This month's round-up of the best DJ mixes covers plenty of ground: hypnotic techno from a member of Studio OST, tarraxo-infused R&B from two members of Future Brown, Japanese hip-hop, backwards-looking UK house. It also includes one selection that, strictly speaking, isn't a DJ set at all. Juju & Jordash's Fine Time Session 4 is, like all of their work, a live set—all improv, all hardware, all original. (That doesn't stop people from asking for track IDs in the SoundCloud comments, which is kind of cute.) But it's long, and you listen to it pretty much the same way you'd listen to a DJ set—that is, working in the kitchen, or riding the subway, or running on the treadmill, or any other activity that requires immersion and focus (and rewards mental drift). Finally, we dust off an Osunlade set paying tribute to the Purple One, because let's face it—Prince is all we really want to listen to these days anyway.
And once you're done with these, check out last month's Best Mixes column.
Alvin Aronson — White Material Mix Series #2
Alvin Aronson's White Material mix is pretty much everything I want out of techno right now. The mixing is impeccable, weaving long, linear drum tracks seamlessly together, and commingling harmonic elements into a luminous mist. The selection is just as faultless: I don't know most of the tracks, but I want them all. And the pacing is seductive: The set begins with a rosy ambient glow, deepens the mystery across a long run of energetic-yet-meditative tunes, and goes out in a blaze of Rephlex-style techno and electro at 150 BPM. My favorite moment happens some 47 minutes in, when he momentarily knocks you off your feet with a bleepy, minimalist sequence straight out of the Sähkö playbook; anyone sitting behind me on the bus would have caught me very subtly headbanging. It's as close to perfect as any set I've heard in a good while.
Laurel Halo — BCR #13
Where Aronson's mix takes the form of a long arc whose curve is barely perceptible, Laurel Halo's recent set for Berlin Community Radio revels in switchbacks, traversing swirling choral music, R&B a cappella stretches, dank techno, disco edits, '80s funk, industrial electronics, and something that sounds like a No Wave take on Raymond Scott. No matter how unexpected the segues, though, it all holds together, directed as if by a kind of hidden logic (right down to a bizarre Bob Marley cut-up toward the end). Like the tag promises, this is the best kind of #freeform radio—an experience as exhilarating as it is disorienting.
Avalon Emerson — Groove Podcast 52
"Staying in one zone too long is boring," says Avalon Emerson in the interview that accompanies her podcast for Germany's Groove Magazine. That might be one reason that she recently put together four different mixes for B. Traits' show on BBC Radio 1, zig-zagging across classic synth-pop, coldwave, Detroit techno, and scads of acid, along with latter-day anthems like Panthera Krause's mental "Umami." But in this mix she sticks largely to peak-time vibes, while still keeping things varied enough to be interesting. She also has a tendency to play cuts slightly slower than their intended speed, which lends an extra element of friction, and maybe mystery.
Early on, the elegant modern acid of Aroma Pitch's "Portal" sets up Justin Crudmore's feisty "Crystal (Servito's 730 Reshape)," forthcoming from Honey Soundsystem, and from there things go dark and chugging. She's got killer instincts for older tunes you don't hear so much these days, like a tribal-tinged cut from Grain (a.k.a. Magnetic Man's Artwork!) released on FatCat in 1999, and a rough-yet-smooth 1997 track from Swag's Primitive label. She also teases some unreleased tunes, and they're all killers, particularly Courtesy & Solid Blake's icy "27" and the Berlin producer Physical Therapy's absolutely thundering techno stormer "Spasm," upcoming from Work Them. That track provides the white-knuckled climax to an increasingly intense hour, while Urulu's gentle "Lullaby" ensures a soft landing.
Juju & Jordash — Fine Time Session 4
You never know quite where the Israeli-Dutch duo Juju & Jordash's all-hardware, all-improv live sets are going to go. They start from zero—their sequencers empty, their drum machines a blank slate. In this set recorded at a Dekmantel night at the Doornroosje club in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, they play their cards closer to their chests than is usual; tightly controlled basslines and stern, snapping drum programming predominate. But they can't help but get swept up in it all: A warm, psychedelic wind sweeps through the club around the 10-minute mark, and about halfway through, they give in to their jazz backgrounds, indulging in creamy keyboard soloing and the lushest chords this side of late-'80s Detroit.
