Spring Tastings
some tasty handpicked mixes to ease yourself into the Spring
Henry Ivry guides us through some tasty handpicked mixes to ease yourself into the Spring
Although April certainly is the cruelest month with its long snail crawl into summer, March can also be a bit of a cruel mistress depending on where you are in the world. But this year, it felt like temperatures were lifting around the globe, giving us a momentary respite from a world that remains on fire. For this month’s column, I’ve focused on mixes that also managed to capture a bit of that March sunshine, however short lived it has proven to be.
RA 772 - Space AfrikA
To be frank, in a month that also featured a mix from Laurine, it was hard to choose just one RA podcast. I say “hard’, but it’s a bit like apples and oranges when you compare the Space Afrika entry in the series to most others. The Manchester/Berlin duo offer something closer to a mixtape that moves through an eclectic array of dubby and blown out sounds - from ambient leaning textures to droney pop to grime to an unknown Burial rip from 2010. It’s an immersive listen all ground together by the duo’s own production. With each listen, I find myself gravitating towards a different section of the mix, blown away by the way they can weave together sounds.
Phonica Mix Series 81: Willow
There is something perfect about the artist name, “Willow.” The name of the tree conjures a lightness that is also fleeting, bordering on the ethereal, making it synonymous with the music the Manchester producer and DJ plays. It taps into a type of deepness that feels subterranean, tapping into a sonic frequency that, if you aren’t paying attention to, might disappear. Her mix for Phonica is no different. It starts off with some vintage minimal (pronounced in the German “mnml”) that she plays almost in its entirety before moving into some prime vocal house. After the second track, however, the mix seems to double back on itself, changing gears entirely with flecks of dub and UK bass moving things in a slightly sinister direction. At about the 28 minute mark, the bottom completely drops out as Willow provides us with an extended interlude that slowly builds back up over the remaining half hour. In an era where the ambient intro and outro have become a running cliche in DJ mixes, it’s not often that the format of the mix itself is inverted in such a compelling way. Willow here squares the circle and does so in a way that doesn’t feel forced or overly academic - the whole thing still fucking grooves.
Partisan Podcast 005: Bowyer
For the 5th entry in Anthea’s Partisan podcast, she taps the British bad boy of bounce who is also behind the latest release on the label, Bowyer. Bowyer runs the Rube Goldberg label and has been turning heads with his productions for a hot minute (for some reason his release on Alec Falconer’s 2X series is still criminally cheap despite being one of the heaters of last year), but this mix showcases his impeccable style behind the desks. The mix is an hour plus of house in all sorts of shades, from deep and soulful (with a few inspirational vocal samples thrown in for good measure) to breakbeat-y. The mixing also has a casualness, like he’s throwing on records at a friend’s on a Saturday afternoon, not so much an after-hours feel, but the way it sounds when you and your friends are putting on records and not so concerned with creating a clear narrative arc, not trying to impress but rather just trying to showcase some tunes you love (and, granted, the tunes Bowyer loves are likely better than the ones you and your pals are swapping).
DIM223 - Evan Baggs
I always feel a bit giddy when I see Evan Baggs pop up in my SoundCloud feed. And this past month saw us truly spoiled - we got not just one Baggs sitting, but two. Although his jungle set with Jubilee approached his Rinse 2014 Rinse Garage Hour levels of infamy, I find myself gravitating back towards his Dimensions set. If you’ve ever seen Baggs play, you also know how much fun he has mixing records. It’s that enjoyment that I feel sets his DJ sets apart and it is something that can be lost when translated into mix format. But this entry for Dimensions seems to capture that in a way that the jungle set didn’t. As always there are bombs in here that will leave the trainspotters and DJ Bigos alike hunting for some time to come (and even if you do find one, act quick before it shoots up like this breaky number that he slotted in). But there are also more recent tracks in here from the likes of Charonne and even a track that we might call a hit with Dude Energy’s “Renee Running.” I’m sure Baggs could bang out a mix with records that none of us are ever going to hunt down, but here he shows that a master selector prioritizes vibes over Discogs value.
