TRENCH Radio 106: The Best Mixes Of The Week

Words: James Keith
Photography: Johanna Ghebray

Between SoundCloud, YouTube, Mixcloud and everything else, it can feel like we’re being overwhelmed by an impenetrable, almost 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.

Dive into TRENCH Radio’s best mixes of the week below.

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Saige Sounds w/ Jimmy Smith, moon & Sticky Dub for Balamii

This one won us over with just a short clip posted to the Balamii Instagram a couple of days ago. If you caught Saige’s show with Jjamz last month you’ll know how much fun her sets are, especially when she buddies up with another selector. Often turning the Balamii studio into a full-blown dance, there’s always a big crowd there for her, and with good reason. Her latest show saw her team up with Jimmy Smith, Sticky Dub, and moon as they brought out their best bruk, broken beat and jazzy deep house groovers. And if you like this, then you should probably make your way to The Social in West London tonight where they’ll all be on deck for the Step Steady dance.

Dolenz for Subtle Radio

Although Dolenz is often pinned as the guy connecting the dots between hip-hop and halftime, that doesn’t come close to doing justice to his seamless eclecticism. This week he delivered another smoky, immersive set that’s just as well-suited for pre-gaming as it is for the afters. Here Jeffrey takes us through off-balance rap sizzlers, woozy club chillers, some jazzy numbers, and the occasional crash of D&B thunder. That all may sound pretty disparate, but the threads stitching these various points are all but imperceptible. If you’re not a devoted regular listener to his Subtle Radio show then this is a prime chance to get yourself hooked before catching up on everything you’ve missed.

Bluetoof for Rinse

South London’s Bluetoof returned to the airwaves after making his Leeds debut alongside Jossy Mitsu as Blumitsu. Revered as much for his technical expertise as he is for his actual selections, the Rinse FM resident and Infa Red boss is more often than not drawn to anything with big thumping drums on them. That means techno, hardcore, footwork, hard drum and pretty much anything likely to make your teeth rattle can all be expected. It’s far from just an hour of pure kick drums, though. In fact, the real treats come with the hairpin turns he does into flighty garage sweeteners or slick, futuristic electro, or that dizzying, rolling slab of low-end that he slips in about 32 minutes in.

Kemarr for NTS

Everyone in the music industry has at least a few different hustles on the go; it’s the only way to survive. Kemar Reid, for example, is a graphic designer, visual artist, style don, art director and DJ. He’s also one of the brains behind Lighter Dance alongside James Messiah. Next month, the pair are teaming up with Prestige Pak (Lil C, Zooey Gleaves/Lagoon Femshayma, and Architect are all on the bill) for a big party at Ormside Projects in South London, but ahead of that, Kemarr took to the airwaves for his latest NTS show to give us a little taster of what you might be in for, specifically lots of big, bassy dancehall, reggaeton, gqom and more, from Shaggy to Scratcha DVA and a whole bunch in between.

Kikelomo for Resident Advisor

I wouldn’t normally include a Valentine’s Day-themed mix—especially since that was several days ago—but this one from Oroko Radio founder Kikelomo was too much to resist. It’s labeled a V-Day mix, but it’s far from sappy (she herself even describes the day as a “commercial scam”) and it’s definitely good to go all year round. Eschewing the usual R&B and slow jams for bouncy house music and big club smackers, this is more about love in the wider, more abstract sense. In essence, it’s good old-fashioned, ravey togetherness as it was meant to be.

Aisha Mirza for HÖR Berlin

Another multi-faceted selector on our list and one who seems to have more hours in the day than the rest of us is Aisha Mirza. A member of the Daytimers’ expansive family, we don’t quite have the column space to list everything they get up to, but suffice it to say they’re involved and invested in just about every facet of music, from creation to critiquing. They even founded MISERY, a mental health hub and sober club for QTIBPOC. Anyway, background for the uninitiated out the way, they’re also an unreal selector, this time splicing South Asian with Jersey Club, grime, broken beat, and more—and always with an abundance of charm.


Posted on February 17, 2023