My first memories are just of being

Listening to the Body Count show on Radar Radio can often be a frantic experience, full of the sort of quick tempo and genre breaks that result in Migos edits flaring into drone and on into jungle. Helmed by Sim Hutchins, Sully and Klaar, Body Count functions as both a singular entity and a reflection of its members’ individual sensibilities, blending Hutchins’ innate sense of texture and analogue thrust with Sully’s taste for fast, rough bangers and Klaar’s deep catalogue of unorthodox tracks from the deepest, darkest corners of the experimental world. Better than almost any other radio show, Body Count mirrors and expounds upon the daily experience, both real and imaginary, overflowing with quick right turns, jagged edges and non-linear story telling. Sim Hutchins’ solo work represents the darkest end of that spectrum, epitomized on his excellent debut I Enjoy To Sweep A Room LP on No Pain In Pop and furthered in the Essex-based audio-visual artist’s screwed up edits and oft-frightening video work.

I Enjoy To Sweep A Room quietly came in as one of 2015’s most heartfelt (and best) records, an emotionally mangled journey built on fucked up analogue gear that comes across as much like a secret whispered in the listener’s ear as a frigid, unapproachable web. Disaffection, paranoia and apathy all come to mind when listening to the album, but through the long periods of dread and song titles like “Nihilism Was Not Sustainable” and “I Felt Like A Fox Being Hunted” are impeccably dance-able grooves, exhilaratingly disintegrating soundscapes and an overarching sense of forgotten memories. Considering he’s spent years working with grime MCs and playing out on Essex pirate radio, it’s now surprise that Hutchins’ work has the sort of rawness and immediacy found in those formats and the aesthetic is only bolstered in his video work where lo-fi VHS footage meets Orwellian commands and amnesia-driven narratives.

Which brings us to Hutchins’ Astral Plane mix, a composition made up entirely of his own edits that manages to converge late era Dance Mania with Cali Swag District in a world of tape delay that is as much a paean to Houston’s screw tape legacy as it is a fresh, albeit mucked up, take on a host of Chicago and Detroit classics. In Hutchins’ own words:

I grew up home-taping, Limewireing and CDR-burning. Though the ID tags were all wrong, the bit-rates sucked and the tracklists were incomplete, the act of seeking out pirated music lead me to a discovery of styles and scenes a world away from what was available to buy in the shops. This mix of home-made edits is a nod to screw tapes, lo-fi ish and cassette hiss (parental advisory sticker pending).

Like I Enjoy To Sweep A Room and the more abstracted collaborative tape Hutchins made with Klaar for Ecology Tapes, this mix features a heap of audial randomness, a sort of read-between-the-lines sensibility that comes across as both guilefully directed and 100% random. Indulge in the interstices and check out a full track list after the jump. I Enjoy To Sweep A Room is available in both digital and physical formats here.