This month’s roundup of mixes tends to skirt the edges of the dance floor, when it doesn’t fall outside the disco ball’s radius entirely. Vancouver’s Khotin explores ambient vibes on his set for the Libra Mix series, while the dub-loving LA duo Peaking Lights dig out a mess of African and Brazilian records that are sure to keep the barbecue lit, and Japan’s Powder offers a woozy, psychedelic accompaniment for backyard sitting after the coals have burned down. Venturing even further afield, Versatile’s Gilb’r delivers an unusual, experimental in-store mix for Amsterdam’s Rush Hour that's sourced from the store’s own shelves. It’s not all so laid-back, though: Rebolledo, Helena Hauff, DJ TLR, Studio OST, and the 1432 R crew all provide their own unique takes on house, techno, and electro, and Bristol’s Shanti Celeste offers up an irresistible open-air set from Amsterdam’s Lente Kabinet festival.
And if these don't satiate, check out last month's Best Mixes column.
DJ TLR @ Fresh Flesh, Intergalactic FM (20.04.2016)
This set from Crème Organization's DJ TLR was broadcast on Intergalactic FM in late April and it went up on SoundCloud in late May, but it's simply too good to pass up for this month’s column. There’s nothing tricky about it: just ominous techno, alternatingly stern and supple—sometimes gnarled and punishing, sometimes diamond-tipped and precision-engineered. I recognized one track in the whole two hours.
It’s expertly paced, moving from a shadowy, mood-setting introduction—the first hour is particularly entrancing—into breakbeats and electro before finishing off with an appropriately mind-flaying outro. And the whole thing is expertly mixed, too, with intertwining rhythms and harmonic elements making every transition feel like more than the sum of its parts. It’s also as convincing an argument against the tyranny of the sync button as you’ll find: Every now and then, you can hear beats slipping slightly out of phase before TLR tugs them back in place, and that subtle friction creates more genuine drama, the kind you feel deep in your bones, than any pro-forma white-noise sweep ever could.
Shanti Celeste at Lente Kabinet
I can only imagine what the response from the dance floor must have been like when Shanti Celeste dropped Sheila E.’s “A Love Bizarre” early in her set at last month’s Lente Kabinet festival, just five weeks after the death of its co-writer, Prince. The Dekmantel-organized event takes place outdoors, and the Bristol DJ clearly made the most of her daytime slot. After kicking off with a handful of feel-good chestnuts (Charlie’s “Spacer Woman,” Indeep’s “When Boys Talk”), she slips into a buoyant groove that snakes between infectious vocal cuts (Omar S and Colonel Abrahams’ “Who Wrote the Rules of Love,” Maurice Fulton and Jackie Sangster’s “You Give Me Good Feeling”) and hazy deep house (Norm Talley’s “Ion,” Joshua’s West Coast classic “Work It Out”). Despite the preponderance of sunny vibes, she's not afraid to go dark: Around 26 minutes in, a voice intones, “My friend is losing his mind for fear of going insane,” and it's as though thunderheads were massing over the park. But they soon pass, making way for one of the most effortlessly summery house sets you could ask for, on or off the dance floor.
