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Ghost Kwini Mix For The Astral Plane (w/ Interview)

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November 25, 2015
Mixes, Uncategorizable
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Scrolling through Ghost Kwini’s Youtube channel is an intense experience, his new work divided among a series of untitled tracks accompanied by digitally manipulated visuals of flowers, born again Baptisms, microscopic organisms and more, marking a path through paranoiac 8 bit grime, bizarro dembow and the sort of abstracted beat work championed by the likes of TCF, Arca and Gatekeeper.  Since releasing the Dark Address EP in June 2014 on Sonic Router, the channel has been the best way to keep up with Ghost Kwini’s output and in the process has marked the way his sound has developed and mutated. Whereas Dark Address tracks like “Black Google” and “Netscape Navigator” wouldn’t have come across as out of place on a Boxed compilation, invoking many of the weightless grime tropes so popular today,  the new work is far more difficult to pin down, throwing trance, glitchy noise, dancehall and more into a polyglotic mass.

Hailing from a small coastal town in the Netherlands and currently residing in Berlin, Ghost Kwini’s music resides firmly in the web space and despite wishing he could occasionally hear his music on club systems, its sonic makeup and visual accompaniments seem to fit far more comfortably inside of a Youtube stream. And like a users ability to leap from one section of the internet to another, Ghost Kwini doesn’t appear to be held down by any genre or rhythm constraints, freely jumping from one sound to another in a fashion that is as engrossing as it is hard to follow. Likewise, his Astral Plane mix hardly follows a set template, jumping from gabber, hardcore and grime to a series of infectious bubbling tunes, all tied together by an abiding digital aesthetic, an aesthetic that seems to drive forward with reckless impunity as it simultaneously crumbles. Ghost Kwini doesn’t have an official release planned as of yet, but keep an eye on his Youtube channel and follow his words on Twitter. Hit the jump for a short interview with Ghost Kwini as we discuss his relationship to grime, club music and the internet.

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Radar Radio w/ Letta b2b Patrick Brian – 23rd November 2015

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November 24, 2015
Mixes
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After hosting them at our monthly Clubfriends night at The LASH a few weeks back, we had two of Los Angeles’ finest, Letta and Patrick Brian, representatives of the vaunted Coyote and Terrorhythm clans respectively, suit up for a b2b session on our Radar Radio show. The results are blinding and full of the sort of dubs, edits and madness we’ve come to expect from these two on their own. There aren’t a ton of people anywhere doing it like Letta and PB, especially in the City of Angels, so stay locked and join us on December 28 for our next Radar session. No track list for the second hour, but you can peep what the Astral Plane DJ Team played throughout the first. Stream below and download here.

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Kid Smpl Mix For The Astral Plane

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November 19, 2015
Mixes, New Music
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The electronic music community has always been interested in the sublime, both theoretically and literally, through psychoactive substances and transcendent experiences. If the sublime is reached amid a torrent of drum machines, then all the better. Over the past few years, a widely dispersed set of producers have seemed to approach the question of the sublime from a different angle, matching noisy sonics and hybrid sensibilities with moments of brief elation, moments that often become larger than the songs, albums and mixers that hold them. It’s an aesthetic found on Lotic’s recent Agitations mix and Rabit’s Communion EP, on most efforts released on Mr. Mitch’s Gobstopper label, and on Acre’s debut Better Strangers LP.

Seattle’s Kid Smpl has never sat comfortably in any one mold, advancing from the “night bus” inspired UK sounds of his early releases on Hush Hush Records to a current sound that touches on everything from digital dancehall, jungle and the hyperreal stylings of FKA Twigs, Kelela and Le1f. Often times, those influences only seem to flit in and out of a song momentarily, the remainder filled by wide-eyed cinematics, often accompanied by the sounds of worlds tearing apart. Smpl’s music has always been imbued with a sense of the dramatic and while his aesthetic has slowly become more outward-focused, there’s still a distinctly personal focus in his releases, whether his reference points be Emptyset or Alkaline. His Astral Plane mix touches on both influences and contemporaries, the whole coming off as remarkably consistent with his original work despite including everything from Letta’s remembrance anthem “Where I Left You” to Lee Bannon alias DedekindCut’s crushing breakcore. Be sure to get Smpl’s Response/Ascend EP, out now on Symbols, and always look out for more from this loft-minded Northwester.

