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She’s Drunk Mix For The Astral Plane

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October 9, 2014
Mixes
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These days, producers often make the transition into the deejay game as their songs, bootlegs, etc. gain traction online and calls for their physical presence (read: tour money) reach a fever pitch. In the United States, this trend has become the norm as prodigious, young beatsmiths garner tens of thousands of online fans before they even touch a CDJ or Technics, but in Europe and the UK, the trend is, by-and-large, reversed. Consciousness altering, outer belt raves have become the stuff of obituaries as of late and DJs, especially in the realm of ‘ardkore, jungle and drum & bass, have been forced to seek out new contexts for their music, or worse, a day job. Hailing from Besançon, France, David Monnin is one of the many refugees of the rave scene, a ragga jungle and hardcore DJ in past life who now lives in Berlin and produces under the She’s Drunk moniker. Unlike most former rave denizens, Monnin has metamorphosed effortlessly into the world of cross-genre and cross-generational club music.

With everything from mid-120s electro-styled drum tracks to Special Request-esque jungliest riddims in his arsenal, Monnin has tailored the She’s Drunk moniker to his own omnivorous music tastes, gathering influences, both contemporary and not, from across the Continent and beyond. Like some sort of dysfunctional Rube Goldberg machine for the dancing masses, the She’s Drunk sound is teetering on the brink of collapse, pinging endlessly and almost always unhinged, relying more on recognizable sound signifiers than any existing rhythmic  structure. On releases for his own Through My Speakers label/party/collective and the always-excellent, London-based Liminal Sounds blog/label, Monnin has developed a sound that reflects his years on the jungle circuit in its frenetic nature, a raw energy that can’t be attained through sitting in a room working in Ableton.

And while the usual signifiers (Jersey club, ballroom, grime, etc.) criss-cross, She’s Drunk’s Astral Plane mix, the kinetic spirit is readily apparent, mirroring the polyglot madness of his recent Physical EP (out now via Liminal Sounds). Monnin might have entered the contemporary club-verse from another time, but his real life experience playing out and open-face attitude towards production is easily discernible in his output.

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Grandmixxer Mix For The Astral Plane (w/ Interview)

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September 30, 2014
Interviews, Mixes
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With just over ten years under grime’s belt, journalists and historians have spent a good amount of time navel gazing about the genre’s origins, eulogizing the demise of its piratic origins, and prophesying about its gun clad future. Since its modest, wheel-filled beginnings though, grime’s story has always been best told by its constituent members and crews, whether through formal means of official histories and interviews, or the contemporary platform of the Twitter screed. We were lucky enough to speak with a modern legend in Grandmixxer and the former Rinse (and current FLEX FM) DJ was kind enough to drop off an hour of palette wrecking instrumental grime for the occasion. As a label curator (Wig Power Foundation), tour DJ (Big Narstie), mentor (Novelist, DullahBeatz) and producer in his own right, Grandmixxer has inextricably involved himself into the fabric of grime’s rich past and its effervescent future. And the man himself can obviously tell it best so without further ado, a conversation with Grandmixxer.

Over the years, you’ve played out on a number of radio stations and you currently have a weekly slot on FlexFM. Do you have a favourite memory or set of memories from your time in radio?

My first ever radio appearance on On Top FM. A locally big pirate at the time with crews such as N Double A, Roadside G’s, South Soldiers, Mastermind Troopers and basically any one who was big at the time in grime from south London.

Appearing on there was a big deal to me and I will never forget the tension, shaky hands and all of that! Luckily for me it went well and I was given my own show a week or two after my debut.

