The 9 Best DJ Mixes of August 2020

Every month, Philip Sherburne listens to a whole lot of mixes so you only have to listen to the best ones.

As this long, strange summer staggers to its whimpering finish, clubs are mostly closed (save for the events, legal and otherwise, that conscientious clubbers are calling “plague raves”) and so are many borders, at least partially. Americans still aren’t allowed into Europe, and even within Europe, some countries have banned flights from fellow member states. These are especially difficult circumstances for electronic music culture, which is fundamentally international in spirit. Fortunately, this month’s mixes may help free your mind of geographic restrictions, even if your ass can’t follow.

CCL – Blowing Up the Workshop

After eight years, the Blowing Up the Workshop series is bowing out with a bang, dropping seven mixes at once. The array of styles is typically expansive, taking in ambient, UK garage, and even Bollywood; the names involved are typically obscure. (As the platform that introduced Galcher Lustwerk to the world at large, BUTW deservedly has a rep as something of a tastemakers’ tastemaker.) Among those names is ex-Seattleite CCL, who has appeared in this column an impressive five times over the past couple of years. Presented as a “re-imagination” of a mixtape in progress that they abandoned after a head injury made listening to music painful, it’s a self-evidently personal set, with a hushed introduction that feels like a loving embrace. But CCL doesn’t get tripped up by sentimental convention; their mixing is as bold as it is bucolic, making way for moments of controlled fury in between balmier fare from the Durutti Column, Wilson Tanner, and the Congos with Sun Araw and M. Geddes Gengras.

If you’re looking for a moment that crystallizes what makes CCL such an exceptional DJ, check out the blend, roughly 48 minutes into their BUTW set, where Cocteau Twins’ “Serpentskirt” gives way to the shuddering barrage of Second Woman’s “VII (Jlin Remix)”: You wouldn’t think that dream pop and footwork would ever make sense together, but here, somehow, they do. And as far as ambient bliss goes, you really can’t beat the one-two caress of 10cc’s “I’m Not in Love”—slowed and dubbed to gentle oblivion—mixed into A Silver Mt. Zion’s “13 Angels Standing Guard ‘Round the Side of Your Bed.” By the time it all wraps up with Beat Happening’s rapturous “Godsend,” one thing is clear: CCL is a DJ with the gifts of a storyteller.

Terrence Dixon – At Dekmantel Festival 2019

For more than a quarter century, Terrence Dixon has been one of Detroit techno’s most adventurous producers. Composed almost entirely of his own productions and recorded at last year’s Dekmantel festival, this set captures him at his most uncompromising, interweaving steely rhythm tracks with passages of pure chaos. The extended opening is a journey through pure abstraction, with analog squeals and a NASA mission control countdown giving way to the percussive ecstasy of Sun Ra & His Intergalactic Arkestra’s “Watusi” drum breakdown. Dixon’s 2012 cut “Dark City of Hope” delivers the first pulse, but with a twist: The song’s muted sonics give the impression of standing outside a peak-time dance club, echoes ringing off dumpsters and A/C units. When the fog clears some 20 minutes in, it feels revelatory. The next 40 minutes take in crystalline vistas and murky expanses; a heart-in-mouth climax of dissonant synths and hammering snares feels like a sentient metal shopplaying free improv. After that mind-melting peak, the set’s final three or four tracks follow a slalom course between techno jazz and machine soul. It’s an exhilarating conclusion.

Muqata’a - Live from Refraction Festival

The Palestinian DJ Muqata’a prides himself on being what he calls “a glitch in the system.” Born to a family of refugees whose homes were taken from them and their possessions confiscated, he samples classical Arabic music both as a form of protest and a way of reclaiming what is rightfully theirs. “When your heritage is being attacked by the state, you have to find ways of being remembered,” he told The Guardian. Influenced by the cut-and-paste philosophy of classic hip-hop, Muqata’a’s music pushes the aesthetics of beat and club music to fierce, fearsome extremes, more noise than dance music. His set from July’s Refraction Festival, an all-online event, sounds a lot like what I remember of his set from Sónar 2019, in which seismic low ends quivered beneath irregular breakbeats and explosions of static, throwing up the occasional slab of solid ground before liquefying once more. The aggressive nature of his art is a natural reflection of his surroundings, he says: “It’s about fighting back; it’s the response to the sound of checkpoints and military helicopters and all these things we’re used to hearing daily.”

Deena Abdelwahed – Fact Mix 772

In a few short years, the Toulouse, France-based artist Deena Abdelwahed has developed a unique style, fusing sounds from her native Tunisia with electronic music’s global mutations—batida, footwork, techno, club. This set for Fact puts the borderless sweep of Abdewahed’s playing front and center. Kicking off with a layered pair of cuts from Morphine Records’ The Sacred Rage, a benefit for victims of the Beirut port explosion, she weaves her way across Italian techno, Egyptian mahraganat, Russian club, French house, Angolan kuduro, and more. No matter how far she ranges, though, the commonalities of the tracks she plays outweigh their differences. In track after track, she emphasizes complex rhythms, hard-hitting club aesthetics, and an industrial appreciation for everyday sounds (just check the alarm clocks, or perhaps construction noises, in Thoom’s “Large Fly”). All the way up through the Tunisian producer Ammar 808’s closing “Marivere gati,” a collaboration with the Indian Carnatic singer Susha, a belief in the transformative power of fusion prevails, celebratory and defiant.