Ghostlycast #91: Titonton Duvante - Inverno Malinconia
Some quick Google translating tells me that “Inverno Malinconia” seems to be Italian for “Winter Melancholy.” It’s a fitting title, then, for Midwest kingpin Titonton Duvante’s downtempo mix for Ghostly. When a house and techno DJ tries their hand at “downtempo” it often is code for them selecting innocuous and sterile B2s off club records they own. The results aren’t necessarily “bad” but they do result in music that feels like it could play in a trendy hotel lobby. Duvante’s downtempo mix is none of those things. It is dramatic and cinematic - the sheer number of commanding vocals and orchestral strings give the mix a hi-def feel. It’s not a mix that you can put on while you are trying to do something else, each track demands your attention - whether it is the blissed out soul of Wajeed and Monica Blair or the hip-hop meets rave afterglow of Lone.
RR Tape n°7 by Charly & Scotch
Charly & Scotch is a collaborative project between the French DJs Charlotte Vannuchi (aka Charlotte of RA + RE fame) and Louison Savignoni. The A1 on Charlotte’s debut release for RA + RE is a track I come back to regularly - it’s a bloated breakbeat track with a lazy acid line wrapping itself around the whole thing, like spliff smoke in the summer. I mention it here as it is a good primer for the mix. This is two hours of absolutely funky house music (with plenty of breaks and acid) that is sequenced and mixed in such a way that never feels hurried. There isn’t so much a crescendo here - a build-up and final release - as it is a series of micro climaxes. Each song in the mix calls to mind the French phrase that is bastardized in Anglophone countries, “Le petit mort” - a description that likens the feeling after an orgasm to a little death. I mention the idiom here as each track reminds me of how even the most euphoric of house tracks are also marked by a slight melancholy and that’s what always keeps us coming back for more.
宀 MIX002 - Meet Me at Sai Wan Pavilion by Teng
In the past month, Hong Kong club 宀 has launched a new mix series that is already making some serious waves. For this month’s column, I was tempted to include the entry in the series by Liquid Earth (which is, by all means, all killer no filler), but I find that I keep hitting the rewind on the second entry in the series by Australian-born, China-based DJ Teng. The mix starts off with some deep mechanic pilates with a few electro-tinged bangers followed by a quick tech house breather before we get deep into pure rave madness and end with some breaths of ambient sunrise. If this is any indication of what either a night at 宀 is like (or, for that matter, a visit to the Sai Wan Pavillion), you better believe it is worth the cost of the plane ticket.
Bside Incoming: Rubi
Bside falls somewhere between a podcast and a radio show for me. The premise of the show is that DJs can only play the b-sides of their favorite records and, while this may not be revolutionary in and of itself, the way Kommuna co-founder Rubi approaches it, does feel revelatory. Rubi selects a number of wellish known records and plays their B-side, recontextualizing a whole spectrum of downtempo, IDM, and almost-techno records. Where the podcast approaches the radio show format is that Rubi spends some time introducing each of the records. While I find that this can sometimes interrupt the flow of a mix, disrupting that perennial groove, the way Rubi handles it here means that by the end of the mix, my Discogs cart literally had every record she played that was reasonably priced. If anything, I think DHS might want to be paying Rubi some sort of commission for the shipping fees they are racking up off the back of this mix.
Paul Popa - Hypnotic Mindscapes 12
If “Romanian DJ” still conjures an image of a Sunrise stage where the introduction of a single hi-hat solicits enough horsepower to power a steam engine, look no further than Paul Popa for insight into how the scene is changing. As the label head behind Varme, Paul Popa has been taking the structural and formal vocabulary of minimal and infusing it with a variety of newer textures, whether that is full throttle acid or UKG. And it also makes sense that Paul Popa steps up for the Hypnotic Mindscapes series, his last release was from Hypnotic co-founder and resident, Cosmic JD. Returning the favor, he manages to weave together a variety of eras and genres - there is velvety, almost buttery, deep house, a number of proggy melodies, paranoid, Halloween night techno, and rave-flecked breakbeats - but they all seem to work in concert.
Words by: Henry Ivry