The Nasty Crew show was my first grime experience and I used to lock in every week. More recently I got to host a show with Mak10 at FlexFM. It is not an understatement when I say I would not exist today if it was not for this guy, hearing him manipulate sound made me want to own my own turntables so being able to do a show with him was just a very special moment for me

Continue with interview, Grandmixxer’s favorite trax to rinse, and track list below…

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Decibel Festival 2014: Hush Hush feat. Kid Smpl, Hanssen, Slow Year, and Cock & Swan

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September 19, 2014
Festivals, Mixes
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For the next two weeks, we will be featuring different facets of Seattle’s crown jewel of an electronic music event, the consistently excellent Decibel Festival. Considering that Seattle is our hometown and Decibel is one of the most tactful curators of electronic music in the United States, the annual gathering is one of the highlights of our year and more than deserves the praise heaped on it in recent years. The festival runs on a showcase structure, featuring different labels, promotion groups and other tastemakers flexing their creative muscle at Seattle’s best venues. Over the past 11 years, Decibel has grown from a small neighborhood gathering to one of the premiere dance music festivals in the world and over the next few weeks, we’ll parse through the dozens of events to highlight the best and brightest talent the festival has to offer.

Over the past week of Decibel Festival coverage, we’ve pointed our cursors at two showcases, Kinesthesia (Arca + Jesse Kanda, Max Cooper, Total Freedom) and Modern Love (Andy Stott, Millie & Andrea, Demdike Stare), that stopping through Seattle in the midst of truly global tours that will hit dozens of other cities before 2014 lets out. And while Decibel’s growth has allowed the inclusion of highly touted live acts like the aforementioned Cooper and Stott, its roots are still firmly planted in the lush Pacific Northwest and a heartening number of the festival’s key acts hail from Seattle, Portland and the surrounding region. Natasha Kmeto, DJAO, J. Alvarez, The Sight Below and many more local artists will be displaying their numerous talents across a number of showcases, but the single, most condensed collection of local talent at Decibel comes in the form of the Hush Hush Records showcase. Still a relatively young outlet, the discography of Alex Ruder’s label reads like a storyboard of against-the-grain beatwerk, from the fabric (and heart) tearing UK-derived work of Kid Smpl to the richly textured guitar + voice compositions of Cock & Swan.

Hush Hush will be bringing the core of its roster to Decibel and the showcase, taking place on September 26 (Friday) at EMP’s JBL Theater, will feature live performances from Kid Smpl, Hanssen, Slow Year, and Cock & Swan. And while the label ostensibly started as an outlet for the sort of “night bus” sounds intended to soundtrack long, lunar rides on public transportation, this bill has more than enough propulsion to bring any listener out of their doldrums. For a taste a what’s to come next Friday, Hush Hush core man Hanssen was kind enough to contribute a mini mix of key and upcoming label material, all influenced by gauzy hip hop, found sound collage art and rich R&B dynamics. The Hush Hush showcase will not feature the biggest names or stage productions at Decibel, but you won’t find a better representation of the festival’s DIY spirit, inclusive ethos and overall quality control.

If our insistence on attending showcases at EMP seems odd, it’s only because the venue will play host to many of Decibel’s most dynamic performances, dancefloor oriented and not. On any one night, you could witness the hellish choral work of Oneohtrix Point Never, the brilliant harmonics of Cock & Swan and the West African-derived percussive workouts of Millie & Andrea in Seattle’s usual home of rock & roll kitsch. Get single tickets to the Hush Hush showcase here.

Magic Fades Mix For The Astral Plane

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September 17, 2014
Mixes
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For many years, artists of the sonic ilk have attempted to forge their way through a landscape of copyright law and appropriation discussion, both issues exacerbated in the Internet-age, with varying success. On the one hand, there’s the owners of the Dope Jams record shop; masters of acerbic banter, but more importantly, unrepentant bootleggers. The two owners, who also go by Slow to Speak, have been pressing classic pop 12″ for years (with the addition of their own edits) and while their CORE series is a completely legitimate business in the eyes of copyright law, they’ve made a name for themselves as anti-ASCAP Robin Hoods of a sort. On the other hand are the countless musicians who have been expunged from the annals of Soundcloud, Pro payment or no, for violating the website’s increasingly draconian rules and algorithms, only to recreate their profile and pull out the credit card at the next possible turn.

