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.

For the past few months, PIRATE.COM have been scouting for new resident DJs to join the station. Last week, they announced that they’d picked their 36 new selectors from the 5000+ applicants. To introduce the new stable to the world, they’ve had each of the new DJs put together a mix and they’ve been putting them out over the past couple of days. Of those, this one from R&B specialist Emma Lou struck a chord, and not just because it’s a warming counter to the sub-standard weather. Featuring gems from NxWorries, multiple Omar tunes, some Erykah, and some Raphael Saadiq, it’s a very promising opening play from Emma Lou.

Also making a radio debut this week was Zero Dijits who played his inaugural show on Subtle Radio. The designer and selector has been a regular fixture on the airwaves up in Leeds, with appearances on LDC Radio and a regular series on Tuff Radio under his belt as well. This maiden trip on Subtle sets the scene with Lauryn Hill’s MTV Unplugged performance of “Water” before shifting gear quite dramatically into some big, juicy house music. Whether or not this is a one-off or the first of many isn’t 100% clear, but it would be a shame if it were the former.

House and garage veteran Elski was back on air this week with another full-bodied slab of garage and 4x4. No frills or themes on this one, just 90-odd minutes of unabashed 2-step joy with some walloping low-end underneath it. A mixture of box-fresh newness and some lesser-spotted gems, listen out for picks from Conducta, DJ Q, MJ Cole, Groove Chronicles, Gemi, Etch, and a few of Elski’s own productions and remixes.

This week saw Bristol pair Kahn & Neek hit the airwaves for a special show to celebrate their recent debut album, Lupus et Ursus. The LP was a long time in the making, having grown from an EP to a series of EPs to an album in its lifespan; in fact, some of the tracks were started way back in 2017. So it’s both a cathartic relief and a triumph to have the album out there. Understandably keen to shout about it from the rooftops, this latest show uses album highlights “Inadequacy”, “Space Mutiny”, “Sho Off” with Mez, and “Rally” with Riko Dan, Killa P, Irah, Long Range, and Armour as a jumping off point before getting into tunes from Darq E Freaker, Walton, President T, Mia Koden and more.

DJ IC’s been a fixture on London’s myriad underground scenes for over two decades now, zipping between scenes and styles as they ebb and flow. More recently, he seems to have really found his groove as the conduit between South African artists and the UK’s appreciative club scenes. The last year or so in particular have brought him more and more attention, and a big part of that is his searing Afro-tech remix of KG’s “Taboo”. So it’s not at all surprising that he decided to drop said remix at the peak of this new DJ mix for Pan-African Music.

Chroma co-founder and Step To resident m.Kwas hit Deptford this week for a breathless, sweat-soaked session of airy, liquid breaks, sugary B’more, slick electro futurism, and just about every shade of crisp, percussive club music. Featuring scorchers from Anz, Tygapaw, OSSX, Skee Mask, there’s not a dud in sight. Best of all, m.Kwas will be at The Glove That Fits in Hackney on the 21st for the next Step To party and it’s devoted entirely to the mighty drum break, from R&B to jungle and everything in between. In other words, roughly as eclectic and broad as this latest mix.