This month’s round-up of must-hear DJ mixes traverses Norwegian disco, New York noise, and a globe-trotting approach to psychedelia that touches on Turin and Tennessee. The sets I've selected tend to avoid obvious bangers in favor of stranger, more unsettling atmospheres. But listen closely, and you'll hear some old friends in there, from Fingers Inc.'s “Mystery of Love,” which Kanye recently dusted off for “Fade,” to a little-known Neneh Cherry side project.
For more music, including sets from John Talabot and Bjørn Torske, don't miss last month's mixes column.
Prins Thomas – XLR8R Podcast 460
Norwegian DJ Prins Thomas told XLR8R that he started recording this 68-minute set in his home studio at three in the afternoon—“just in time to pick up my daughter from kindergarten, with barely any time to make the deadline.” Having misplaced the carefully selected records he had meant to play, he opted to make it up on the spot. Maybe that accounts for the off-the-cuff feel, as sprightly house (Axel Boman's “Chains of Liberty”), frog-croak disco (Prins Emanuel's “Exkursion”), heavy African-percussion workouts (Erick Cosaque & Voltage 8's “Bazouka”), and wriggly quasi-acid (Joakim Cosmo's “It”) congeal into a thick, psychedelic haze. Let's hope he aired the house out before the kid got home.
Warpaint – Solid Steel Radio Show
I'm not entirely sure what I might have expected Warpaint to spin in a DJ set, but it likely wouldn't have included the Detroit techno legend Anthony “Shake” Shakir or Chicago house innovator Larry Heard. The L.A. quartet goes in hard on African house like Mr. Raoul K's “Sene Kela,” Daphni's “Ne Noya” edit, and a Henrik Schwarz Baaba Maal remix. They reveal a fondness for UK bass in selections from Hudson Mohawke, Zomby, and Skream. The Barcelona producer Marc Piñol's brain-scrambling mix of SAVE!'s “The Light,” featuring Mutado Pintado, ought to turn a head or two. And opening with the French bassist Henri Texier's spiritual-jazz anthem “Varech” is as refreshing as a deep gulp of mountain air.
Via App – Trunacy Volume 158
Juggling multiple tempos in a single mix is no easy feat, but New York's Via App makes it feel like it ain't no thing. She just gets in there and makes it work. I was tempted to say that her approach to transitions came from the ripping-off-Bandaids school, but on second thought, it has more to do with Obi Wan Kenobi's “These are not the droids you're looking for” style of misdirection: Her hand flutters just outside the frame of your vision, and suddenly you're listening to a totally different beat, without any idea of how you got there. As for the content of the mix, it's exactly what you'd hope for, if you've heard her records for 1080p and BANK Records NYC: squirrelly, lo-fi techno that makes zero concessions to convention.
Yves Tumor – FADER Mix
The Tennessee-raised, Turin-based musician Yves Tumor’s Fader mix is equal parts meditation and disorientation. Like the deconstructed soul of his PAN debut, Serpent Music, the mix walks a crooked line between form and formlessness. A field-recorded intro of barnyard sounds and buzzing flies gives way to chiming kora from Toumani Diabeté. A Nurse With Wound song aimed at fetishists and surrealists provides the springboard into darkly glistening ambient from Christoph de Babalon, overlaid by a hypnotic Elysia Crampton spoken-word. Throw in noise blasts, neoclassical piano, and still more gibbering animals, and you've got one hell of a soundtrack for the spooky season.
Benjamin Brunn – Mixtape 40
Benjamin Brunn is one of the great, unheralded talents of ambient techno. Songs from the Beehive, his 2008 collaboration with Move D, is a stone-cold classic, yet the German electronic musician has never achieved the notoriety of his colleagues. Timed to coincide with his fine new LP for Third Ear, Plastic Album, his TISSUE Magazine mixtape stitches together 15 of his own unreleased cuts. Fidgety hints of classic electro and pinging four-to-the-floor pulses keep things moving, while Brunn's flickering Nord Modular patterns unleash an unusually vivid array of textures and colors—an iridescent swirl of satin, abalone shell, and soap bubbles.
Ben UFO / Illum Sphere / Morgan Buckley – Hessle Audio for Rinse FM
Ben UFO cooked up a mental double-header for this recent Rinse FM broadcast. First, following 20 minutes of Ben's own selections—bit-crushed drones, lo-fi techno, and some sparkling electro—Illum Sphere delivers a special mix based on the industrial and EBM inspirations behind his new album, Glass. Dead-eyed vocals swim through clammy ring mod, and spring-loaded drum programming takes like a staple gun to fat, rubbery sheets of acid; the whole thing smacks of a Belgian midwinter rave, circa 1987, in an unheated airplane hanger. (Except for the last track, an unhinged slab of electronic cumbia that sounds like a punk gig in a meat locker on the Mexican border.) Then, for part two, Morgan Buckley, of the Wah Wah Wino label, digs through a batch of exclusives that demonstrate why the out-there Dublin imprint is one of the most interesting outfits in house and techno right now. This isn't your usual machine music: Tempos veer all over the place, and gummed-up drum programming is tugged this way and that by all manner of eccentric forces—jaw harp, blues harmonica, broken film projectors, tabla drums, even a dramatic reading of a complaint letter that comes off as part Found Magazine, part “Monty Python's Flying Circus.” But the music can be flat-out gorgeous, too, as a saxophone-led Fourth World cut towards the end of the set attests. It's all as invigorating as it is bizarre, and fans of Powell, Studio Barnhus, Gesloten Cirkel, et al, will find plenty to love.
Barry Redsetta - Major Problems Mix for Inverted Audio
Dublin's Major Problems label has been sending me records for a few years now, and I still have yet to put my finger on exactly what the label is doing. Early records like Compassion Crew's “Masters of the Gentlemanly Art” traded in industrial-flavored acid house; this year's Compassion Cuts, Tapes & Acetates compilation dusted off decades-old oddities like Roger Davy's new age exotica, Plustwo's soulful Italo disco, and even a Philip Jeck tribute to Walter Gibbons and Arthur Russell. Label-head Barry Redsetta covers similar ground here, crossing up disco grooves with digi-dub sonics and using pitter-pat Roland CR-78 patterns as stepping stones to jump from decade to decade. The keystone to the whole thing is a dubbed-out tune called “Give Sheep a Chance (Wooly Version).” Released in 1982 as the B-side to a cover of Norman Whitfield's “Stop the War,” “Give Sheep a Chance” is the work of Neneh Cherry's one-off group Raw Sex, Pure Energy; its off-kilter hybrid qualities get to the heart of the Major Problems aesthetic.