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Fallow Mix For The Astral Plane

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November 11, 2015
Mixes
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Often overlooked in the conversation surrounding UK dance culture, a series of recent parties in Manchester have put the northern city in focus, the likes of Chow Down, Swing Ting and High Bank all contributing to a culture that embraces grime, UK funky, dancehall, reggaeton, kuduro, rap, R&B and beyond. Fallow is a regular at Chow Down and has long been embraced as one of the most talented members of the greater Boxed family, contributing to Boxed Vol. 2 and even providing a memorable/unfortunate moment when he fell off the stage at a Boxed event last year and chipped his tooth. Embracing both the weightless, square wave-focused side of grime and full frontal speed garage and UK funky, Fallow has shone with an MC at his side, contributing production work (with Finn) to Jammz’s song of the year candidate “Final Warning” and working extensively with vocal tunes in his mixes. His Astral Plane mix is chock full of choice vocals, from Beatking’s guttural boasts to Asher’s crooning over AdotR’s bassline jam “Look So Good”, each respective piece showing off Fallow’s ability accelerate and decelerate the mood with a deft touch. Check him out, along with Mssingno, Grizzle and Craig A.D., at the next Chow Down if you’re in Manchester and be on the lookout for a prime new solo release in the not so distant future. Also hit the jump to find out the best late night eats in Manchester, Fallow’s favorite set starters and more.

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C.Z. Mix For The Astral Plane (w/ Interview)

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November 4, 2015
Mixes
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Photo by Jasmine Safaeian

As a member of the M|O|D crew, then located in Boston, Colby Zinser, better known as C.Z., saw a pretty remarkable rise into the popular consciousness a few years ago, going from an unknown music student making hip hop beats with friends to an early instigator of the sound we now call “trap”. While Zinser, as well as fellow M|O|D members Arnold, Lil Texas, Rewrote and Yung Satan, were initially swallowed by the burgeoning EDM behemoth, the C.Z. sound has always been more than that, both in terms of its contemporary references and the manner in which fans interact with it. Despite taking a break from M|O|D collaborative work, C.Z.’s star has only risen in the past year, having collaborated on production work for Elijah Blake’s “I Just Wanna”, toured China and Japan and continued to fine-tune his Iceboi project, a series of edits and originals aimed at the colder, more cutting end of the club music spectrum.

His latest project, the I Don’t Feel So Good EP, is the inaugural release on Paul Devro’s Murky Rips label and sees a merging of the C.Z. and Iceboi aesthetics, finger waving anthems that reside in a frozen alien landscape, recalling the work of Kid Antoine and Drippin. And like the aforementioned producers, the references on I Don’t Feel So Good are endless, from grime and trance on “Ready” to UK-derived mechanical drum beats on “Playtime Is Over”. Like much of the music C.Z. and M|O|D champion, the EP involves a lot of sensory overload and Zinser’s Astral Plane mix is no different, comprised mostly of C.Z. originals and edits including a collaboration with the aforementioned Drippin. In the mix, clouded rap from Glo Gang member Lil Flash butts up against an ecstatic synth workout from Murlo before C.Z. delves into more traditional speed garage. Grab I Don’t Feel So Good here and check out the full C.Z. interview below.

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Smutlee Mix For The Astral Plane

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October 28, 2015
Mixes
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Back in June, The Large tweeted “if u don’t like cheesy dancehall u don’t really like dancehall feelme,” a sentiment that could just as easily be applied to Bmore, footwork or any number of other contemporary dance forms. Case in point, London DJ/producer Smutlee first grabbed our attention via a blend of Dre Skull’s “Loudspeaker Riddim” and Breach’s “Jack”, a cheesy combination if we’ve ever come across one that still goes off every time we hear it out in the dance. Subsequent combinations of Jack U with Meridian Dan and Aidonio with O.T. Genasis cemented his place as one of the most creative blenders around and, more recently, Smutlee’s begun to refine his production abilities, combining his creative sampling with an ear for sharp rhythms.

The SAS EP, a collaboration with Serocee, was the breakout moment for Smutlee, a series of rethought productions based on grime classics (and Paleman’s “Beelzedub”) with the London MC riding roughshod over the top. It’s one of the best releases of the year and a clear-eyed merging of grime and dancehall, slowing down the former to a crawl and adding a rhythmic intensity to the latter. Smutlee’s Astral Plane mix jumps off with a series of remixes (“Take Time”, “Good Times”, “Jump Off”) and some quick dancehall jams before heading into some proto jungle and drum and bass, a range that Smutlee has always seemed to feel comfortable at, especially with tracks like Think Tonk’s “Opposite” and Gully Bop and Stylo G’s “Who She Want?” flowing out of numbers from Alix Perez and Sam Binga. Smutlee has made a name for his party rocking style and mixing virtually anything and everything, but it’s still fair to say that he’s at his best when rinsing his favorite bashment, grime and drum and bass, simultaneously offering the listener a condensation of each genre’s recent hits and collapsing the boundaries of those same genres.