Rebolledo – FMB Mixtape 48
Like many DJs, Rebolledo began producing partly because no one else was making the kind of music that he wanted to play in his sets. The Mexican producer’s new album Mondo Alterado is proof of how seriously he took that task: The 75-minute record plays out as seamlessly as a club set, stretching Rebolledo’s hypnotic signature moves toward the horizon. It’s a testament to the strength of his vision that no matter whose tracks he plays, in the context of one of his DJ sets, they always end up sounding like no one but him. This set for Northern Ireland’s Feel My Bicep has all his usual hallmarks: ropy electric bass, skeletal drum machines run through endless reverb, and synth lines that move like searchlights through the fog. He reaches a high point with the melancholy melodic acid of Pale Blue’s “Acid Waves,” and he takes an unexpected but welcome left turn for the finale, as the gothic mist lifts to reveal the flickering disco of Justus Köhncke’s sprightly “Elan.” (Stream / iTunes / direct download)
Powder – Juno Plus Podcast 140
Not too long ago, I wrote about a new single from Powder, a Japanese electronic musician with a humid and particularly lysergic take on house music—call it “rainforest tribal,” perhaps. This set for Juno Plus does a wonderful job of peeling back the curtains on her influences: clanking house, Space Age lounge tunes, Japanese easy-listening pop, André Cymone’s slow-motion funk, and so on. Among the gems are Nirosta Steel’s “Some Say (Pocketknife Mix),” an Arthur Russell-produced tune rescued from the vaults a few years back, and an eerie Jon Hassell cut whose dubbed-out congas slap like buoys in choppy water. The set unspools according to its own hazy logic; the most uptempo thing here, Robert Owens’ “Far Away (Chicago Instrumental),” is plopped somewhat incongruously between another Jon Hassell selection and something that sounds like DJ Shadow remixing Deep Forest. But its meandering path makes a strange kind of sense if you just let yourself go with the flow.
Helena Hauff – In Session
If dry ice didn't already exist, Helena Hauff’s sets would have necessitated its invention: The Hamburg DJ doles out a fast, furious mix of acid, techno, and EBM that chills you to the bone even as it makes you sweat. Compared to this history lesson for Mixmag, though, the rest of her sessions are as warm and cuddly as a litter of kittens. Here, she reaches into the depths of her crates and pays tribute to the sound of Frankfurt in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Surveying the EBM and industrial chuggers that would pave the way for Frankfurt trance, it’s full of icy arpeggios, rigidly funky drum machines, and stern spoken-word samples—plus a throbbing mashup of Front 242, Nitzer Ebb, and Strauss’ “Also Sprach Zarathustra” via New Scene’s “Out of Control (The Belgium Mix),” a high-energy love letter to Belgian New Beat. If you were looking for an excuse to do the robot, now’s your chance. (Stream on Mixcloud / download)
Khotin – Home Music (Libra Mix)
It seems fitting that an artist named Ambien Baby is prominently featured in this set from Vancouver, British Columbia’s Khotin. The 1080p signee’s take on electronic music is nothing if not heavy-lidded—see, for instance, the woozy “Recycle (Drift Mix)” from his Baikal AcidEP—and here, per the Libra Mix series' ambient leanings, Khotin really gives in to his horizontal instincts. Even when he does turn to beats, like the foggy breaks of Ex-Terrestrial’s “Blue Smoke,” they're barely energetic enough to inspire you to peel yourself off the couch, much less cut a rug. (And in the case of Future Beat Alliance’s snapping “Eon Link 500,” he pitches it down until its slap-back reverb turns thick and gelatinous.) There’s nothing fancy about the mixing, but the mood is so well sustained that the question of technique is irrelevant. And his selections surprise and delight at every turn. Freestyle Man’s “Vibes Revisited,” from 1997, is a beatless swirl of organ and guitar; Daniel Wang’s 2002 Playhouse B-side “Two Tracks We Made in 1999 for a Gay Leather Video” is like sex in zero gravity. If the idea of Oval’s Sistemisch turned into breakbeat deep house is appealing, keep an eye out for that Ambien Baby tune, forthcoming from Edmonton's Normals Welcome label.
1432 R – Wut Mix
Back in January, one of the mixes that kicked off this column was a selection of unreleased material from Washington, D.C.’s 1432 R label. Six months later, the team (Joyce Lim, Dawit Eklund, and Sami Yenigun) returns with a new deep dive into their collective hard drives: breezy disco, clattery machine workouts, flute-led steppers' jams, watery downtempo with a debt to Arthur Russell. In vibe and personnel, 1432 R overlaps a little with D.C.'s Future Times label—Maxmillion Dunbar contributes an unreleased tune, and Protect U's Mike Petillo and Pitchfork contributor Aaron Leitko turn up in a new duo called Ocobaya—but this mix, along with the last one, also offers evidence that they're creating their very own aesthetic. House music’s rhythms provide the set's flexible backbone—sometimes wrapped in rubbery sinew, sometimes run into the red and rubbed raw—but there's a killer detour into hazy drum‘n’bass toward the end that makes me wonder if an illbient revival might be around the corner (and if there is, let it begin here, with a record I'm betting is in the 1432 R office collection). There’s no tracklisting for this one, but that's half the fun. Keep an eye on this talented crew.
