Midweek Mixes (16/04/25)
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.
Before I get on to this week’s mixes, here’s my current schedule, in case you’re able to come see me:
11/4 Dance Club @ DC9, Washington DC
17/4 Steep @ Middlesex, Boston
18/4 All night w/Gwenan @ Signal, NYC
19/4 All night w/Gwenan @ Void, Philly
10/5 Breakfast Club @ Radion, Amsterdam
Dance Club in DC last Saturday was a sick party. The venue was a wood-lined live music bar that, for some reason, had a four-point Void soundsystem installed. It sounded sick, and custom lights were brought in and operated by local wiz Artemis. Joyce Lim (of 1432R, whose records I’ve reviewed here and here) played a super vibing opening set that got me in a great mood. I did two hours and felt totally at ease to play what I wanted. (I’m happy to report that the M.I.A. obsession is alive and well.) And then Tommy C and Baronhawk Poitier had everyone dancing till the end. Well, until ten minutes before the end, because apparently DC law requires everyone to be out of the actual building by the time 3am rolls around. Rude. I also visited two other spots in the city - gay bar Trade and mermaid-meets-astronaut-themed bar Neptune Room — and had a fab time at both. Thanks Dance Club crew for the lovely weekend!
In the second half of May I’ll be returning to East Asia for a small tour:
16/5 Modeci, Seoul
17/5 Snug x Peach @ Savage, Hanoi
24-26/5 Zhao Dai On Leave Festival, Qinhuangdao
Before rounding out the month with Leeon at LISA back in Lisbon on the 31st.
I can feel another ‘what does touring cost’ report brewing, especially after paying $32 to go bouldering here in Brooklyn the other day. But for now, I’m focussing on mixes and records, and this week is a friends special!
Nick Kagame - NARR Radio (04/04/25)
This radio show is actually a recording of Nick warming up at an unnamed party earlier this year, and you know I love a warm-up. I can just picture myself alone on the dancefloor, protective of my private dancing space while Nick plays the best tunes in the best way possible — stretching out, taking the time, always finding and working with the musical overlaps and frictions that remind you there’s a human in charge of the music. Those are the kinds of thoughts most DJs will never provoke in me, which is why Nick is one of my favourites.
After a froggy, woody opening (surely there’s a Hofbauer tune in there somewhere) there’s this wonderful transition where one polyrhythmic rhythm tune slowly bleeds into a triplet-time jazzy microhousey tune with a Herbert feel. There’s a stretch where the previous beat feels like it’s fading out and you start to get the anticipation for the new kick. When it drops it’s the softest thing, but the connective work has been done by that interface been the previous polyrhythm and the incoming triplet-time synth. It’s thoughtful, crafty, a little bit seat-of-your-trousers. And therefore brilliant.
The mix out of that is another long, layered situation into ‘Riots Of Brixton’, produced by Todd Terry in 1991 and featuring ‘Dis Poem’ by Jamaican poet Mutabaruka, which Bobby Konders had used on ‘The Poem’ a year earlier. The big dub bassline key-matches with the previous tune, which is incredibly satisfying. Halfway through ‘Riots In Brixton’, the tune actually scratch-cuts into a chopped-up version of ‘The Poem’, the kind of trick Terry was known for, both reverential and irreverent.
The second part of the mix develops into a carnival atmosphere: big syncopated drums, voices grunting and whistles and bird calls. Apparently the crowd at this party weren’t so into the non-4/4 stuff — all I can say is, their loss! It’s the kind of percussive massage that is necessary in any warm-up, to loosen up your dancing muscles (including your brain). You can hear Nick leaning into the transitions, drawing them out likely as much for his own benefit, alone in the booth, as for the early doors dancers. There are further key matches (including a particularly life-giving one 52 minutes in) before, being a true gentleman, he hands over with a loopy, rolling number that any DJ worth their salt would love to mix out of. (Tell me please, Nick, that the next DJ mixed out of it.)
The lore for this mix, which you can read in full on the SC page, suggests it’s what would happen if Pinch’s seminal Underwater Dancehall, released on his label Tectonic in 2007, were to somehow get taken into outer space, trading its soupy underwater dubstep pressure for weightless, alien climes. The mix delivers 100% on that promise, from the free-floating Ariana edit that opens proceedings to the spacedust filigree on Joe deep cut ‘MPH’ and the meowing extraterrestrial critters populating Príncipe tune ‘Tarracho Exxelentt’. Twenty years on from Tectonic’s debut, this mix shows how thrillingly alive these sounds still are in 2025, albeit in new, mutated forms.
Gwenan - Live at Globus, August 2024
A two-hour excerpt from an all-night set Gwenan played at Globus last August. As I’ve mentioned many times, Globus has my favourite sound system in Berlin, and I can easily imagine how good these records would have sounded that night. Scratchy, slippery, spiky, squishy — the foundation is dry, measured, loopy techno but Gwenan’s tunes always have an unexpected texture or twist to expand your mind beyond that. And then those moments we all know well from a Gwenan set, when you’re quietly minding your own business to a stripped-back drummy number like the one 45 minutes into this recording and then out of nowhere in comes this rolling, driving bassline groove, all sleaze and sass and attitude. Later she gets growly and wonky and even finds space for Rafiki’s ‘A London Sound’ off my label, mixing out into an MK singalong finale.
Eli Verveine - Dekmantel Mix 484
No stranger to Midweek Mixes (here, here and here), Eli Verveine is one of the best to do it. The fact Dekmantel waited until now to call her up for either their mix series or their festivals (she plays Selectors this summer) suggests they have been suffering from advanced tunnel vision all these years. And as Efdemin says in his comment on the tracklist: “amazing selection, as usual! you are still thinking and selecting totally outside of the box.”
A quick dig through said tracklist will confirm it: who else is playing random digital releases from 2010 that, if you heard them in a festival set today, would be the one track you’d remember for weeks after? Such could be said for the Silicone Soul remix of ‘We Don’t Know You’ with its trademark-Eli vocal intoning the title over and over again, and which as far as I can tell has only otherwise been played on a Hypercolour compilation from 2015 mixed by…Eats Everything?!
But that’s what Eli does: play you tracks so far off the beaten track they’ve fallen off a cliff, yet in her patient hands sound like the main-stage hit of the summer. When she mixes out of Efdemin’s tune into Frits Wentink’s ‘Discosizer’ it’s like your pill has suddenly kicked in massively, yet we’re only 13 minutes in. Discult Soundsystem’s ‘Outflank’ is a cut-up vocal house roller that sounds like DKMA vs Deep Dish, yet it was released in 2019 on a Portuguese label I’ve never heard of. Eli uses a vintage 90s beat track by NY house royalty Johnick to form a 60-second bridge out of that tune into a fresh tech house joint by Keisuke. She is D-J-ING.
Another later highlight is this lean and mean Craig Richard remix from 2016, another seemingly overlooked track that sounds like it should have been everywhere. Eli speeds it up from its original sludgy tempo, turning it into a bang-up-to-date drippy, steppy banger. It’s alchemy. After one of her own productions (from her Among Trees project with Andrey Pushkarev) she closes the mix like any good Swedophile would: with a Jesper Dahlbäck track.