If there’s an implicit theme to this month’s column, it’s a globalist one. Three of the mixes tackle geopolitical questions, whether it’s Ata Ebtekar’s survey of the Iranian avant-garde, Andy Votel’s celebration of Turkish psychedelia, or Éclair Fifi’s funk-fueled defense of the European Union itself. And an internationalist spirit bubbles up in the other sets, too: Atom TM and Tobias continue a conversation that they’ve kept up between Chile and Germany for more than two decades; Ben UFO and Helena Hauff find common ground between Bristol bass and Hamburg EBM; and Laurel Halo fuses European techno and African kwaito and gqom in a mix that refuses to sit still.
(If this doesn’t satiate, take a look at last month’s Best Mixes column.)
Laurel Halo – Truancy Volume 150
From start to finish, Laurel Halo’s set for Truants’ 150th podcast is determined to throw you off balance. But subtly, always subtly. She opens with lysergic drones and dream-logic spoken-word—something about champagne-filled hot tubs in Las Vegas hotels and watching your best friend get skinned alive in the desert, all recited in a thick Midwestern accent and pitched down until it resembles this—and she closes with the apocalyptic vocoders of Chino Amobi’s “Rotterdam,” an unsettling vignette from his Airport Music for Black Folkalbum. In between those points, the groove reigns supreme: dub, kwaito, club music, gqom, techno, and even Belgian New Beat. What makes the mix so engaging is the way she keeps switching up the vibe without ever losing the thread: Most tracks play out for just a couple of minutes before she deftly changes them up, and she often focuses on a single, common element—in the case of a captivating three-track passage in the first half, a staccato snare pattern that reappears in three different tunes—to provide a counterintuitive through-line across tracks you wouldn’t think would work together.
Éclair Fifi – EU Special, NTS 007 – 23rd June 2016
On June 23, the same day that the British public went to the polls and decided, in distressing numbers, to leave the European Union, Scotland’s Éclair Fifi took to the airwaves for her monthly show on NTS. Given the occasion, the Edinburgh native and LuckyMe signee came prepared with a bag stuffed with all European tunes: French house, Dutch electro, Ukranian techno, Polish children’s music, and loads of Continental hits like Falco’s “Der Kommissar.” The selections are never anything less than eye-opening—I never knew that a 14-year-old Vanessa Paradis came to fame singing a song called “Joe Le Taxi”—and the twists and turns (from Italo disco into French cloud rap, for example) consistently exhilarating. While the mixing isn’t always seamless, mostly because these are styles that aren’t really meant to go together, she makes it work with remarkable finesse. And is that not, after all, the spirit of the European Union? (Bonus points for being, surely, the first DJ mix ever to open with a goal by the Italian soccer star Mario Balotelli.)
Ben UFO B2B Helena Hauff – RA Live – 2016.06.07, Sónar Festival
As far as back-to-back duos go, Ben UFO and Helena Hauff aren’t necessarily obvious fits for each other: Ben UFO tends toward leftfield techno, while Hauff wears her acid and EBM influences on her sleeve. The common denominator between the two is an adventurous spirit and the ability to bang it out without resorting to gimmicks. And at their first-ever B2B pairing at this year’s Sónar festival, banging it out is exactly what they did: This is 83 minutes of bare-knuckled percussion, relentless acid, and insects-under-your-skin rave mania. Scanning the tracklisting, it’s actually not too hard to figure out which selections belong to which DJ—Ben UFO sticks largely to bass-heavy techno from his own extended circle, while Hauff leans toward classic-sounding electro and acid—but in practice, it all slots seamlessly together. Highlights include Fango’s Plastikman-referencing “Rectum,” the Detroit flourishes of Dynarec’s noir-tinged “All Automatic,” and the killer unidentified opener, which unleashes dizzy arpeggios over a simple shaker. The finale is pretty great, too: Who knew that Belgian New Beat and Bristol bass could work so well together?
Aurora Halal – BIS Radio Show #838
Given the full-on drive of many of Aurora Halal’s productions, the understated opening here on her recent set for Tim Sweeney’s Beats in Space—DJ Sprinkles’ mournful, meditative “Sisters, I Don’t Know What This World Is Coming To”—might catch you by surprise. After that head-nodding head-fake, though, the New York producer and DJ takes us deep down her more customary lane with nearly 90 minutes of dark techno accented with hints of acid and trance. Metallic tones bob like fireflies; arpeggios unspool endlessly toward the horizon. (Needless to say, this is great late-night driving music.) Her mixing style is exceptionally smooth—profoundly linear but always evolving, never boring. Among the standout cuts are Voiski’s “Ad Infinitum,” in which bright chords catch the light like sprinklers whipping across a summer lawn, and Wata Igarashi’s “Night,” a track that exemplifies Halal’s instincts for capturing ecstatic moments and fixing them in amber.
