Virgo season lied to me. There’s no other way to put it! There has been no sense of order, logic, or organisation. Things feel more chaotic than ever before and I am convinced the world is finally spinning off of its poor axis. It should have been a moment to level up, to really get it together. To me, that’s preposterous. Transformative change, things of that nature. But. The best-laid plans and devilish details be damned, the most undersung qualities of the Virgo are adaptability - that willingness and capacity to accommodate flexibility - and of course a predilection for collaborating with people and helping friends. And it’s with this that here, at the end of Virgo 2021, I can reflect that it doesn’t matter if there hasn’t been much evolution in my life, because there has for the people around me.
Virgo Season Mix: Rizmi
This season’s mix comes from Rizmi, a DJ and painter with links to Leeds but currently based in Birmingham. She’s had a busy few recent years (re-)embracing her arts and on the music front that’s meant various sets here and there and a great many radio shows and guest mixes on the likes of Rinse, Sable, Narr, Stamp the Wax, Callshop, Limbo, NTS and much more. The reason I mention all that is to emphasise just how gassed we are to have found her with the teeniest bit of free time to contribute a Virgo Season mix, nevermind the fact that recent months are the first time she’s really felt like she’s embodied her Virgo self in life. ‘Very serendipitous’ she notes — indeed! Her mix is a 90-minute delight, flavoured with rhythm and funk. House moods, acidic propulsions, percussive zones, anthemic harmonies - it’s all going down inside. What a time. Listen to Rizmi’s Virgo Season Mix here.
F1 Drivers Are Pretty Hermetic, or, Fuck Valtteri Bottas
Earlier this summer, I did what any sensible person would do and got massively into Formula One motorsports. The TV show Drive To Survive is a pretty good gateway drug for this it turns out, in no small part thanks to the enigmatic celebrity of the different drivers involved. And when you consider that each vehicle on the track only has one seat, it’s really driven home just how much this sport relies on the individual personalities. So naturally it makes sense to view them through the lens of the occult. (And the occult, in my opinion, is no more esoteric than the engineering and blood magic conducted to get these cars on the track in the first place.)
There are three Virgo drivers in the F1 at present: Carlos Sainz and Esteban Ocon, who are both lovely and are September Virgos, and Valtteri Bottas who is an annoying shit and is an August Virgo. Immediately there are conclusions we can draw from this. Fascinating!
Sainz is something of a straight-shooter, and it’s great to watch him move through teams before settling into the very sexy Ferrari red of present. Things rarely go off-track for him, and in a sense he’s emblematic of Virgo’s topline.
Ocon has been through it a bit. One of the few F1 drivers who haven’t come from out-and-out wealthy upbringings, his career took a stumble in 2019 when he didn’t really have a team to drive for and was a reserve driver. Fast forward to last month, he miraculously won first place at the Hungarian Grand Prix after taking advantage of some huge crashes around him. Testament to that adaptability we talked about earlier.
Those crashes, meanwhile, were caused by one Valtteri Bottas. Things have been particularly tumultuous for a driver largely known to be very boring. Spending most of his time in the shadow of Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes, he stole some limelight by causing a huge pile-up in the Hungarian GP. Later it was announced he’d be switching teams, and most recently he clawed his way from the back of the grid to secure 3rd place. Here we have a man wildly veering between Virgo’s planned and transformative sides, chaotically spinning out in a moment of change and crisis. It’s the kind of thing that looks like it should be fun in a way, however the thing that’s prompted it all is his own vacuousness. Just a total, crippling lack of a personality.
Virgo’s companion tarot card is the Hermit. The Hermit is all about the quest to stay true to oneself and to forego worldly experiences in order to find some sort of enlightenment. There’s something Hermetic about how far removed F1 drivers are from the reality the rest of us exist in. It’s not just the laughable finances involved or the media scrutiny and pressure - it’s more the sustained pressure of wind to face for hours and hours over the weekend, the isolation of the cockpit, the test of endurance against laws of physics and nature. It’s here on the track drivers find themselves and learn things about life the rest of us couldn’t from the outside. Bottas is simply what happens when you finally find yourself, only to discover that there is nothing there.
Club Virgo
Bassline. Deep house. Minimal techno. Boogie. Drum’n’bass. Got it all mate.
🎧 Rush N Renegade - First Time (Mr Virgo’s Organ Mix)
🎼 Voices From The Lake - Twins in Virgo
DJs Please Tell Us Your Starsigns
Season’s all about starsigns - when we organise the mix series, when we run radio and when we’re programming events, we try to curate guests to match the starsign of the astrological season we’re in. We’re always on the lookout for new people to invite and involve on that front, so we’d like to invite DJs to register interest and let us know their signs! If that’s you, please complete this form, and if it’s people you know, do send it their way: https://tinyurl.com/SeasonAstroForm
Tonight’s Entertainment
Leeds fam - I’m spinning records at the Belgrave tonight, 7-9pm, if you wanna come thru and say hi. I’ll try not to rant about race car drivers, but I can only promise to try.
Everyone else - Harv’s streaming on Twitch tonight, 8-10pm UK time - it’ll be a very lovely time: https://www.twitch.tv/docterre
And with that, I bid you adieu!
T x