DJ Taj Jersey Club Winter Mix 2020
TikTok’s meme-driven transformation of Old Town Road into a global blockbuster hit was cultural amplification on an unprecedented scale – but it was far from a new phenomenon. Similar signal-boosts occurred on Vine, thought of by many as TikTok’s spiritual predecessor, back in 2013-15. Memes, dances and remixes from black US communities using the app quickly caught international attention, proving crucial to Jersey club music’s establishment outside the States. Newark-via-NY’s DJ Taj was a key part of Jersey’s Vine wave and remains central to the scene. His Winter Mix 2020 is a reminder of the genre’s irresistible charm, marrying Jersey club’s signature pounding beats, innovative vocal chops and bed-squeak samples with flips on the likes of HoodCelebrityy, Don Toliver and the Caillou theme tune.
Stellar OM Source – Motel Campo Podcast 006
Arriving at the end of the 00s with a spate of synth-based CD-Rs, Christelle Gualdi’s Stellar OM Source project became a transformative force in techno in the subsequent decade. Much like the balance between her music-making, her career in architecture and her role as a mother, the sounds of Stellar OM Source are always shifting, always hurtling towards some revelatory destination whether that’s through acid, electro or sometimes house. This mix chugs through EBM territory, traverses rough and rugged hardware terrain and propels into a curious orbit, meditative and thrilling all in one.
Adab – 999˚
Sharing their name with Islamic concepts concerning etiquette and practice, Adab أدب appears in our mix highlights column for a second time with this selection of jungle, drum and bass and fast percussion. The Pittsburgh-based, Cleveland-raised DJ and visual artist began to develop their craft after visiting influential queer club night In Training, going on to co-create their own night Heaven Is in You as well as joining Eris Drew’s Motherbeat party series. Over one hour, Adab carves out common ground for veterans such as Photek and Talvin Singh to push tempos with fresh talent Forest Drive West and 33EMYBW. The mood is continuously mutating, the mixing seamless yet never stale, and the results are a total rush.
Elijah & Skilliam – 01012020
The formidable partnership between Elijah and Skilliam continues into the 2020s with a mix manifesto. This New Year’s Day mix is a sequel of sorts from one compiled a decade previously. In the intervening years, the London-based DJs turned their grime blog Butterz into one of the UK’s most vital underground imprints, documented the scene through CD compilations, headed up a longstanding radio show on Rinse and ran a nationwide roaming club night named Jamz. Their collective wisdom culminates in this bombastic half-hour of new tunes from the scene, serving up square waves, seismic bass and bars about protein shakes.
Rrose – Air Texture VII Mix
The Air Texture series sees artists curate compilations of unreleased and new compositions tracing the peripheries of dance and experimental, not-quite-club music. This mix resequences and welds together Rrose’s selections from Air Texture VII. With releases on some of techno’s toughest imprints as well as some of its calmest, Rrose connects electronic music’s academic principles with its aesthetic potential, delivering club-ready wreckers, home-listening drone and ambient performance for art galleries. She says she approached musicians to reflect all sides of their sonic influences for this compilation, with the intention of “pushing the techno/dancefloor artists out of their comfort zones”. Those musicians delivered, with Rrose’s mix demonstrating how fitting it is for club-oriented artists such as Octo Octa and Ron Morelli to share the same space as dedicated experimentalists such as AGF and Charlemagne Palestine.
rRroxymore – DBA podcast 006
Berlin’s Room 4 Resistance collective are a queer and non-binary-led group of artists, organisers and activists committed to further including and supporting marginalised communities in dance music. R4R resident DJ and club music outlier rRoxymore played a set in the chillout room at their recent fifth birthday celebrations, which this mix excerpts. It shares similar themes with her own productions: slow-brewed beats, steady psychedelia and exercises in rhythm from way out left. Traces of soul and jazz trickle through hazy house cuts; consciousness lost within the delay function. Fathoms deep, nearer the very middle of the mix, lies the greatest treasure: an Arab cover of the Still DRE instrumental, complete with MIDI strings and weighty hand drums for the beat.