On the creative side of the debate, especially with regards to outer realm dance music, lies the conversation on appropriation, sampling and, especially, sound collage art. Portland duo Magic Fades have spent the past several years dappling in R&B, hip hop and the weapons-grade fallout that was/is vaporwave, grabbing onto bits and pieces of pop music ephemera from the past twenty years to craft seemingly tenuous, yet deceivingly affecting collage work. But interestingly enough, Magic Fades started out as an act that seemed to have the potential to fit itself into the singular world of digital-filtered, big room R&B alongside acts like Autre Ne Veut and How To Dress Well. 2012’s Obsession LP, released through Mishka, didn’t necessarily see the duo draft an original sound out of the ether, but the album’s nods to The-Dream, Usher and Prince didn’t overwhelm the project and, in the end, were nothing more than reverent flourishes.

Fast forward a few years and R&B still forms the central column of the Magic Fades sound, but the remaining sonic aesthetic has splintered and broken apart, only to be brought back together in a disjointed frankenstein of influences, effects and digital mementos. Earlier this year, the duo collaborated on an album with Soul Ipsum, the Zirconia Reign LP, which was released by 1080p in April. Sounding more like E+E or Lotic than R. Kelly, the LP featured soundtrack-inspired grandiosity and a drastically improved production value that lifted Magic Fades out of the proverbial bedroom. And Zirconia Reign not only sounds larger than the duo’s previous work, it’s crashing pastiche of flutes, piano, violin and rave digitalism has highlighted, by drawing together disparate elements from across the pop and avant-garde landscape, a distinct Magic Fades sound.

Since the release of Zirconia Reign, Magic Fades have dedicated themselves to elucidating the collective phantasm through club music, drafting a number of edits and blends that bring together key figures in the progressive club music realm (Neana, Air Max ’97 and Sudanim) with the likes of Tinashe, their most barefaced attempts at collage work to date. The result is far more cohesive than the aforementioned E+E, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t get across a chaotic, decomposing affect. What started on Obsession as stylistic appropriation has grown into full-fledged aesthetic smash-and-grab, a gravity-less melange of sounds, melodies, riffs and vocal lines that smash into each other as often as they coalesce in harmonic perfection. Coming back to copyright and appropriation, Magic Fades don’t necessarily play the conscious role of insurgent, but their work flies in the face of the traditional, rockist conception of originality. And their Astral Plane mix epitomizes that ethos, a series of edits with no clear start and no clear end, grafted together with apparent slapdash abandon. It’s a channel changing epic that frazzles the mind as much as it dazzles the senses, but this time around it has a function: dancefloor efficacy.

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Zutzut Mix For The Astral Plane

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September 3, 2014
Mixes
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Music criticism has always been deeply involved in the discovery, development and documentation of purported scenes, grouping artists together along sonic, cultural and geographic lines that often reduce constituent members to mere footnotes in a greater dialogue. Whether a scene is organic or not is often lost in the ether, either deliberately ignored for the sake of a false origin story, or simply not intriguing enough to push with any verve. In this frenzy to group, structure and delineate the contours of contemporary music, the study of true origin stories; of harmonious, biotic entities arising from unexpected territory is increasingly rare.

That being said, if the previous descriptors were to apply to any particular scene, it would be Mexico City’s NAAFI, a four year old club night, record label and politico-cultural movement that has rocketed into the global dance music consciousness in the past year. Started by Tomás Davó, Paul Marmota, Lauro Robles (Lao) and Mexican Jihad, NAAFI has developed with pace and aplomb into an entity with a singular, outward-looking identity that doesn’t obscure its original members. Under the banner of “peripheral rhythms”, both a literal pointer to the disparate percussive elements utilized by NAAFI artists and a risk-taking mantra to live by, NAAFI has approached club music culture with a curiosity and consciousness rarely exhibited, aligning themselves with Diamante to the south and Fade to Mind to the north to create something of a progressive musical spine that runs throughout the Americas.

A number of Mexican producers have risen out of the ring of influence established by NAAFI and Alejandro Núñez aka Zutzut, hailing from  Monterrey, has proven to be one of the most sonically adventurous and mindful of the dialogue constantly unfolding between Caribbean, American, African and European sounds. With only one release to his name, a self-titled EP on his own Extasis imprint, Núñez has augmented his resume with a number of twisted bootlegs and collaborations with fellow NAAFI members, exploring the “de-contextualization” of samples and how genre epithets can be reorganized in different forms. If anything , the modern R&B continuum is the strongest thread in his work (his first Soundcloud upload was a TLC remix), but kuduro and dembow also take prominent positions, allowing Núñez to contort the works of Kelela, Clara La San and others into body-led percussive workouts.

