{"id":1147492,"date":"2021-10-01T18:03:32","date_gmt":"2021-10-01T15:03:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1147492"},"modified":"2021-10-01T18:03:32","modified_gmt":"2021-10-01T15:03:32","slug":"the-7-best-dj-mixes-of-september-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1147492","title":{"rendered":"The 7 Best DJ Mixes of September 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The 7 Best DJ Mixes of September 2021<\/h1>\n
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This month\u2019s mixes range from a Four Tet set recorded at the Lost Village Festival to a haunted rework of soundtracks from Candyman<\/em> composer Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe<\/div>\n
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By <\/span>Philip Sherburne<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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Every month<\/em>, Philip Sherburne listens to a whole lot of mixes so you only have to listen to the best ones.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Four Tet \u2013 Live From the Village<\/h2>\n
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Though he appears with some frequency on The Lot Radio, Four Tet rarely posts recordings of his festival or club appearances, which makes this two-hour DJ set from August\u2019s Lost Village festival all the more notable. Held in a forested, lakeside site that\u2019s meant to resemble an actual derelict hamlet\u2014complete with a downed airplane fuselage, abandoned cars for dancing on, and similarly fantastical touches\u2014Lost Village goes all in on mystery, and Four Tet delivered a set tailored for the occasion. It\u2019s full of swirling chords, dramatic buildups, and liberal use of reverb, and while Four Tet\u2019s own tunes and those of his peers (Overmono\u2019s \u201cSo U Kno,\u201d Jamie xx\u2019s \u201cIdontknow\u201d) establish the mix\u2019s sparkling throughline, he doesn\u2019t hesitate to throw in some surprising crowd-pleasers: Adam F\u2019s drum\u2019n\u2019bass anthem \u201cCircles,\u201d a stretch of speed garage toward the conclusion, and even a sneaky remix of Sugababes\u2019 \u201cOverload.\u201d For my money, the highlight is an extended blend of Basic Channel\u2019s \u201cPhylyps Trak II\/II\u201d with Burial\u2019s \u201cArchangel.\u201d<\/p>\n

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MoMA Ready \u2013 @ Kiosk Radio 14.08.2021<\/h2>\n
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The advent of online mixes where there\u2019s a camera in the DJ booth has opened up a window on the interiority of the DJ\u2019s art. Take this session for Brussels\u2019 Kiosk Radio, which finds New York\u2019s MoMA Ready enclosed in, literally, a kiosk\u2014a tiny wooden shack in the city\u2019s Parc Royal, with barely enough room to take more than a few steps back from the turntables. A wide-angle camera is trained on the decks, and the fly-on-the-wall perspective gives us a semi-voyeuristic peek as he works. Here he is cueing up a new track, or concentrating on a mix; here he is dancing by himself, pumping an arm before regaining his composure; here he is glancing idly out the windows at random passersby, sipping on a canned beverage. Occasionally, a hint of a grin flashes across his otherwise impassive expression. To watch him is a reminder that DJing, for all its social connotations, can also be a profoundly private art\u2014an act of communion with one\u2019s records and one\u2019s thoughts. And something about MoMA Ready\u2019s selections here feels suited to that sense of solitude. Moving through deep-house classics that emphasize gliding grooves and swirling keys\u2014DV8\u2019s \u201cGive It All to You (92 Remix),\u201d Saint Etienne\u2019s \u201cNothing Can Stop Us (Masters at Work Dub),\u201d JohNick\u2019s \u201cMagic (Maurice Joshua Remix)\u201d\u2014he converts club staples into a soundtrack for daydreaming, and an absolute day-brightener of a set.<\/p>\n

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Akua \u2013 Dekmantel Podcast 350<\/h2>\n
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New York DJ Akua pulls absolutely no punches in her contribution to Dekmantel\u2019s mix series. Full of pile-driving beats, this is a tribute to \u201990s techno at its most unrelenting. Kicking off with a 1994 cut from the late K-Hand, who died in August at the age of 56, the Ghanaian-American DJ proceeds to tumble down a rabbit hole of corkscrewing grooves infused with subtly psychedelic textures. Mixed fast and furious, the session is charged with adrenaline, but it\u2019s also playful, balancing overdriven kicks and apocalyptic stabs with squirrelly synths and pirouetting squiggles. Akua\u2019s intuitive sense of pacing is a big part of the set\u2019s charm: When DJ Hyperactive and Woody McBride\u2019s gravelly, squelching \u201cNew Ones\u201d suddenly morphs into DJ Slip\u2019s pinging \u201cBushwick Birds,\u201d it feels like a tightrope walker stepping nimbly into the eye of the storm.<\/p>\n

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Razrbark \u2013 Psychosomatic Ambient Steam<\/h2>\n
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A reader tip led me to this wonderful mix from Razrbark, a New York DJ whose obvious talent and taste far outstrip her (for now) low profile. Despite the title, this isn\u2019t ambient in the beatless sense of the term; instead, her downtempo beats and blurry atmospheres have more in common with the trip-hop of nearly three decades ago. An injection of rock aesthetics keeps \u201cPsychosomatic Ambient Steam\u201d from sounding like other, similarly paced sets: She kicks off with an acidic blast of noise from Japan\u2019s Melt Banana and soon slips into the grinding, breakbeat-inspired post-rock of Suuns; her closing track morphs from glitchy dream pop into muscular post-punk drumming. And despite the set\u2019s leisurely pace and breakbeat grooves, even her most laid-back selections have little in common with the silky, well-pressed output of lifestyle soundtrackers like Kruder & Dorfmeister: There\u2019s a hint of something ominous lurking beneath the hissy boom-bap beats, which frequently devolve into grinding dembow patterns and slow-motion acid.<\/p>\n