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Wallwork Mix For The Astral Plane

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October 21, 2015
Mixes
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London’s Nervous Horizon collective have been hitting the radio waves with an energy rarely found in younger artists, guesting on Rinse, NTS, Radar and Boiler Room with regularity and pushing their tracks into the rotation of as many DJs pushing bizarre, percussive club music as possible. The crew, particularly co-heads Tsvi and Wallwork, have also done an excellent job of pointing out and putting on their forebears, hosting DJ Deeon and DJ Technics on their respective Radar shows. Wallwork in particular has consistently shown an interest in working with classic sounds, whether they be breaks-led techno or ghetto house, in order to build his own unique aesthetic and his output of late has proven that he not only fully grasps the antecedents to his work, but has a firm understanding on how to build on them.

On tracks like “Final Fantasy” and “Impact” (a collaboration with Luru) though, those antecedents are becoming more and more blurred, still apparent in Wallwork’s productions, but increasingly part of an animated, alien whole. Metallic in nature, but unwilling to give in to more industrial, noise-y proclivities, Wallwork’s recent output is unabashedly fun and dancefloor-focused and despite edging into weirder sonic territory with every new track and mix, it all feels innately comfortable. March’s Don’t Panic EP (a collaboration with RZR), the first release on Nervous Horizon, set a firm foundation for Wallwork, built on tireless, machine-led rhythms and a willingness to break out of traditional four-on-the-floor formats. The next step for Wallwork, represented in his Astral Plane mix, is to bring the sort of abstract, spatially aware approach to his club tunes and if the aforementioned “Final Fantasy” and “The Portal”, a forthcoming collaboration with Lloyd SB, are anything to go by, you’ll be hearing Wallwork’s name in wider and wider circles. In hindsight, we all should have been tipped off immediately when Scratcha DVA started championing Wallwork and Nervous Horizon, but the rest of the world is slowly coming around and it’s fair to say that we’ll be hearing Wallwork tunes everywhere going forward.

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Dexter Duckett Mix For The Astral Plane

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October 16, 2015
Mixes
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“I’ve had this complex since I was young where I’ve just needed to develop like it’s a disease.” Hailing from Adelaide, Dexter Duckett is still a teenager, but has approached dance music with a far more developed critical lens than most artists two or three times his age. This isn’t a story about some prodigious kid making big via Soundcloud, but almost the exact opposite, an isolated young musician taking in a glut of material, garnering inspiration from a select few, Brooklyn’s flextune artists and 90s scramz groups for example, and consciously critiquing the remainder. On a recent trip to Los Angeles, I sat down with Dexter at a cafe serving $9 juice shots to talk about rejecting accelerationism, desensitization to violence and spoken word artist Sunni Patterson. The rest of the interview will appear next week, but now we’ve got Duckett’s viscerally touching Astral Plane mix, a conflagration of shoegaze, ambient, bashment that seems to simultaneously mask and attempt to point out, in the most blatant manner, the contextual differences between these forms.

“I’m going to start incorporating my vocals into my music soon. i need a more hype performance aspect to my music that isn’t this static DJ shit.” After staying in Los Angeles for a few weeks with his girlfriend, Duckett just arrived in Europe and will be performing in London (at Exquisite), Berlin (at Creamcake) and in Stockholm. The move to more vocal work seems prescient for Duckett and, despite not having an official release to his name, it fits into his fight against irony and general emotional distance, as well as a push forward for an artist who’s already reinvented himself several times. Duckett’s Astral Plane mix is heavy on unheard original work and should shine a good deal of light into the aesthetic he’s developed over the past year and continues to rework, music from Teen Suicide occupying the same space as the aforementioned Sunni Patterson and YAYOYANOH.

