TRENCH Radio 110: The Best Mixes Of The Week

Words: James Keith
Photography: Cojos

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.

💥💥💥

Albertina’s ‘Waistline Afrolatina/Amapiano’ Mix

The connections between Amapiano and Afro-house have been well-mined this past couple of years (as has the even more natural Amapiano/gqom link), and there’s doubtless plenty more fun to be had with it, but this new mix from Albertina finds a different crossover. As the title suggests, this one sets the South African sound against Afro-Latin rhythms, including a couple of gems from Soweto-hailing singer and dancer Kamo Mphela and even Skepta’s reggaeton-leaning “Lit Like This”. Albertina puts it best when she says, “Perfect for a whine and a sauvignon or a magnum”.

Arthi for Boiler Room

As part of this year’s London Fashion Week, Boiler Room and Moncler linked up for a surreal-looking event in West London. Featuring sets from p-rallel, A.G, Kemarr, Crash-Tracy, Arthi, and Taylah Elaine, it was a pretty eclectic showing from all involved. House, garage, ‘80s pop, breaks, R&B, it all get a look in. For us, it was this set from journalist, dancer and selector Arthi that just edged out in front. There are quite a few edits and bootlegs here—the 2-step version of Little Simz’s “Gorilla” was an obvious highlight—but the City Girls/Daniel Bedingfield blend was what really cemented her place on this list.

OSSX for FACT Magazine

Forged in the fires of the East Coast’s sprawling and multi-dimensional club scenes, OSSX—Equiss, Lektor Scopes and Elise—have made it a point of pride to find unifying threads in seemingly disparate global club sounds. More often than not, that common element tends to be ‘anything that gets your heart racing as quickly as possible’—and that’s true of their latest mix. Philly Club, UK garage, vintage hardcore, and some of the heavier, breaksier club sounds coming out of Florida all bump up against each other here before they stick the landing with Styles P’s ode to getting blitzed.

Faux Poly w/ Kassian & Emanuel for Balamii

Steering the good ship Faux Poly, label heads Kassian, aka Warren Cummings and Joe Danvers, brought in New Zealander Emanuel for their latest show. A storming blend of techno and jungle (plus lots more besides), it’s pretty indicative of the duo and their label, not to mention a taste of the busy release schedule they have lined up for its second year. Emanuel’s dubby, breaksy selections fit right in here, which is presumably why they drafted him in for the bouncy breaks remix of Jay Carder’s “Eva’s Stoned” that coincidentally dropped today on Faux Poly.

Eddie Otchere for Kindred

Eddie Otchere is rightly renowned for his absolutely crucial and exhaustive photography documenting hip-hop in the US and jungle in the UK. He recently collaborated with author Paul Terzulli on a book and compilation focusing on the latter, and this week he popped down to the Kindred store to dip into that subject once again for an hour-long set. A lesson in focusing on the melodies and grooves of jungle without sacrificing the toughness, he also finds space to chuck in a few doses of ‘90s hip-hop as a bonus.


Posted on March 17, 2023