Midweek Mixes: Honcho Campout (22/11/23)
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.
So it begins. The recordings from Honcho Campout are being uploaded, it seems at a pace of six every Friday. This is of course far too many to keep up with, so you can expect these to filter through Midweek Mixes for months to come, as I revisit the sets I witnessed live and discover the ones I didn’t. There are also some I just heard snatches of, as I walked around the site or bobbed idly in the creek. I’m also looking forward to the recordings from the Circle Of Whispers programme, curated by Dylan Harris, including a talk on ‘Centring Queerness In Rural Spaces’ by Neema Avashia and an interview with Paradise Garage devotee Michele Saunders.
I’ve avoided writing directly about Honcho Campout here but I’ll continue trying to capture a bit more of my experience there through these Midweek Mixes. Previous instalments can be found here and here.
Cay Horiuchi — Live @ Honcho Campout 2023
A few weeks after Campout, I mentioned Cay Horiuchi’s set at The Grove on the Thursday night, writing that “you could sense that both the staff and crowd had the feeling of a festival being set on the right course”. Listening back to it now, that’s exactly what I hear. The first 40 minutes are as steady as they come, a contemporary lesson in the dependable proggy music everyone and their uncle has been playing this year. It’s a sound I don’t feel much affinity with but the selections do come from the less monotonous end of the spectrum, and when Cay starts to mix in corresponding sounds from the early 90s things start to get more interesting. Europe’s ‘Quasi Midi’, slowjammed from almost 150bpm to 130bpm, sounds glorious, growling now rather than pounding, its soft dub accents lifting it further.
This proves to be a bit of a breather before the next stretch, which sees Cay push into the higher 130s with early Italian techno (which to my ears basically sounds like EBM sped up) and a bit of mossy trance. It’s still not entirely my bag but I remember at the time admiring Cay’s DJing chops as they knitted these tracks together with both energy and precision. To me listening back, it sounds like they were grounding themselves with this opening hour, constructing a vibe and setting the stage on which to then have some real fun. Indeed, when the aforementioned ‘bare feet pound mossy forest floor’ merges, magically and fully key-matched, into the Colombian guaracha trance of ‘tu y yo, sobandólo’ (we can get mossy AND we can get it on, Cay seems to be saying), the tension of that first hour simply explodes.
I have a tendency to go on about things being ‘DJing’, i.e. saying “THIS is DJing”. Well I’m going to do it again. Cay mixes out of that explosive moment into a bridging tool (fastjammed by about 15bpm) that re-instills all the tension. They play this out for less than three minutes before mixing into another very woozy tribal rhythm track (now fastjammed by almost 20bpm), which gets about the same amount of airtime before the next big kick comes in, now broken. This might seem like a passing moment but to me it’s pivotal. Firstly, the sudden increase in mixing pace injects new energy into the set even though the two tracks in question are hardly showy. The second track also contains instrumental drums that foreshadow the hi-NRG that will come later. Finally, this beat-focussed interlude clears out all the wafty prog vibes from the first hour of the set ready for something fresh, which in this case means the funky barrage of Sobolik’s ‘Airplane’ plus an acappella about everyone needing ice cream. THIS, as I said, is DJing.
Cay then takes us on a whirlwind trip through syncopated rhythms from Mexico, Iran, Angola, Palestine, the UK and more, with Muskila’s ‘Hayvan’ an unexpectedly delicate highlight. Cay broadens the palette even further with Indo-futurist jazz and an even less expected appearance from Boredoms offshoot OOIOO, soon followed, naturally, by Dr Dre. The final hour of the set is then the part that’s clearest in my memory. mainly because it featured things I recognised: Orion Agassi’s edit of Pretty Poison’s ‘Nighttime’ (the Spanish version, of course), ‘Al-Naafiysh’, ‘Right On Target’, ‘Motorcycle Madness’, all in quick succession.
Asha Puthli’s ‘Chipko Chipko’, a homage to the Chipko “treehugger” movement in 1970s India (‘chipko’ means ‘hug’) that’s also a riff on ‘Smooth Criminal’, in a way ties together the threads of this mix. Cay’s selections are both historically informed and politically astute. Their choices tell us that representation is important, connection across eras and geographies is important, acknowledging and exploring difference is important, recognising roots is important. That these messages come packaged in such a musically virtuoso package is Cay’s great achievement. Of course, the kind of analysis I’ve done here is made possible only by listening back multiple times and by Cay’s generous provision of a tracklist. But I’m sure they, or any DJ, would like to think that this work does not go unnoticed on the night itself. Having been there, I, for one, know it didn’t. Cay, we appreciate you!
Harry Cross — Live @ Honcho Campout 2023
Harry Cross, resident at Smart Bar in Chicago and founder of the wonderfully named Witch Finger party, played Hemlock Hole on the Friday afternoon and took us from 117bpm to 132bpm with masterful ease. As I’ve mentioned previously, Friday was my birthday and I couldn’t think of a better start to my shift than having a front row seat for Harry’s set. The first hour was all sunshine and cocktails and halo-halo (the secret MVP of Hemlock Hole), my first strong memory listening back now being the whip-smart disco-y house edit half an hour in. It has the edgy cut-up vibe of a proto-Soundhack tune but in this case the disco can’t help but burst out through the seams. Harry ratcheted up the pace patiently and with purpose, his feet stomping on the booth floor (he was playing digital so there were none of the issues we’d have on Sunday) as guitar riffs and 80s b-boy electro heightened the pump. Black Traxx’s ‘Doctor’s Housecall’ (which, incidentally, beat ‘Prescription Every Night’ to the First Choice-sampling punch by three years) finally made the bridge from disco into straight-up house music.
And then Harry really let us have it. As you can hear in the recording, this set was a flow of sexy, funky, thrilling, jubilant music of the kind you feel in your stomach. The sound at Hemlock Hole was glorious and the speakers and stage were laid out in such a way in the clearing that you always had options: plunging into the pressure of the music between the front two speakers; moving further back to the centre or back part of the four-point focus, where there was more space and the most balanced sound; or staying just outside the coverage of the speakers, for example in that pocket round the side of the booth where it was quieter but still sounded great. That was my post during my shift and from there I got a fantastic view of both Harry and the forest floor filling up until it was heaving with moving bodies.
The stretch from 75 minutes is just brilliant, kicking off with a crazy Ursula Rucker-sampling tune with marimbas and syncopated fanfares, mixed into a mash-up between the UK funky of KG’s ‘Obsession’ and Aaliyah’s ‘Rock The Boat’ vocal. More broken funky stuff ensued, depth contrasting with upfront drive and conjuring a bewitching mood over Hemlock Hole. Just past the two hour mark Harry dropped an absolutely pounding 4/4 track straight into the outgoing breakbeat tune, igniting the dancefloor. Then, just when you thought he was done, in the final stretch he gave us a surprise UKG twist including Escaflowne’s pitch perfect ‘The Boy Is Mine’ rework, before closing things out with DMX Krew’s (track of the year?) ‘Return To Jupiter’.
Throughout, you can hear that Harry’s mixing is dynamic and always on point, revealing both his experience and his sense of fun. The dots he joined along dance music’s lineage spoke to me very strongly that Friday afternoon and the finale is something I could imagine doing myself, so beyond just being a blast, his set contributed to a real sense of peace and belonging in me. Indeed, with their Campout sets both Harry and Cay demonstrated that musical understanding and sensibility is the foundation of good DJing, and on that foundation you can build a craft that acts as a powerful connecting tool, for relating to other people and places and for finding your own place. And you can have a damn good time while doing it.