Midweek Mixes (21/09/22)
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.
I’m writing this from a room in Brooklyn on the second day of a two-week stint in the US. This Friday I play for [sic] Philadelphia with DJ Anarres (read about their work on a previous Midweek Mixes here) and on Saturday I’m in New Orleans for Gimme A Reason with Bouffant Bouffant and Phlegm. The week after I’ll be in LA for Por Detroit with Kodemul on 1 October. While I’ve been in the former two cities before, I’ve never played in either, and LA will be a totally new experience. Bring it on!
As for Midweek Mixes, anyone taking notes may have spotted a quite US-centric leaning to the selections over the past few months. I can only explain this by saying that there seems to be a load of really cool stuff happening here at the moment and my exposure to it, while limited by geography and finances, has been really inspiring (for example, read about my trip to NYC Pride back in July here).
Listening to sets from names appearing at the parties and festivals I’ve been admiring from afar is one way of feeling closer to these scenes and keeping that inspiration going while I’m at home or on the move in Europe. I guess it corresponds to the thrill I get in an NYC record shop - the general feeling is of familiarity, but there’s also something satisfyingly fresh about the records I come across and the directions they subsequently take me in. I get the same vibe from these crews and scenes that I watch from a distance.
So here are three more Midweek Mixes from people doing it right over this side of the pond.
Aaron Clark - Live @ Maybeland, 30/05/22
As far as I can tell, Maybeland is the collective brainchild of various promoters and artists in Pennsylvania who all came together - twice! - earlier this year to put on a large-scale queer underground warehouse rave in Pittsburgh. When I was there for Honcho back in July I could feel, even in a few short days, that something vital was brewing in the city and I’ve been hitting play on even more music by people from the scene since. (Regular readers will know that Pittsburgh was already on my map in a big way thanks to Ali Berger.)
One of the organisers of Maybeland is Aaron Clark from Honcho, who recently uploaded his opening set from the second room of the party’s April edition. This is room two sound exemplified, the dreamy atmosphere of its opening 45 minutes leading into the half-double tempo-busting bifurcations of the rest. You can tell Aaron dug deep for this selection while also keeping things light and spontaneous enough on the night to build a real vibe. No cheap tricks, no instant gratification, just well-crafted musical emotion.
I promised I would dive into this mix of video game music when I wrote up Max D’s contribution to this same series (run by Eto Ano Records), so here we are. The Lot Radio resident DJ Wawa had already done one video game music mix prior to this one, Wawa’s Arcade Vol. 1, which drew on the pumping side of the genre.
This selection for HodgePodge is far more chilled, stretching out a towel on the (beautifully rendered) sand and soaking in some (beautifully rendered) rays. While there’s no ‘Dire Dire Docks’ here, we are treated to its spiritual successor from Mario Odyssey, ‘Lake Lamode Underwater Passage’, alongside several other examples of harp-heavy console zen. And Wawa mixes them all with a musician’s sensitivity for key and mood.
Chris Cruse - Analogue Players Club
Chris Cruse may be a Berlin resident now but he’s still very active Stateside as part of the Detroit party Club Toilet and Honcho Campout festival. Spotlight, the party he used to run in one-off spaces in LA, built a reputation for its sleazy and pumping take on the best currents of queer dance music’s past. He has also translated this signature sound through his own Spotlight remixes (like this one that I play incessantly) and, coming soon, an original EP with Massimiliano Pagliara as Couple Looking.
This latter project gets a shout out in the brief interview halfway through this Dublab show and one of the EP’s tracks appears in the mix that follows. (If you’re a fan of early-mid 00s dance-punk-psych-disco hybrids - aren’t we all? - then you should be able to spot it.) This session is by turns sexy and sweet, uplifting and reflective, rough and smooth, with that Spotlight piston forever propelling it forwards. At its centre is the slamming clarion call of ‘Aaron Carl Lives On’ by Gideön, which is out soon on his new label Homo Centric.