And like the majority of NAAFI’s constituents, Zutzut is not defined by traditional ethnomusicologic barriers, instead driven by a unique conception of localism, or in the words of Mexican Jihad, “something that resonates because it’s coming from where you are and from what you are living.” Next Monday (10/11), NAAFI’s Paul Marmota, Lao and Mexican Jihad will take over Total Freedom and Josh Peace‘s Mustache Mondays night in Los Angeles (unfortunately no Zutzut this time around), a can’t miss opportunity to witness the malleability of the label and a selection of its star producers.

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Ziro Mix For The Astral Plane

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August 21, 2014
Mixes
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In 1968, Romanian composer György Ligeti produced “Continuum”, a harpsichord piece that, to this day, frays human sound perception. By most estimates, humans can only “digest”, or separate, 18 individual sounds at a time so Ligeti played the harpsichord at as close to that rate as he possibly could. “Continuum” is unhinged, a direct exploration of how the brain perceives perfection and how it can so often be wrong, exemplified in Ligeti’s polyrhythmic harpsichord performance. Ligeti’s fascination with polyrhythms was inspired, first by the piano music of piano music of Chopin and Schumann, but also by polyrhythmic and polyphonic dance music from Africa, specifically the Banda-Linda tribe from the Central African Republic. Taking influence from the latter’s dance forms, Ligeti’s work has formed an intriguing rubric from which to study contemporary electronic music, a rubric that places the producer in the role of perception orienter (or de-orienter). With much of modern dance music involving rhythmic elements from West Africa via the Caribbean (and vice versa), either directly or indirectly, the role of polyrhythms, broken beats and non-quantized percussion is readily apparent, but only a select few producers consciously meditate on the relationship between sound production and listener.

Recent efforts in this vein have been plentiful, from M.E.S.H.‘s dynamic “Scythians” to the percussive backflips of DJ Nigga Fox‘s O Meu Estilo EP. And many more have pressed on how conventional genre structure’s are perceived, from netting breakbeats into the fabric of four-on-the-floor techno or the ever-disintegrating percussion of Rabit‘s “Pandemic Transmissions”.  For his part, Ziro has been consciously challenging perception in dance music and the inherent assumption of perfection within the form. Preferring un-quantized percussion and unconventional, often tonal drum work, the Bristol-based producer’s work nominally transitions between techno, funky, grime and dubstep, but it’s his consistent usage of the uncanny that begets experimentation. 2012’s “Coded” (out now on Crazylegs) is a club-ready techno roller in the vein of much of the dark, warehouse-focused material being released at the time, but its characteristic squelches and crashes, often slightly dissonant from the main groove, are what make its premise so curious.

Similarly, Ziro’s latest single, the Trim assisted “Lost”, falls into the grime category, but like Gage‘s “Telo” (also released on Crazylegs), creates dissonant spaces where an MC-led track might have once fallen into line. The “Club Mix” is full of the buckshot snares and roiling low end characteristic of contemporary grime, but also involves piercing rubber ball bass hits, organized in triplets, rim shots that lead into snare rolls and, at times, a suffocating blend of disparate percussion. The song, as its title states, is intended for the club and that disposition allows it to challenge the notion of what a “club” track should sound like. And while Ziro might not be challenging aural perception quite like the seminal Ligeti, his work and general consciousness is affecting a different audience.

Ziro’s mix work also exhibits his apposite approach to rhythm, drawing from the dreary acrobatics of Vince Staples, Arca‘s odd ball theatrics and Alex Coulton‘s pulse-heavy techno in his Astral Plane mix. Like “Lost”, much of the mix draws from grime, but as much as it highlights the likes of Visionist, ISLAND and Biome, it more often utilizes them as a foil for the next rhythmic exhortation. Most listeners of the following mix won’t be moved to investigate the intricacies of polyrhythms, but if it pushes an individual to reconsider how their mind’s intake differs from its perception, then Ziro will have done his job.

