The 9 Best Mixes of May 2019
Every month, Philip Sherburne listens to a whole lot of mixes so that you only have to listen to the very best ones. This edition features heavyweight rave from Minimal Violence and Cera Khin, post-punk dance from DEBONAIR, and fleet-footed bass music from Darwin. Plus: cameos from Dr. Dre and Sheck Wes!
DEBONAIR – RA.677
“I connect to sound more when it’s sneaky and creeps up on you,” the London DJ DEBONAIR (aka Debi Ghose) has said, and her Resident Advisor podcast is nothing if not surreptitious. From its first minutes, it’s clear that strange forces are afoot: A man’s ASMR-inducing whisper initiates a guided meditation; an eerie, sing-song loop promises “another day.” DEBONAIR snakes her way through slowed-down rave edits and nimble ambient dub, and she doesn’t drop a four-to-the-floor pulse until 30 minutes in; even then, the mix remains streaked with industrial accents. Just when you’d expect it to peak, it slows down not once but twice, then gathers steam for a rattling noise-techno climax before collapsing in a heap. Shriekback’s 1982 funk-punk classic “All Lined Up” makes for a canny ending, its blend of dance and doom perfectly summing up the set.
Minimal Violence – Noisey Mix
Where DEBONAIR’s mix bears trace elements of 1980s gloom, Vancouver’s Minimal Violence go full bore on coldwave dread and industrial shudder. The first half of the set skulks through slow-motion synth pop, gothic acid, and EBM; the second half is more in keeping with the pummeling doom techno of the Vancouver duo’s debut album, InDreams. Tzusing’s “Cubicle” threatens to overload the speakers with bass-heavy throb and disorienting shouts; Le Dom’s “Oazis” builds a high-tech bridge from Sheffield’s sooty past to a shiny electro future; Notausgang’s “Vegancore” is straight-up bludgeoning. After Ikonika’s grimy “Bodied (OG Mix),” Vancouver darkwave duo Koban’s “This Pursuit” comes out of nowhere to finish things off, a finale made all the more blindsiding for its manic, double-time pulse.
Beta Librae – FR033
New York’s Beta Librae has an unusual style behind the decks, unpredictable yet carefully controlled. Her excellent recent mix for Tim Sweeney’s Beats in Space show slipped across brittle techno, disco house, and decade-old 2-step throwbacks; the only similarity in this set for Chile’s Fake Rolex series is its expansive range, along with her skill at keeping the tempo in flux. It’s an enveloping session, moving from ambient and slow-motion breaks into fractured bass music and linear, driving techno. The final 15 minutes are particularly striking, as rolling breakbeat techno gradually speeds up and turns to atmospheric drum’n’bass, which in turn dissolves into ambient dub, all without breaking a step. It’s a serpentine voyage across points unknown.
Ploy – Cav Empt Tape
Last September, Joy O cooked up a surprisingly slinky mixtape for the Japanese streetwear brand Cav Empt; now Ploy, a fellow fringe bass music acolyte, does the same—and, like Joy O, he’s generously popped the audio on SoundCloud, for the benefit of all of us who aren’t Tokyo hypebeasts. A sample of Dr. Dre’s “Still D.R.E.” kicks off the mix in unexpected fashion; the first half hour is a slow, almost imperceptibly accelerating tour of dubbed-out machine snares and menacing, percussive bass music. Roughly halfway through, the synthetic flutes of Ellll’s “Pepsi” add a rare moment of relative clarity; then Ploy dives back into the murk with a handful of crisp, cutting electro tunes—Amish Boy’s “Laika Test Project,” Konrad Wehrmeister’s “Kitchen Blade,” and Phoenicia’s 1999 classic “Odd Job (Soul Oddity Rhythm Box Version)”—that keep the atmosphere from getting too oppressive.