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Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe \u2013 Unsound Podcast 72<\/h2>\n
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In order to infuse director Nia DaCosta and co-writer\/producer Jordan Peele\u2019s new remake of the 1992 horror movie Candyman<\/em> with a sense of presence, composer Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe (aka Lichens) recorded the voices of the film\u2019s actors, manipulating them until they no longer sounded like human voices at all; he also collected field recordings in the Cabrini-Green housing projects where the film is set. \u201cFor me, the score and sound should exist as a character within the landscape of a film,\u201d he has said. A similar emphasis on atmosphere runs through virtually all Lowe\u2019s selections\u00a0in this mix sourced from classic film soundtracks. An excerpt from Ennio Morricone\u2019s score to Il Sorriso del Grande Tentatore<\/em> fuses madrigal-like singing with occult chants; Gil Melle\u2019s pioneering soundtrack to The Andromeda Strain<\/em> treats synthesized tones like disintegrating strands of DNA; the icy dissonance of Krzysztof Penderecki\u2019s De Natura Sonoris<\/em> mirrors the snowbound terror of The Shining<\/em>\u2019s Overlook Hotel. Beyond serving as a sampler of iconic soundtrack composers like Klaus Schulze and John Carpenter, Lowe\u2019s set functions beautifully as an almost narrative work in its own right, full of twists and turns, levity and terror. Cue it up on your stoop this Halloween and watch the trick-or-treaters tremble.<\/p>\n

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Byron Westbrook \u2013 Cyclic Defrost Mix<\/h2>\n
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Los Angeles composer Byron Westbrook\u2019s new album Mirror Views<\/em> was inspired in part by his stay in a Stockholm boarding house where many inhabitants have reported seeing ghostly apparitions in the mirror. Fusing Buchla experiments from his residency at EMS Stockholm with field recordings made around the time of the 2017 solar eclipse, the album\u2014originally composed as a disorienting audio-visual installation at New York\u2019s ISSUE Project Room\u2014makes for an immersive and at times bewildering listening experience in which rumbling abstractions give way to needle-sharp synthesizer tones. Westbrook\u2019s set for Cyclic Defrost<\/em> gathers material with a similarly vivid spatial focus. Geneva Skeen matches piercing sine tones with distant voices and slamming doors draped in the boomy reverb of a basement parking garage. The gentle drone of BJ Nilsen\u2019s London cityscape merges with the crickets of Olivia Block\u2019s Mobius Fuse<\/em>. Not a whole lot happens<\/em> during the course of the set; woven from birdsong and babbling water and shimmering sounds of unknown provenance, it inches along at a measured pace, emphasizing recordings that reveal their environments in real time. But subtle tonal elements function as a kind of emotional handrail, guiding you through an eyes-closed environment where nothing is certain except what you perceive with your ears.<\/p>\n

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Huerco S. aka Pendant \u2013 Rinse France 03.09.2021<\/h2>\n
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Some 10 minutes into this characteristically murky set from Pendant (the atmospheric alter ego of Huerco S.), the Kansas City musician switches things up. Suddenly, the muggy ambient and ambient trap give way to a winsome vocal and sparkling electric guitar that sound like they could be from some long-lost My Bloody Valentine demo. It\u2019s a startling moment of clarity in a set that\u2019s otherwise as hazy as the California skies in fire season. Soon, he\u2019s back to his usual tricks: sluggish trip-hop, agonizingly screwed vocals, digital textures as crinkly as cellophane. Then, just before the end, right after some Pole-esque IDM from Pontiac Streator and Ben Bondy, the clouds part again, this time for a gorgeous cover of Soundgarden\u2019s \u201cBlack Hole Sun\u201d sung by Mimi Goese, of the criminally forgotten dream-pop group Hugo Largo. As her processed voice fades out, Huerco plunges us back into the depths, cutting from the fuzzed-out noise rock of the Flying Saucer Attack-adjacent group Amp into the gothic trip-hop of Mister Water Wet & Monkey 20\u2019s \u201cPour Me Out,\u201d featuring Alexis Penney. But the ghostly effect of Goese\u2019s voice lingers long after the set has finished.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

Source URL: https:\/\/pitchfork.com\/thepitch\/the-7-best-dj-mixes-of-september-2021\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Columns The 7 Best DJ Mixes of September 2021 This month\u2019s mixes range from a Four Tet set recorded at the Lost Village Festival to a haunted rework of soundtracks from Candyman composer Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe By Philip Sherburne October 1, 2021 Every month, Philip Sherburne listens to a whole lot of mixes so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1147494,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[54],"class_list":["post-1147492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-pitchfork-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1147492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1147494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1147492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1147492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1147492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}