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MM Mix For The Astral Plane

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August 14, 2014
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miss-modular Since the advent of the Internet, it has become increasingly difficult to step back and register one’s surroundings and comprehend the flow of history. This is true for nearly every cultural sector, but especially for contemporary dance music, a culture desperate to establish, defend and reinforce its position in the global canon. Every think piece about commercialism, capitalism, drugs, or artistic legitimacy is born out of that fundamental disposition, a disposition born out of both real and perceived marginalization. Timeline, lineage, and those infernal genre maps (the footwork one excluded) are the physical manifestations of this yearning for history, but temporal language is inherently built into the fabric of dance music. Terms like future, post, retro and the abominable “nu” run rampant on Beatport, Juno and Boomkat and have become some of the most common, and most maligned, signifiers in the dance music lexicon. The search for the “next” best thing/trend/genre/producer is often steeped in the language of sports recruiting, pointing to an artist’s potential and whether it will/can be realized. The fact that modern dance music has only been a semi-coherent industry for three odd decades now makes comprehension all the more difficult and the proclivity to assign false historicity all the more common.

Miss Modular, co-head of Her Records, is at the vanguard of a brash, young coalition of UK producers pushing the boundaries of club music. Along with compatriots Sudanim, CYPHR and Neana (to name a few), MM is often pointed to as a member of the Night Slugs generation (the line has, and will be, trotted out again and again), but as much as they are following the early steps of Bok Bok, Jam City and Girl Unit, they are flouting their forebears and writing an original blueprint. At the beginning of their excellent interview with Tom Lea for FACT, MM, Suda, CYPHR and Fraxinus point to the “obvious genealogy” from Night Slugs to Her, but then flip the script and lambast a general willingness to follow the former label’s Club Constructions series. While their literal “fuck you” to the British dance music establishment is slightly impulsive, it also acts a figurative breakpoint between Her and everything that came before it (and might come after it).

When Miss Modular’s Reflector Pack/Cruzer Edge single was released last December, Her was still a relatively unknown entity. Two compilations and several hit-or-miss EPs dotted the label’s Bandcamp, but the now ubiquitous “Reflector Pack” started off a string of wildly inventive releases that continued with Sudanim’s The Link EP, CYPHR’s Brace/Gloss Finish and, most recently, Her Records Volume 3. With only a semblance of traditional label framework, MM, Suda and CYPHR developed a sonic environment all their own, drawing bits and pieces from Jersey club, dancehall and hyper-crisp Atlanta/Los Angeles rap production. Those aren’t the label’s only tangible influences of course, but the fact that all three are definitively modern sounds is an important factor in the development of Her.

For his part, MM is the most indebted of the Her crew to the sounds of Jersey and his contribution to our mix series highlights that relationship. Overtures into dancehall and grime jumpstart the mix, but stomp box kick drums and stark vocal cuts are the bread and butter of this 40 minute composition. It’s difficult to perceive a physical environment outside of the club for MM and Her, but I imagine a hi-tech trans-continental expressway that features stops in Newark, London, Lisbon and Kingston. Lanes are demarcated by a crisp, effervescent linearity, but due to the geographical impossibility of the expressway, also feature a number of interstitial “portals”. There has to be some explanation for how these South London polyglots developed their sound after all. If you’re in London, catch MM along with Pinch, Preditah, Riko Dan and more this Friday. Check below the jump for MM’s idiosyncratic track list.

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Celestial Trax Mix For The Astral Plane

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August 6, 2014
Mixes
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celestial-traxThe “is grime a sub-form of hip hop?” debate has raged for years now and while nearly all of the genre’s major players have had their say, the dregs of forum culture are still ablaze with cathectic “controversy”. And while countless words have been scribed in an attempt to contextualize grime’s past and future, the fact of the matter is that the genre is only ten-plus years old and, essentially, needs more time before its legacy can be analyzed with any sort of clarity. A far more worthwhile goal in 2014 is to draw tangible connections between disparate sonic and cultural elements within both grime and hip hop. The atmospheric rattle of gun shots in both Lil Wyte’s Memphis odysseys and Jammer’s best instrumental work. The joyously over-the-top chipmunk sampling techniques utilized by Dipset production duo The Heatmakerz and Blackjack. The contemplative, dagger-like wordplay of Trim and Scarface. The fact of the matter is that the Atlantic is less a cultural barrier than a short wall meant to be leapt over, chipped away at and, eventually, torn down.