Teen Suicide – Anne
GRKZGL – Danger Music
Sunni Paterson – Yacub Majeed (poem)
Dexter Duckett – Let Me Take Over U
N-prolenta – Van Vicker
Gabrielle – Long, Plain and Straight
Dexter Duckett – Blue Blood
Dexter Duckett – EU Riddim (shleepy edit)
Dexter Duckett – Sweetheart
Dexter Duckett – Timyaya’s Kick Inside
DJ Ambitious – Lala Land
Lovesliescrushing – Overdose
Mya Gomez – Skype Tone (edit)
Dexter Duckett – Little Piggy
Dexter Duckett – Silence (edit)
Uninamise – The Prayer
YAYOYANOH – On & On Rmx
Willow/Potential Kidd – Freq7/Tight Tight
Teen Suicide – Anne
GRKZGL – Danger Music

Toxe Mix For The Astral Plane

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October 5, 2015
Interviews, Mixes
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A key member of the formidable Staycore crew, Gothenburg, Sweden-based Toxe (FKA Tove Agelii) has asserted her position as one of the most forceful, talented artists in the club music world over the past year, pushing an aesthetic that is as raw and unforgiving as it is delicate and inspiring. With a year left of high school and her debut Muscle Memory EP out on October 16 via Staycore, Toxe has seen a remarkably quick rise into the popular consciousness, first garnering attention for tracks like “Martial Arts” and “Offense” and further bolstering her credentials via collaborations with fellow Staycore members Dinamarca and Mechatok. Meanwhile, Tove started the ever-growing Sisters Facebook group, an in increasingly influential space for female producers, DJs, writers and label employees to share music, discuss sexism in the dance music world and occasionally work to take down a repugnant label head. And while Tove doesn’t like to take credit for founding Sisters, her role in instigating the movement is undisputed and her place as a positive and motivating presence for other female producers is well known.

With Muscle Memory out next week and a move from Gothenburg planned for next year, it’s easy to see Toxe’s name spreading like wildfire in the not too distant future, especially considering how fully formed and considered the EP is. Her Astral Plane mix is also remarkably consistent, showing off Toxe’s ability to switch up tempo with ease and utilize a range of vocals (from Missy Elliot to Jandro) over tracks from Muscle Memory and efforts from producers like v1984, Kamixlo and Zutzut (not to mention a host of her Staycore co-conspirators). It’s an all-enveloping listen that, despite changing speed several times, always seems to be moving at an energizing pace, smacking the listener with brusque, machinic kick patterns while soothing those hits with brief flits of angelic melodies and addicting hook work. We spoke with Tove via email about the mix, Sisters and the concept behind Muscle Memory, which is about as sure a thing as we’ve heard all year, words which can be found after the jump/below the fold. Also check out the full track list below the interview.

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Letta Mix For The Astral Plane

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September 30, 2015
Mixes
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A little while back, Los Angeles-based Letta sent Tomas at Coyote Records a few demos. The London-based label head became enamored with the works and hit Letta back, starting a process that would eventually become Testimony, his debut album out next week on Coyote. Nominally a grime outlet, Coyote works to break artists (Spokes, Silk Road Assassins, Forever Forever, etc.) with a left field approach to the London sound, melding tradition with wildly inventive approaches to melody. In that context, Letta’s inclusion in the Coyote fold makes all too much sense, but it’s been far from a linear path to this point, a story of addiction, rekindled inspiration and long lost family ties that we outlined in our interview with a few weeks ago. Last night, Letta took to the decks at the Coyote Boiler Room in London (still looping to our knowledge), sharing the stage with Last Japan, AJ Tracey and more and strutting Testimony and other material on his biggest stage yet. And while a record like Testimony isn’t exactly the banging club record that most Boiler Room audiences prefer, it fit seamlessly with performances from the rest of the Coyote roster, belying Letta’s status as a consummate outsider and snuffing out any doubts as to why he has been brought in for the label’s first full length release.

Listening to Letta’s Astral Plane mix a few days before his departure for the London, it becomes clear that his love for outsider music, whether that be Gang of Four or Mr. Mitch, seems to mesh easily with the weirder strains of modern rap and R&B. It’s not ever day that Ciara and Akira or Loom and D-Lo sit side by side, but through his own bootlegs and a few additions from Purple Tape Pedigree’s own Geng, the mix seems to come together with a somewhat jarring cinematic grace, topped off with well chosen and well placed dialogue snippets from The Wire. It shows off a more mischievous side of Letta’s repertoire as well, seen in his past bootleg work and hidden just below the surface throughout Testimony. This is most apparent in the way he works banger/big room quality vocal work over decidedly introspective beat work, drawing out qualities in both components that might otherwise have lied dormant. Letta will be hitting a good deal of radio while he’s in London so be on the lookout for those announcements and don’t forget to pre-order Testimony (out October 7)!

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