TRENCH Radio 120: The Best Mixes Of The Week

Words: James Keith
Photography: Terna Jogo

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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Elheist for NTS Radio

In recent years, being a multi-genre DJ has become increasingly popular among selectors and there’s no question the anything-could-happen approach gives a certain electricity to the dancefloor, but there aren’t many taking it quite as far as Elheist. A rapper, singer, songwriter, producer, and selector, Elizabeth Osaguona has built a healthy stack of acclaimed hits—and a fanbase that includes Jorja Smith and Tiffany Calver—but away from the mic, she’s also got an increasingly revered NTS show. Here she builds the heat from the ground up, starting with Amapiano and deep house grooves, progressing through some heavier club cuts, before wrapping up with some liquid D&B and a bit of dembow.

Holloway for Rinse FM

Next month (July 7), Holloway is throwing the very first party for his Waylo Records outfit at The Carpet Shop in Peckham. He’ll be joined by Parris, Mosca, and Nadi (not too shabby at all for your label’s first club night). Word has it he’s got a few treats lined up for it, including a bit of A/V magic and, with any luck, some of the unreleased house, garage and bassline productions he’s been sitting on. But before we get to that, he’s been whetting our appetite with his monthly Rinse show. The latest was a roughly 140 affair, sticking mostly to garage with a little bassline, and even a dash of techno snuck in under the radar.

Krotone for Outlook Festival

For the thick end of a decade, Leeds DJ/producer Krotone has been hopping back and forth between various strains of techno, particularly the bassier end of things. He’s playing Outlook Festival in Croatia at the end of July this year and as a taster, he’s put together this mix that goes in a slightly different direction (although he does retain the spirit of those sounds). It’s still got a bellyful of low end behind it, but this time it’s something more akin to his release last year, “Sensing”. Expect predominantly 4x4 garage and dubwise, including cuts from TRG, Introspekt, SP:MC, and more.

Jubilee for Daisychain

A life spent with one foot in NYC and the other in Miami has given Jubilee’s record bag a pretty distinctive identity. A proclivity for low-end frequencies is probably as close as you could come to a unifying element between the Miami bass, electro, rap, techno, and dancehall, as well as our homegrown grime, bassline, garage and D&B, all of which maintains a presence in her sets to this day. Case in point: Magic City CEO’s latest for Daisychain shunts Posthuman between Meat Katie and a Martin Bootyspoon remix and then back to Pangaea and Eleanor, plus jewels from Thys, Addison Groove, Eli Escobar, DJ Swisha and OSSX, Leonce, and a couple of her own.

MikeQ for Sonar Festival

For a lot of people not on the front lines of Ballroom culture, there’s a really good chance that the first time you did hear it, it was thanks to MikeQ—especially if we’re talking the blog era. And if you’re only just hearing about Ballroom because of Beyonce, well, MikeQ still deserves some credit because he’s sampled on “Pure/Honey”. Anyway, Mike’s been a tireless force for Ballroom, pushing the culture relentlessly, and it still feels like he’s warming up. Here he throws in some of his most iconic creations including, of course, the Renaissance cut that samples him, some other key tracks that informed her album, and a few golden NY house classics.

xqz for Radio Raheem Milano

This roundup always feels a bit naked without a bit of jungle or D&B to take you to the verge of arrhythmia at the end, but this one from Italian producer xqz is a little different. A lot of his other sets tend to lean towards hazy, jazz-inspired beats with a flair for the atmospheric, but this D&B session feels almost like an album, building the mood gradually at the beginning, dipping back into more laid-back territory towards the end before bringing it back to a crescendo. You’ll have no trouble breaking a sweat, but it’s just as effective away from the dancefloor.


Posted on June 02, 2023