TRENCH Radio 108: The Best Mixes Of The Week

Words: James Keith
Image via Instagram

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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Sicaria for Keep Hush

The self-styled ‘Moroccan princess of dubstep’ Sicaria, was invited by Freshta to close down the Keep Hush night she’d curated. Also on the bill were Cicely Grace, Freshta herself, and Raji Rags who brought Killa P and Manga Saint Hilare along for mic duties. A multi-genre marathon, we got breaks, electro, techno, bassline, loads of grime, some jungle, but to close things out Sicaria (now a solo venture after the two parted ways last year and she dropped the ‘sound’ part) stepped up with a something really special. Mixing semitone North African and Middle Eastern melodies into the low-end wub, it was a mix of old and new dubstep, but one that felt entirely her own. There have been some whispers about a dubstep renaissance this year, and with any luck, it’ll sound a little something like this.

Hirma for HÖR Berlin

As part of the Zagaza Collective—alongside her pals Shalanda, Tanya, and Sandra—Swiss-based Hirma Ndayiziga and co use DJing, storytelling and performance art to explore diasporic histories and what they call the “Black collective art consciousness. Flying solo as a DJ, Hirma explores a lot of those same themes in her selections, taking us hurtling through the diaspora across the UK, Europe, Africa, North America and more. Amapiano’s often a recurring presence in her sets and this time she mixes that with techno, garage, UK funky, Afrobeats, often layering up the tracks and finding surprising connections as she does so. Well-informed and technical, most importantly it’s also a surefire vibe-supplier.

DJ DNDY for Grime & Grind

Mr T Remix’s Grime & Grind series has been one of the most fun additions to the grime world lately. Focusing on a different theme for each show, whether it’s chopped & screwed grime or R&G, it’s given the world of 140 a much-needed injection of freshness. This week, MTR invited DJ DNDY in for a power-hour of grime mashups and it’s just been uploaded to SoundCloud. It’s difficult to pull out highlights, but the grimey sped up version of Shenseea’s “Bad Alone” and “C From T” by CASisDEAD (or Castro as he was then) are probably the biggest reloadables. Utter filth.

Gemi w/ Sammy Virji for Reprezent

Straddling the overlapping worlds of garage and bassline, Gemi and Sammy Virji have shaken up both worlds a lot lately. High energy and with an aversion to the po-faced and overly serious, their productions and their DJ sets are constant reminders of the fun that should always be at the core of the two scenes. Finding time between jet-setting missions, the two new-gen bass peddlars went halves on a radio show this week. It’s all good stuff, but the bassline remix of Louis Armstrong’s seductive La Vie En Rose that Virji opens with is by up their with the most outrageous we’ve heard in a very long time.

Bok Bok for Rinse FM

With all the new additions to the Rinse resident roster, there’s been a lot to take in this week. In amongst new faces like HudMo, WIZE and I.Jordan, Bok Bok put together this all-too-welcome look at what he’s been cooking up with the Night Slugs lot. This new set packs in a massive stack of the dance floor gems the labels got coming up, including treats from Hysterics, Egyptrixx, OSSX, Ronnie Loko, Karen Nyame KG, Zaida Zane, and half a dozen scorchers from the top dog himself. There’s also a good few reworks of label classics like the two new versions of last year’s “Ouai”, Polo & NKC’s take on “Melba’s Call” and JLSXND7RS’ remix of “Silo Pass”.

Kampire for NTS

Kampire’s recent Boiler Room set in Mumbai very narrowly missed the cut last week (and it’s still worth checking out, not least for the inspired combination of “WAP” and something we can only describe as Jersey Banghra). But she was back on the NTS airwaves this week with a show built largely around Amapiano and gqom thunder. Listen out for big and bassy cuts from homegrown heroes Scratchclart, NOIRE and DJ Polo, Arma, and Neana. Plus Kelis and TNGHT collide on an ingenious Paul Mond flip at the halfway point.


Posted on March 03, 2023