The 10 Best DJ Mixes of January 2020
Every month, Philip Sherburne listens to a whole lot of mixes so you can hear the best ones.
The new year is the time to take stock, and judging from January’s sets, DJ culture is in good health. Risk-taking selectors are finding new places to explore the fringes of familiar genres. This month’s roundup begins with what is technically a live set rather than a DJ mix, with Floating Points performing material on a head-spinning analog setup. Courtesy, Monster, and DJ Special Guest offer different suggestions of where club sessions might go in 2020, while Nadia Khan and Fiedel serve up home-listening pleasures. And AceMo, usually a fast-paced techno purveyor, lobs a delightful softball to keep all the head-nodders happy.
Floating Points – Live at Printworks 2019
Sam Shepherd’s 2019 album as Floating Points, Crush, was the most adventurous thing he’s done yet: Though it never wants for groove, it largely traded the lushness of his earlier work for strange, spindly modular-synth patterns. This stellar 90-minute live performance gives him the space to venture even further, beginning with the extended ambient intro that kicks off the set. Along the way, he digs into radically reworked versions of album tracks and vintage material like “Nuits Sonores.” But what really makes this video so engrossing is the way it intersperses footage of Shepherd onstage with views from back in the crowd, the better to appreciate how Hamill Industries’ custom visuals complement the music: Simultaneously lo-fi and high-tech, they utilize oscilloscopes, lasers, and glistening soap bubbles to captivating results. Not many live videos give you the feeling of being right there the way this one does.
Courtesy – Essential Mix 2019
Courtesy’s recent BBC Essential Mix captures what’s so special about her sound. Though the Copenhagen DJ doesn’t play at quite the breakneck pace that’s associated with the city’s “fast techno” sound, her selections and her mixing are both lively and tough. She’s not exactly a melodic DJ, but she favors tracks that are bursting with color, rolling out super-saturated cuts as though drawing from a bag of gemstones. Interweaving contemporary productions with well-chosen vintage tracks—and with nearly half the picks by artists signed to her Kulør label—Courtesy collapses the distance between then and now, compressing decades of energy into a bright, forceful sound.
AceMo – Guest Mix 4 Dreamcast.Mo on NTS2
For anyone who has been having trouble returning to their normal routine after the holidays, AceMo’s recent mix for Dreamcast’s NTS show may be what you’re looking for (I cued it up on a recent Sunday afternoon and it made an hour of window-washing approximately 800 percent more bearable). Where AceMo’s stellar recent album Existential favored breakneck tempos of 140 bpm or more, this set’s happy to luxuriate in slower, cozier climes. The New York DJ opens things up with a dozy stretch of Native Tongues hip-hop and laid-back electro, drops woozy breakbeats (Luke Vibert’s evergreen “I Love Acid”), and then takes a serpentine detour through funk and freestyle before slinking into some seriously deep midtempo house. AceMo offers occasional commentary on the mic, adding to the freewheeling mood; at one point, he admits, “I don’t even know whose track this is.” That’s the kind of set it is—wonderfully unpredictable and meandering, even to its creator.
DJ Nigga Fox – XLR8R Podcast 628
With Lisbon’s Príncipe Discos label entering its 10th year, DJ Nigga Fox, an early signee, has become one of Portuguese batida’s relative veterans. His XLR8R podcast confirms that he’s still one of the style’s most adventurous players. The set’s composed almost entirely of his own productions, save for one credited to South Africa’s Caiiro; there are a handful of tracks from his recent Cartas Na Manga, but most of his picks are unreleased. It’s all distinguished by Nigga Fox’s signature rhythmic sensibility, simultaneously woozy and rigid, as loops of sampled hand percussion, voice, and detuned synths flip and interlock like the squares of a Rubik’s Cube.
