ‘Tra Tra’, a frenetic deconstructed 90/180 club tune (OK, it’s just merengue) that has a cool 10M views on youtube. Then there are the moments that all of a sudden crash into emo teenage angst: I even left a comment on soundcloud at one point, only to then read that this was Daniel mixing a cumbia-layered ‘Ghost Rider’ into Grimes. To quote an earlier iconic Campout moment: “OK, Daniel, Okaaay!”
As Sam said to me as we were discussing this mix, though meaningful selection and technique are obviously really important, we can easily get lost in the weeds of DJing. I mean, that’s partly why this newsletter exists in the first place: to get lost in the weeds. But with someone like Daniel you don’t have to get all the references or catch all the layers and tricks, because at the same time as he’s giving you detailed, technical, cultured DJing, he’s also making you dance your ass off. He did the same thing a week later when we saw him play at Mansions Bar in Ridgewood, except then he was dropping pristine early 90s NYC house. Now that’s a DJ with a sense of time and place.
(One last piece of NAP witchcraft: Daniel finished his set with the Vapourspace remix of ‘Driving Blind’, which, as I wrote in my earlier newsletter, is EXACTLY WHAT I HAD BEEN DOING during his set.)
Johnny Zoloft - Live @ Honcho Campout 2024
Johnny Zoloft is a drummer from Pittsburgh who late last year put out a swirling, Golden Teacher-esque EP (review here) with the Louise to their Thelma, Kiernan Laveaux. That wasn’t the first time I’d heard JZ’s name, as at Campout back in August I’d been the one to greet them at artist check-in. And in fact, when they played this long, serpentine opening set down at Hemlock Hole on Saturday morning, my body was approximately 15 metres away, laid out horizontal behind the stage, in my tent. But my mind was sadly far away, as I’d soundly knocked myself out following Friday’s exertions, and once I finally got up and out I must have rushed off at once to get breakfast. I don’t think I heard a single thing from the set.
More fool me. Listening back to the recording now, and reading JZ’s words about it, I can tell it was something special. They ease us in with over an hour of sonic collage, layering morning lullabies like Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s ‘Sunset Village’ with sounds from the Environments series of field recordings. (Given such a gentle introduction, it’s no surprise I didn’t wake up.) The first beats, when they arrive, are deep, plant-based DnB, evoking the natural surroundings but also — when that big guitar solo busts in at 1h10m — with a kinda punk edge. Let’s call it what it is: New Age done right, that is, hippy whimsy shot through with enough weirdo vibe to avoid kumbaya territory. JZ twists from this into midtempo groovers via Pépé Bradock’s remix of Roy Ayers’ ‘I Am Your Mind’, one of those tracks that’s so familiar but rarely gets heard (at least in the circles I move in).
When it comes, just a little past the halfway point, JZ(KL)’s own ‘B12 Velocity’ (featuring fellow PGHers Gladstone Deluxe and MIRA MIRA) sounds fully like a big blend of all that’s gone before it: spiritual, spiralling, somewhat spasmodic. The crafty mix out into some amapiano is a real coup, as is the appearance soon after of JZKL spirit animal Maurice Fulton with ‘Down In The Dungeon’. The final hour of the set is more traditional Hemlock Hole daytime fare — what JZ calls “a crescendo of euphoric, sassy midwest house music, which holds a special place in my heart and sets me free every time”. It’s a fun ride for sure, but for transcendence you’ll find yourself returning to those opening two hours. I just wish I’d been conscious at the time.