Studio OST – Rejected Mix for Dekmantel
Studio OST is the duo of White Material’s Alvin Aronson and Galcher Lustwerk, and this set makes a perfect companion to the duo's debut album, which came out on Lustwerk Music back in March. They cover a similar range of styles here, from ambient techno to atmospheric electro, and they continue to explore sounds from the mid-to-late 1990s: the trancey breakbeat techno of John Beltran’s “Morning at the Window” (1997); the jittery, melancholy electro of Monsters From ID’s “Spatial Lobe” (1999), which sounds like an IDM take on Jean Michel Jarre’s Zoolook; and the almost new agey moods of Larry Heard’s “Winter Winds and Chill” (1994), which comes complete with lapping ocean waves. The set’s not quite as hypnotic as Aronson’s White Material mix from back in April, but it’s still plenty enveloping, particularly in a long section in the middle that builds from the charcoal-rubbed dub techno of Morgan Louis’ “3sex” to Stingray313’s “Who’s Watching the Watchers,” a dark, thrilling electro cut. And keep your ears peeled for the track after that: REKchampa’s “Atonal Shit,” a spooky electro tune that balances metallic clank with a bleepy sequence reminiscent of land-line intercept messages from the ‘70s and ‘80s. I’ve never heard of the artist or the label, Harsh Riddims, but it's precisely discoveries like that one that make listening to selectors like these two such a worthwhile pastime.
Peaking Lights – Resonating Friction Pt. 1
The trajectory of Indra Dunis and Aaron Coyes’ duo Peaking Lights has been a long, gradual journey into the light. Early records like Imaginary Falcons offered a lo-fi, new age swirl redolent of dank basements and sticky resin; 2012’s Luciferand Lucifer in Dub brightened their sound and sloughed off the stoner pall, and on 2014’s Cosmic Logic, they posted up in an imaginary tropics where digi-dub went roller skating with the Tom Tom Club. This summer-themed mix from the two musicians offers some clues as to how they wound up where they did. Soul, reggae, Brazilian music, African music, and progressive rock flow seamlessly together, with pitter-pat electronic percussion underpinning deep funk, sweetly ecstatic vocals, and sun-kissed psychedelia. Along the way they check in with new wave soul from Belgium’s Marc Moulin (Aksak Maboul, Telex), slap bass and synthetic birdsong from Kenya’s African Vibration, and lilting smooth jazz from Mallorca’s Joan Bibiloni. It’s pretty much the perfect barbecue mix, though the closing tune—Lata Ramasar’s Caribbean Hindustani devotional “The Greatest Name That Lives,” which simply has to be heard to be believed—may have you wondering if someone spiked the watermelon.
Gilb’r – Rush Hour Store Mix 010
What happens when you set an adventurous DJ loose in the aisles of one of Amsterdam’s best record shops and record a mix right there, on the spot? That’s the premise behind the Store Mix series from Rush Hour, a store (and eponymous label) specializing in house, techno, disco, hip-hop, reggae, Brazilian, African, jazz, and more. And it’s a pretty great premise: What other method is likely to yield a set that pulls in Jorge Ben, Pierre Henry, Bernard Herrmann’s Taxi Driversoundtrack, Jaylib, and Pepe Bradock? Gilb’r is head of Paris’ Versatile label, and he makes good on the name here, carving a winding path through an eye-opening selection of unusual records and finishing with 20 minutes of oddball house. It’s like “Project Runway,” but for crate-digging.