Machine Woman – RA Live 30.06.2018
Berlin’s Machine Woman has a fitting name. Her music does sound unusually mechanical, grinding and buzzing; her DJ mixes unroll like a rusty assembly line dripping blackened grease and spitting sparks. This short but potent set hits all those notes, its lurching rhythms topped with dry, scratchy synths, and unsteady 4/4 grooves giving way to occasional stretches of understated turmoil. There’s a great moment early on where the beat gives way to the terrifying sirens of Peder Mannerfelt’s “Acid Drop”; a few minutes later, the bottom drops out, revealing a dark, cavernous netherworld. Recorded in the main room of Tbilisi, Georgia’s hallowed Bassiani, it’s all the more exciting for having taken place in an actual nightclub—precisely the type of setting where energy like this is most welcome.
Cera Khin – Dekmantel Podcast 230
Amsterdam’s Dekmantel festival is known for its eminent taste. Their lineups curate only the best Detroit techno, classic house, cratediggers’ disco, etc. They are a lot of things, but they don’t often sound like the gleefully apocalyptic circus rave that Cera Khin has pulled together in her podcast for them. The Tunisian-born, Berlin-based DJ’s set is pure party, as giddy as a 16-year-old necking a pill at their first Glastonbury. Acid squiggle, ghetto-house vocals, gabber kicks, hardstyle shuffle, rave stabs galore—it’s rude, pummeling, and, with BPMs around 150 or so, makes for an excellent aerobic workout as you gallivant around your apartment cutting shapes. What makes it all work is that there’s not a shred of irony here; Cera Khin takes music often lampooned for its cartoonishness and makes it sound properly intense. I have not heard a more flat-out entertaining mix this year.
Darwin – RSMIX026
Berlin’s Darwin, who’s behind the REEF parties at the city’s Griessmühle club, turns in a sleek, storming bass-music mix for R&S Records. She kicks off with a string of punchy, UK garage-influenced cuts, all bruising basslines and precarious swing, then fakes sideways into electro and house—dropping, at one point, what almost sounds like an acid remix of 1994 Autechre—and then progressively leans into the tempo fader. The breakbeats speed up, moving from rough cut and nostalgic to laboratory-precise; she ends on a pair of flickering, ethereal footwork tracks—including Teklife associate DJ Phil’s stunning “Rok N Down,” a remix of Chicago house icon Adonis’ “We’re Rockin’ Down the House”—that perfectly sums up the set’s opposing poles of moody and body-moving.
Peach – BandCloud Presents Missives
BandCloud—the Irish curator Aidan Hanratty’s weekly roundup of independent music from Bandcamp and SoundCloud—recently made a big step forward with Missives, a charity compilation of new, exclusive tracks from leftfield electronic artists like Yamaneko, Cruel Diagonals, and Violet. (The latter is a frequent subject of this column whose star is definitely on the rise.) Now the London DJ Peach, of NTS Radio, delivers a seamless mix of all 15 songs. It’s no easy task to take a selection this diverse and make something coherent of it, but Peach manages to make it all hang together wonderfully. The opening ruminates on downbeat house and murky ambient; the final third turns more intense, with Yakui’s manic “Airycloud” blending into the slow/fast psychedelia of CCL and Flora FM’s coiled “Winding Plod,” a highlight of the comp. The middle part of the mix is a passage of house and techno as deep as anyone could want; the blend between Persuasion’s dubby “Aidan’s Dream” and Doc Sleep’s Detroit-inspired “Three Suns,” about 30 minutes in, is a total chef’s-kiss moment.
RRUCCULLA – The Sounds of RRUCCULLA
Bilbao’s RRUCCULLA makes some seriously demented electronic music. Cheerfully demented, too: a giddy mix of drill’n’bass (propelled by her own live drumming), deconstructed club techniques, and Garden of Delete-grade post-genre ooze. In advance of her live performance at this year’s Sónar festival, she whips up a dazzling 34-minute set that blends reworked bits from her 2018 album SHuSH with scraps of jazz, anime, classical minimalism, and even a snippet of Sheck Wes’ “Mo Bamba,” which gurgles away as though stuck inside a flooded airlock. Like everything she does, it’s exhilarating, entertaining, and leaves the mind reeling.
Originally Appeared on Pitchfork