Sote – 99% Iranian and 1% Iranian-Looking Friends Mix
I got to know Ata Ebtekar, aka Sote, back in the early 2000s via the experimental techno scene in San Francisco, where we were both living at the time. He put out an EP of punishing breakcore on Warp Records in 2002, and another record along similar lines on the Bay Area’s Dielectric label the following year, but in the past decade, Ebtekar—whose youth was split among Germany, Tehran, and the Bay Area—has turned his focus increasingly toward Iranian electronic music. “I saw a lot of potential in microtonal electronic music and producing Iranian music within an all electronic framework,” he says—not ambient with samples of Iranian instruments on top, but “an active and maximalist outcome through pure synthesis.”
In 2013, Ebtekar and his family returned to Tehran, where he teaches computer music and continues to create; this set reflects his perspective from the center of Iran’s electronic avant-garde. With the exception of Terminal 11’s Michael Castaneda, who appears here remixing Sote’s own “Krom Uth,” every artist featured is Iranian, and most are based in Iran itself, with the exception of London’s Pouya Ehsaei and San Francisco’s Cameron Shafii.
Full of darkly dramatic electronic sound design and marked by a diverse array of styles, from the percolating synth-pop of Raincheck’s “vbLmdx_3 Edit” to the electroacoustic fizz of Sara Bigdeli Shamloo’s “Cataract,” it would be a stunning mix no matter where the music came from. 9T Antiope’s opening "Edax," which pairs gravelly synthesizer drones with gorgeous, melancholy vocals, is simply a thing to behold. (If it doesn’t turn up in a film soundtrack or major TV show in the next year or so, someone in Hollywood simply isn’t doing their job.) The fact that the set offers a glimpse into an experimental music scene that remains all but unknown to most Westerners only makes it that much more fascinating—and invaluable as a resource. (For more on Ebtekar’s work and the Iranian scene, don’t miss this interview that accompanies the podcast.)
Atom TM & Tobias – The Bunker NY
This set from AtomTM—Chile’s Uwe Schmidt, aka Atom Heart and Señor Coconut—and Berlin’s Tobias Freund takes its sweet time getting going; nearly nine minutes pass before the first beat drops in earnest. But then, these long-time collaborators have the kind of confidence that comes from having played together for nearly a quarter-century. They also know that they’ve got plenty of time to stretch out: Recorded at a Detroit after-party last year, the set took them from just past three ’til six in the morning. Once they’ve cleared their runway, the two machine mavens hit cruising altitude and never look down. Rippling drum machines, programmed live in real time, provide the frame for shuddering acid trance and slithery synth patterns that send you spiraling deep inside your mind. The final hour gets especially hairy, finishing off the trip—in every sense of the term—with a flushed, visceral flourish.
Andy Votel – To The Davul A Daughter Vol.1
The Finders Keepers label’s Andy Votel is one of the most tireless diggers out there, with the ability to unearth records and sounds the rest of us barely could have dreamed existed. Ten years ago, he introduced the rest of the world to Selda, a Turkish folk singer who experimented with electronics and psychedelia in the ’70s. Now, in an installment for Dekmantel’s Selectors series, he reaches deep into his crates and pulls out two hours’ worth of freaky Anatolian funk and psych. There’s no tracklisting, but that doesn’t make much difference, since Votel is surely one of the only people outside Turkey who has access to most of these records. There’s a slightly uncanny-valley quality to much of this stuff, as the familiar, tape-warped sounds of the ’70s—rolling congas, wah-wah guitar, squelchy Moogs, disco beats, hard rock guitars—meet Turkish instruments and intonation. It’s a great way to travel halfway around the world without leaving home.
Claire Morgan – Live at Gegen Berlin, July 2016
Even in a club culture that prides itself on permissiveness, Berlin’s Gegen is something else: It’s a LGBTQ-oriented techno party—or, as co-founder DJ Warbear explained to Electronic Beats, “basically a techno-oriented, queer-positive dancefloor”—that takes place at the KitKat Club, one of Berlin’s most iconic sex clubs, and that happens to have a healthy does of critical thinking baked right in. “Gegen” is German for “against,” which covers the party’s oppositional aspect (against homophobia, against heteronormativity, against patriarchy, etc.). But it also means something like “around,” and that conceptual slipperiness is a big part of the party’s identity.
Claire Morgan’s recent set from Gegen, recorded around 6:30 a.m. one morning in July, highlights a different kind of slipperiness: Sweltering, stripped nearly bare, and slicked with sweat. The Australian DJ delivers a proper peak-time set tailored for full-on peak-time impropriety, zig-zagging between stern, corkscrewing acid and lascivious ghetto house (Traxmen & Eric Martin’s “Hit It From the Back,” DJ Slugo’s “Wouldn’t You Like to Be a Ho Too”), and between sexed-up, 2-steppy house (French Fries’ “Hugz”) and grime-fueled headbangers (Scalameriya & VSK’s “Cydonia”). Morgan’s mixing is tight and assured, particularly when she’s dealing with straight-up techno. Even when the music is heart-in-mouth intense, her transitions are like an outstretched hand in a dark room: You grab on, hold tight, and plunge ahead into the fray.