TRENCH Radio: 10 Of The Best Mixes This Week

SoundCloud (while it still lives) can be an impenetrable, infinite stream of music, often of varying quality. You need a soundtrack to start your weekend right, but you don’t have the requisite lifetime to trawl through the week’s new DJ mixes. To help you out, we’ve done the busy work for you. We’ll be running this series every single Friday of every single week to bring you the very finest house music, grime, techno, bashment, R&B, trap, D&B, Amapiano, and no doubt a bunch of stuff that doesn’t have a name yet.

First up, Ruby Savage kept the frost at bay with two hours of invigorating soul, jazzy groovers and a good chunk of relaxed house music; North London pair Ivy Lab toasted the release of their recent Infinite Falling Ground album with a mix of that kind of cosmic, lo-fi cruisers, at least half of them their own; Cahal spun together reggaeton and Amapiano sizzle, some jazzy house, a touch of ragga, some beefy 2-step, all of it seamlessly united by the common thread of warmth and energy; L.A-based Maral slipped from the ominous trudge of Burial and Andy Stott into a freewheeling rally of club edits with some curveball cameos from Fat Joe, David Lynch and King Tubby; in one of at least three new mixes that dropped this week, Fliss Mayo zipped through several dozen shades of fidgety house, woozy breakbeats, slippery electro wobbles, but always with a fat stack of bass; Beatriarchy co-founder Kitsta kept her latest set focused largely around the overlapping worlds of garage, breaks and electro, balancing heads-down chuggers with wild-eyed, ravier moments; DJ Voices upheld her "energy and drama over genre" mantra with an hour that veered from juiced-up breakbeats, sludgy dubstep, a touch of funky, some 2-step, before finishing on a melodic jungle apex; Argentinian producer, designer and promoter Blixa warmed us up for his set at Origins x The Cause tonight with a mix of grimey, techy, bassbin rattlers from Si Begg, J:Kenzo, Silkie, Nick León, DJ Godfather and more; Lisbon selector DJ Ki dipped once again into the grizzled Amen breaks and earthquake low-end he’s been importing into Portugal for nearly two decades, including some surprising moments from Calibre and Forest Drive West; and finally, Rhi Spect dug out a mix from last year that included a whole stack of vintage jungle from beloved giants like Andy C, Shy FX, and the almighty 4Hero.

This is TRENCH Radio’s best mixes of the week.

Photography: Claire Lawrie


Posted on November 18, 2022