Nene H – “Summer Is Cancelled” Mix for NTS

The stress of this long, strange non-year is wearing on everyone, DJs especially: In many parts of the world, clubs remain shuttered and DJs are out of work. The Turkish-born, Berlin-based Nene H’s solution is to push through the angst. Her recent “Summer Is Cancelled” set for NTS plays out like an experiment in magical thinking: What if we were raving right now? The result is a sweat-slicked, heart-in-mouth hour of the quick-stepping techno that she’s known for spinning at residencies like Copenhagen’s Endurance. She draws widely for her selections, cueing up vintage cuts from DJ Deeon and Frankie Bones (and even Too $hort) alongside contemporary producers Bruce and Ø [Phase]; the needle never dips below 150BPM, but even when she’s zigzagging between booty house anthems, industrial techno, and throwback rave, the mixing is surgically precise, and the flow enveloping enough that you can almost forget how long it’s been since you actually danced to a set like this.

Carsten Jost – UV Podcast 097

Founded in 2000, Hamburg’s Dial may have never had a sound, exactly—in an interview accompanying his podcast for Dresden’s Uncanny Valley, cofounder Carsten Jost takes pains to point out the diversity of their catalog—but there’s no denying that there’s a distinct Dial sensibility. From the label’s early, tentative stabs at minimal house, through the high romanticism of Pantha du Prince, and into its more experimental phase (via recent records from Christian Naujoks, DJ Richard, and Jost himself), Dial’s records are marked by their inky depths, glistening highs, and abiding melancholy. The same goes for this gorgeous 98-minute set. Beginning with dreamy ambient ruminations from Jordan GCZ, it plunges into a moody, heads-down groove that doesn’t let up for nearly an hour and a half, even as he switches between classic German deep house (Audio Werner), percussive psychedelia (Aleksi Perälä), and new-school UK techno (Forest Drive West). One of the pleasures of Dial has always been that it is as much head music as body music, and that remains true here; it’s a gorgeously propulsive set for homebound daydreamers and would-be dancers alike.

SUCHI – LT Podcast 138

Born and raised in Oslo and currently based in New York, SUCHI is a resident DJ on New Delhi online station Boxout.fm. In this set for London’s Lobster Theremin label, she surveys the state of underground dance music in India. A wide-angled snapshot, it takes in percussive bass music, breaks’n’bleeps, melodic techno, acid, electro, and more. Much of the selections are forthcoming from a compilation on Mumbai’s Krunk Kulture label, which makes identifying particular highlights difficult, if not impossible. But it’s all mixed in such a way that even nominally divergent styles flow naturally together, and the track that closes it all out—a sparkling, syncopated stepper by SUCHI herself—makes for a gratifyingly emotive finale.

Jordan GCZ – Minimal Detroit Vol. 022

Jordan Czmanski’s group Juju & Jordash have always aimed for the outer limits, jamming improvised live sets on tangled hardware setups, and making their records in similarly off-the-cuff fashion. His recent solo work as Jordan GCZ has been getting even spacier. Picking up where he left off with April’s “Lushlyfe III (Recorded live at home 04/04/2020),” this hour-plus set for the Minimal Detroit series gathers six months’ worth of billowy, unreleased studio experiments that reflect Czmanski’s past as a jazz musician as much as his more recent history in techno. (Mixed in with the solo joints are collaborations with Terrence Dixon, Move D, and Jeff Hollie.) The kick drum only raises its head once, on a brooding, beatdown house cut halfway through; as for the rest, it’s by turns lyrical and gelatinous, beatific and bleepy, shuttling between spiritually infused space jams and dissonant textural experiments. A gravelly, almost indecipherable reading of William Gibson’s “Burning Chrome” ties it all together, lending a pedal tone of distant dread.

Jake Muir - Sure Thing Mmix 094

Longtime readers of this column may have noticed my fondness for texture and abstraction, which is to say, sets that occasionally sound like they’ve been stitched together out of YouTube hiss and the filtered hum of a swimming-pool vacuum. That is precisely the spot that Berlin-based American producer Jake Muir hits so sweetly here. Tapping the same lossy, barely-there aesthetic championed by contemporaries like Perila and Huerco S., Muir sounds like he’s herding dust bunnies in this set for the Sure Thing series. His selections evoke the crinkle of cellophane and the dull pastel shades of faded Sun Prints; despite the occasional appearance of a muted kick drum, there’s almost nothing to get your hands around here—no melodies, no riffs, no signposts whatsoever. Just 67 minutes of cottony discombobulation, a rose-tinted glimpse into the abyss.

Originally Appeared on Pitchfork