New York-based producer Celestial Trax has, quite literally, leapt over the wall after spending time living in London. His latest EP, Paroxysm, was released on Rinse and features what he considers a “rainy gloomy London night” vibe, but he’s hardly a purest and often, both directly and indirectly, references hip hop, jungle, footwork and contemporary R&B in his productions. The influence of American luminaries as disparate as Young Chop and James Nasty are reticent on Paroxysm alongside the more obvious Devil Mix and Metalheadz influences and the EP thrives when it picks up a particular emotion and expounds on it. For most of the EP, that emotion is anxiety and Paroxysm can be viewed as a genre-blended explication of disquietude. On Paroxysm, that anxiety is directly rooted in the physical environment of the aforementioned “gloomy London night,” a tangled web of apprehension and sublimated hysteria. Unfortunately, in electronic music, the subject has been touched on ad nausea and while the kitchen sink approach to Paroxysm is its greatest strength, the emotional superficiality gives it a peripatetic monotony at times.

Which is exactly why the move to New York has done wonders for the Celestial Trax sound. Vocal-like melodies drowned in squarewaves no longer take on the maudlin character they used to. Every kick, metallic swipe and chime seems to have fallen into place and his work with vocalists has taken on a singular focus. Anxiety is still the dominant emotion, but it’s a far more nuanced anxiety. His Astral Plane mix is made up of twelve original tracks, features MCs Shady Blaze and Tynethys, and, considering his adherence to crafting “songs” vs. “tracks”, is more of a production mix than something a DJ’s DJ might put together. Again, the strain of the austere urban environment takes center stage, but it’s appended this time with desire, loss and just enough melancholy. With a small, but effective hardware set-up, Celestial Trax has synthesized his influences into a sound that functions with or without a vocalist and with a breadth of affecting inputs and outputs. Realist hip hop (“Stargate”) sits alongside druggy, elegiac edits (“I Don’t Sell Molly No More”) and foreboding, on-the-cusp grime instrumentals (“Illumination”) that could easily find a home in a Visionist set. The wealth of influences are still palpable, but they have been compounded into a sound that Celestial Trax can proudly call his own.

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6MAKA6 Mix For The Astral Plane

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July 30, 2014
Mixes
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6MAKA6PressShot

The role of manipulation in DJing and dance music in general has always been misunderstood. Whether critics are deriding what they deem malicious sampling, trite looping, or overweening effects usage, the technological maneuvering inherent in both “playing out” and production is oft-confused with sloth, unnecessary spectacle, or, worse, lack of musical ability. Regardless of outside opinion though, the rise of CDJ DJing and, to a lesser extent, controller usage has created a world wherein the manipulation of technology is not only a useful tool, but a necessary, oft-fruitful means of re-contextualizing the music being played out and separating oneself from the ever-growing mass of disc jockeys. Which is not to say that DJs and producers have only recently begun to manipulate “sounds” in a novel manner; on the contrary, it’s an indelible part of dance music history. In recent years though, manipulation has taken on a somewhat meta quality in certain circles with DJs making alterations (pitch/speed being a favorite) to songs that would never be described as far from their purview. This form of manipulation is not novel in the chopping-up-an-obscure-Balinese-psych-rock-sample fashion, or drawing-unconventional-sounds-out-of-a-conventional-machine lineage, but rather in the micro-level, re-contextualization of contemporary sounds.

I’m thinking particularly of Shlohmo‘s Resident Advisor mix, Dubbel Dutch‘s Slow Club mix and Hesk‘s Take It Slow Vol. 1 & 2, which slow/screw big room house, Jersey club and footwork respectively. Each mix is awkward, distended even, at times, but offer a slightly tongue in cheek “outsider” representation of each respective genre involved. Out of the trio, Hesk’s efforts are easily the most manageable, the screwed footwork rhythms fluctuating between swimming low-end punctuated by otherworldly arrangements and edits that could have just as easily been intended for an early-aughts garage set. It’s confounding how a set of high speed, mid-2000s rap sampling tracks could be re-interpreted as sex-driven late night club jams and Hesk’s work deserves its plaudits.

