Midweek Mixes (30/10/24)
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’ve played at some fabulous parties recently and a couple of them have been recorded. I listened back to my four hour odyssey at Flucc in Vienna (which I wrote up here) and decided I was happy with a very specific hour of it, starting from the moment I’d cleared the floor with some electro and building up to the moment I let a record full-on run out on me. I don’t make the rules. You can listen to that recording here and I’ll be happy to give any IDs if you ask for them.
Then this past weekend I played in Lisbon for a fabulous afters/day party called Parabéns, which has achieved that elusive goal of uniting all kinds of daytime ravers, nighttime freaks and a man in a mankini to have a silly-yet-profound party on a Sunday lunchtime. Me and my fellow diddy Dana Kuehr played b2b to close the party and it was a riot. I’m hoping the recording lives up to the funtimes memories from the party itself.
Finally, I’ve also been checking the recording of me and Gwenan from Waking Life back in June. Parts of it sound fantastic, other parts sound like a donkey is braying through the bass. Prognosis TBC.
Enjoy this week’s mixes!
DJ Frog & Lis Dalton - RinseFM (27/08/18)
It’s weird to think a radio show made in 2018 can already seem like archival material, more akin to finding a treasure trove of late-90s German public radio mixes (try this one) than being representative of what the people involved are up to in 2024. For example, Bake’s reliably excellent C To The Power Of X show on Rinse this year has been given over almost exclusively to drippy dubby bass-techno-electro pressure, with tekkers barely making an appearance. (His immaculate warm-up for Craig Richards at his own Spirit party in Glasgow is a notable, understandable exception.)
Go back six years, though, and he was hosting Montreal duo DJ Frog & Lis Dalton for two hours of pretty straight up house and tekkers, opening in style with the Midieval Funk mix of Chiapet’s ‘Westworld’ and, apart from a couple of minor diversions, keeping things pretty chunky and 4/4 from there. I spotted Player One’s ‘Another Crap Night Out In Eltham’ (which, being in a ladsy tech house phase, I’ve been wheeling out again these past couple of months) and a few other tracks I’ve heard around here and there, but for the most part it’s a collection of new (old) things that I’ve not heard before but instantly like. It couldn’t be further from Lis’s Hemlock Nights set (covered here) and that makes it appeal all the more.
Sixsixsixties - Kiosk Radio (27/09/24)
I love it when Stijn goes into deep house mode, which is often the case on his Kiosk residency. The path from Chez N Trent on Prescription three decades ago through rougher slightly-tribal-but-not-silly late 90s and into early 00s skippy glidey techy minimal house is a much-trodden yet ever-rewarding one — and whether any of the records Stijn plays in this show actually fit into those categories, or are in fact all new, doesn’t really matter. Those are the eras and vibes they evoke and he threads them together with a meticulous sensitivity.
Josh Cheon - Saturday Morning Comedown #37
This mix from Dark Entries boss Josh Cheon does exactly what it says on the tin, opening with a Patrick Cowley noodle from the Mechanical Fantasy Box, tripping through sumptuous space lullabies by Peter Brown and Rare Silk (two tracks that are peas in a pod), Cocteau Twins at their most lounge, the ambient closer from Violet’s Bed Of Roses LP on Dark Entries, and finally an OG ambient synth fantasy by The Ghostwriters, from one of two LPs just reissued on DE. The definition of a soft landing.
Here’s the tracklist.