TRENCH Radio 137: The Best Mixes Of The Week

Words: James Keith
Photography: Alba Ruperez

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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Mikey G’s ‘Speed Garage Revival Vol. 4’ Mix

Back with the fourth volume in his ongoing Speed Garage Revival series, Brum-born, Leicester-based Mikey G delivered a much-needed adrenaline spike this week. Nosebleed 4x4 stompers are the order of the day here, including a particularly super-charged Ms Dynamite edit and a surprising bassline take on Eminem no less. He’s still regularly banging out D&B and house mixes, and they’re just as worth checking out, but hopefully he’s got at least one more volume from this series up his sleeve too.

Ayy Den for Boiler Room

Back in August, Ayy Den welcomed Boiler Room to Manchester with a far-reaching, multi-genre throwdown at the Soup Factory alongside Abeena, Aya, D. Clemente, FUMU, Rainy Miller and Iceboy Violet. Turning the energy straight up to 10 and keeping it there, she stirs in bruk, Jersey Club, UK funky, bassline and so much more besides. It’s all gold, of course, but two highlights leap out: a wobbly edit of Gwen Stefani and, perhaps best of all, there’s even a cameo from none other than the Wealdstone Raider.

Oblig for Music Sphere

Last weekend, Oblig made his long overdue Newcastle debut with a set for Music Sphere at World Headquarters. Flanked on the night by Yorkshire DJ and producer Dyslecta and Reef founder Darwin, it’s a prime example of just how exciting UK dancefloors are right now, this one features grime, dubstep, techno, a few other shades of club music to boot. It also offers yet more proof of just how well grime can fit with techno, including a particularly heavy Novelist edit. There’s also a stone-cold classic from Addison Groove along with some gems from Jme, Mez, Jorja, and more.

Kikelomo for DJ Mag

As a resident on Rinse and co-founder of Oroko Radio, London-born, Berlin-based Kikelomo has a lot on her plate. It does, however, mean she has her ear glued to the ground, something that always shines through in her sets. Another core tenet of her mixes is the wide span of genres and tempos. This latest mix, for example, gets things going with some warm-blooded house music before gradually upping the intensity for a jumpy, breaks-heavy finish.

Antagonist for The Forgotten

Having started off on pirate radio as a teenager, Antagonist palette’s evolved immeasurably over the years, dabbling in a bunch of different genres, before ultimately settling on this darker take on D&B. That seems to have crystallised when his first productions under the Antagonist moniker, something he continues to explore across releases on R&S Records, Samurai Music and his own imprint Discipline. This latest mix sticks largely to that territory, slipping seamlessly between high-intensity breaks and moodier cooldowns. Bring on the gloom!


Posted on October 06, 2023