Around a year after the release of Take It Slow Vol. 1 and Montreal’s Hesk has revised the sensibility expounded on the tape in the form of his new alias: 6MAKA6. If the Three 6 Mafia and Snoop Dogg samples were removed from the picture and the thumping, drum-heavy carcasses of screwed footwork left intact, the result would be exactly the sort of progressive, machine-led manipulation oft-derided by the unfamiliar. The screwed footwork also plays a fascinating historical role, illuminating the pathway from ghetto house to juke to modern footwork. The canny vocal repetition and space-filling claps are easily recognizable to any Dance Mania disciple and while much ink has been spilled on the lineage, audial examples are far more incisive. As 6MAKA6, Hesk has taken that lineage and dumped it on its head, melding the raw spirit of analogue techno with the roguishness of ghetto house and the braggadocio of Jersey club. With only a few songs to nom de guerre so far, it’s already apparent that Hesk’s latest venture is his most utilitarian, a refined sound meant for making bodies (every body) gyrate on the dancefloor. 6MAKA6 is also Hesk’s most overtly technological project to date, involving metallic percussion and factory sounds into the stripped-down melange of songs like “Helium and “Clap Backk (Clap For Me)”. Like many other producers making “drum trax” these days, Hesk isn’t beholden to any one genre or sound, just a ruthless demand for dancefloor efficacy. A slowed version of DJ Rashad’s seminal “Ghost” ends his Astra Plane mix and while the disorienting calm that ensues belies the hectic-nature of the 30 minute mix, the totemic intention is clear.

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Astral Plane Radio 002

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July 24, 2014
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astral plane radio 002

Professional mix CDs are a dying breed in the era of the internet, but that’s not going to stop outlets like Fabric and Rinse from plying their trade at the, in relative terms, archaic format. The recent Pinch b2b Mumdance effort on Tectonic is a masterpiece and there certainly is still a semblance of hope in the pay-for-mix system. That being said, magazines (FACT, Resident Advisor, The Fader, Mixmag), radio stations (Rinse, NTS, Berlin Community Radio), blogs (Truants, Sonic Router, Hyponik, Liminal Sounds) and personal mix series (Slackk, Slackk, Slackk, Slackk) have dominated the mix market of late and operate at no cost. The advent of easy streaming and effortless file sharing has led to a glut of mix work and has arguably positioned the medium as the go-to path for debuting, testing and flexing new material. Playing out demos live will always have a place in the culture, but it’s undeniable that a choice placement in a mix can rocket a song to ravenous popularity months before its release. And then there’s Boiler Room, the ultimate “wot u call that one?” platform and a space that walks the line between recorded mix-land and live (at least temporally). Which gets me to my final point: what makes a listener gravitate towards a particular mix or mix series?

The idyllic answer would be content and content alone of course, but that’s not necessarily true and the most successful series shine quite a bit of light onto the common selection process. DIS Mag churns out my personal favorite series, a full-bodied audio/visual experience that balances exclusivity, narrative and on-the-ball design work with results that range from tantalizing coherent (Hysterics) to scene-defining (defying?) (J-Cush) to expectation shattering (Palmistry). The design website’s focus is clear with the series and despite the overtly-trendy intonations and lack of curatorial rationality, DIS’ series is consistently effectual. Here at The Astral Plane, we have a small, tightly-wound team and as a result, our curation could also likely be described as tightly wound. Our artwork is simple, consistent and generally understated and while that can’t be said about the often-bombastic sonic content of the series, we attempt to package the series in an unadorned fashion that allows the guesting artist to shine. Astral Plane Radio is a different, less coherent project that attempts to coalesce the “sound” we cover into a biweekly series. It might achieve that, but it will most likely offer a performative aspect to the website that will hopefully give a little glimpse into our world and our perspective. Thank you!

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