Nguzunguzu — Perfect Lullaby Vol. 3
Nguzunguzu keep it 90—BPM, that is—on the woozy Perfect Lullaby Vol. 3, a dembow daydream that runs cotton-candied R&B through the lilting rhythms of Afro-Portuguese tarraxo. Opening with a take on Art of Noise's "Moments in Love" and folding in bootlegged tunes from Jeremih, Mariah Carey, and Jhené Aiko—not to mention Nindja's kizomba remix of Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight"—the mix often feels like a trip down a tropical uncanny valley, where déjà vu lurks in the shadow of every canned conga slap. (Check Self-Titled for the tracklisting.)
Timothy London — Party on the Circle Line
Not long ago, Mr. Intl, the house-centric label from Hercules and Love Affair's Andy Butler, unearthed a curious song called "The Cortina Kidz" by an artist with the even more curious name, MacDonald Flack and the Ack-Ack Pack. A chilly acid-house track operating the influence of both Soft Cell and the Specials, the 1988 B-side is the work of one Timothy London, a former member of the Smiths-sampling pop-dance act Soho, of "Hippychick" fame. London's Party on the Circle Line fast-forwards a few years to sift through a batch of unreleased tunes produced around the turn of the millennium. It starts off slow and skulking, climaxing with a dramatic bit of fog-lit electro; throughout, the vibe remains austere and a little bit tentative, as machine beats pop like creaky joints and synths wheeze faintly in the dark. The mix comes accompanied with an essay looking back at the fading panorama of the late '80s: the smells of dog shit and weed wafting across Hackney parks; curious fashions ("wide, baggy jeans worn about an inch above the shoe, socks with wide stripes, boxy leather jackets or wind-cheaters, berets or butcher boy caps"); an anticlimactic visit to Shoom, ground zero for the UK's acid house scene. The tone of the text is a lot like that of the mix: chilly, but faintly warmed by nostalgia.
Lee (Asano + Ryuhei) — Mix0000ooo
Dilla is gone, but Lee is not. Not to say the 29-year-old Japanese producer is “the next Dilla,” but fact is: Lee’s music would not exist without Dilla’s music. And in a way, this hour-long mix only enriched my appreciation of what James Yancey accomplished in his 32 years. It features remixes and tracks by Lee along with several like-minded producers, a record-hissing amalgam of eras and genres, from contemplative solo piano jazz to warm boom-bap, from “Fu-Gee-La” to a startling deconstruction of Ciara’s “Promise.” With its random static bursts and spoken-word interludes, the mix seems to be skipping through a shaky terrestrial radio connection beaming in from nowhere but The Past. Just like Dilla, Lee understands that once music is recorded, it is part of a larger story—that, for someone listening to this mix in the year 3000, the difference between 50 Cent and Paul McCartney and Keith Jarrett will be negligible. Luckily, we don’t have to wait a thousand years to experience this revelation. It’s all right here. —Ryan Dombal
AGF — King and Queen Warriors Worldwide
It's not hard to see that this mix is about power: taking it, holding it, refusing to let it go. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech never sounded as foreboding as it does here, as the ominous martial drumbeat of NON's King Isis bleeds into Ksenia Kamikaza's "Warrior." Omnipresent digital grit falls from AGF's edits like the dust of a collapsing city, and what rises up from the wreckage are defiant cuts like Jlin's take-no-prisoners "Queen" and Amnesia Scanner's furious, bare-knuckled "CHINGY." There's even a grinding, bass-heavy remix of Beyoncé's "Formation," adding extra panache to all the mean-mugging.
Osunlade — Tribute to Prince
It may be five years old, but this RBMA Radio set from Yoruba Records' Osunlade have never sounded timelier. He pays tribute to the Purple One across a killer selection of deep cuts, songs written for other artists, and untouchable classics (like "Condition of the Heart," my favorite song off one of my all-time Desert Island Discs, 1985's Around the World in a Day). And when you're done with this one, check out the NTS Radio special Who's That Girl (Prince's Female Protégés).