Moongazing Mix

My mix for Discosódoma’s Moongazing series is one I’m especially proud of. It tells a story that, during the time I spent putting it together, and since, has taken on new layers of meaning and feeling for me. As I’ve written about previously, nowadays I do actively enjoy recording the more transient things I do like radio shows, but there’s something about a mix like this one that is more personal, specific and, I think, relatable. It gives it more creative and emotional weight, both for me and, I hope, for anyone listening. The Moongazing series felt like the right space for committing to going down this road: the other entries in the series regularly strike me as distinctive and from the heart, and more generally I’ve always found the moon to be an object of wonder and superstition, which, as a dyed-in-the-wool rationalist, really does say something. The moon clearly brings it out of us.

So this is a mix about love and lust, loss and renewal, a sort of paean to the moon’s monthly cycle of death and rebirth. The mood is, like my feelings recently, complex and often contradictory: the desire for attachment fights with the will to escape; naive flirtation rubs up against naked lust; and warm intimacy wanes into a colder sense of unease and paranoia, before waxing once again into a fervent glow. It goes without saying there’s a healthy dose of melodrama throughout. I wanted to communicate all of this through pieces of music that mean a lot to me: some have kept me company for years, even decades (Leftfield, Hercules And Love Affair, Naomi Daniel); a few were made by some of my staple producers (Prince, William Orbit, Clivillés & Cole, Mrs Jynx); and others are current favourites that fit the theme and work to glue the rest together.

I can point to three existing mixes that helped to inspire this one. First, James Hillard’s Inflight Mix from around seven years ago, a superlative sub-109bpm adventure that must be one of my most listened-to sets ever. Eminently singable, theatrical, and not afraid to go off-piste (“Gott ist tot!” cries Nina Hagen), James’s mix has been a loyal companion in all sorts of moods, which is something I wanted to try and achieve with mine. I actually included two tunes I originally heard through him: ‘Foreign Affair’ from Mike Oldfield’s Crisis album (which also has appropriately lunar cover art) and ‘Infatuation’ by Rod Stewart.