Fiedel – Bleep Mix #93
Fiedel, who plays in the duo MMM alongside his buddy Errorsmith, is usually known for a particularly gonzo take on contemporary techno, pairing pummeling kicks with seasick frequencies and playful tropical swagger. But he takes a considerably different tack in his mix for Warp’s online retailer Bleep, setting aside steamrolling anthems in favor of tooth-rattling jaw harp, vintage IDM, and avant-garde electronics from Delia Derbyshire, Coil, and Suzanne Ciani. For all its range, the mix is put together smartly: A particularly lovely transition between Oneohtrix Point Never’s sentimental “Chrome Country” and Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman” highlights intriguing parallels between the two tracks’ vocal treatments, while the closing track, an early Depeche Mode instrumental, reminds us of the synth-pop band’s place in the electronic pantheon.
Gilb’R – Red Light Radio #1
For his inaugural show on Amsterdam’s Red Light Radio, Paris’ Gilb’R, founder of Versatile Records and half of Chateau Flight, whips up a spellbinding ambient set evocative of chillout rooms and planetarium soundtracks (something he definitely knows a thing or two about). Equipped with an oscillator, delay unit, and bank of field recordings, he blends rainforest noises, Jordanian street musicians, and minimalist keys into a gentle blur. The mix’s first third is particularly hypnotic; drones, treated voices, and streaks of noise steer the proceedings down dark alleys before it all finishes with a triumphant 10 minutes of sun-kissed ambient house.
Nadia Khan – RA.710
Nadia Khan’s incredible “High Rize” mix for the c- series ended up being one of my favorites of 2019, thanks to its drifting sense of motion and mysterious emotional pull. The North Carolina musician’s Resident Advisor podcast hits a lot of the same notes: There’s resonant ambient dub with shades of Urban Tribe, opalescent downtempo from the Boards of Canada school, and plenty of sustain-pedal swirl. As with a lot of the best ambient music, it tends to hover in the space between form and formlessness—an unstable quality that sometimes makes it difficult to discern what the music is doing at any given moment. But that beguiling character is also a big part of its charm.
Monster – Unsound Podcast 60
Monster turned up in this column back in September 2018 with a rave-ready set for Violet’s Naïve label; since then, she’s been steadily building a name as one of Poland’s most respected DJs. (She’s also an activist and member of Oramics, an organization—named after synthesizer pioneer Daphne Oram—dedicated to empowering women, non-binary, and queer people in electronic music.) This 97-minute set comes from the Unsound Festival’s 2019 closing party, and it’s as delightfully intense as you might expect: a full-bore onslaught of breakbeats, acid, stabbing pianos, ’90s trance, and even a cheeky remix of “Pump Up the Jam.” In other words, it’s a proper party set all the way to its runaway-train finale.
Special Guest DJ - Juggalo Sky Burial
Special Guest DJ is better known as uon, who put out a fantastic mini-album of dub techno on Huerco S.’ West Mineral Ltd. label a few years ago, and runs the left-field label xpq?. His “Juggalo Sky Burial” mix—hands down the best title of the month—sinks its teeth into stern, snarling bass music, electro, techno, and drum’n’bass. But despite the centrality of rhythm here, it’s still marked by the same qualities that distinguish his ambient projects: swollen low end, unsteady sonics, and treble that crinkles like worn cellophane. It’s avant-club music that kicks hard.
JS (Motion Ward) – PBA Guest Mix
Don’t hope for much in the way of information around this set, recently posted by Russia’s radio.syg.ma crew. There’s no tracklisting, no context, and no interview with the DJ, who is identified only by his initials, “JS.” But heads who have clocked Jesse Sappell’s role as the founder of Los Angeles’ Motion Ward label—home to all manner of suggestive rustling and rumbling from artists like Perila, OL, and uon—will know what to expect: a vaporous, slow-motion explosion of tone. Wispy and patient, the music’s movements are reminiscent of natural phenomena: undulating beds of kelp, clouds of pollen, scuttling dust bunnies.
Originally Appeared on Pitchfork
