7 must-hear mixes from May 2019

It’s almost impossible to keep on top of everything that SoundCloud, Mixcloud and online radio has to offer. In our monthly column, FACT guides you through the must-hear mixes of the last 30 days, whether you want a club session to warm you up for the weekend, ambient soothers or a set of vinyl-only obscurities.

As we lug our decrepit meatsuits into festival season – Christ, the sun! my eyes!! – it becomes more necessary than ever to attend to our wellbeing occasionally, and what better #selfcare like an hour in the hands of Gigi Masin’s record collection? The ambient magician picked out oddball beauties for his label bosses at Music From Memory on one very refined mix this month, which he recommends for “a sunny morning in Venice”. Alternatively, for the post-fest Monday mornings when bright lights and sudden movements are about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit, try zoning out to Leo James’ drone-heavy mix for Melbourne’s Sanpo Disco.

For those made of sterner stuff, the new mix series UK Drill Essentials, as selected by Moves Recordsings, is worth adding to your bookmarks – the first transmission includes Skengdo, Digga D and more.

And so to the big seven, led this month by an absolute rager from Knightwerk’s Bored Lord and some agile, adventurous techno from Moscow. There’s also a home listening sesh from rRoxymore, mahraganat from Cairo, sophisticated gloom selected by Logos, Foodman in chaos mode and deranged grooves from Bandcloud.

Bored Lord live at Directory in LA on 4.20.19
Sweat-dripping drums and kicks from a Knightwerk talent

It’s not a good night out unless you’re wringing the actual sweat out of your clothes when the lights go up. Agree? Good. Now, acquaint yourself with Memphis-born, LA-based Bored Lord. Formerly a vaporwave-adjacent producer making glitchy bedroom electronics with futuristic visuals, she now releases vicious club bangers on the increasingly essential Knightwerk label and, it turns out, is an absolutely killer DJ. Listen out for her brilliant ‘Spit In Your Mouth’ track opening up the session – recorded live at Directory in LA – before an onslaught of hard drums, fat kicks and breakbeats from the grubbier end of the dancefloor.

Nikita Zabelin for Groove
Playful, brainy belters from Russia’s techno talent pool

Moscow’s Nikita Zabelin is the kind of DJ-slash-producer who references Gilles Deleuze and sinusoidal curves when he’s explaining his music – but, as is often the case, once those highbrow concepts are beaten into shape for the dancefloor it’s just about getting on with it and finding the zone. Fans of Nina Kraviz’s recent direction – playing absolutely anything she wants, because it’s all techno in the end – will enjoy the playfulness and variety on offer in this otherwise nails-hard mix from the трип affiliate, all of which comes from new Russian artists.

rRoxymore for Strange Sounds From Beyond
Stem-tickling curios for early summer evenings

The incredibly talented rRoxymore digs into the lesser-aired corners of her collection on this listening mix for Strange Sounds From Beyond. Diggers, roll your sleeves up: one intrepid SC commenter has laid the groundwork for us, identifying a twinkling fourth world groove from Carlos Maria Trindade & Nuno Canavarro and ’80s London digidub from Selah Collins. You get the idea: this is stem-tickling stuff for early summer evenings.

Foodman for Noisey
Maverick chaos from Japan’s shape-shifting footworker

You’re gonna shut up, sit down and get this injected into your brain, Kubrick-style, because it’s good for you. Japanese footwork maverick Foodman empties his brain into the mixer for a half-hour voyage through walloping gqom, icicle-sharp electro-minimalism and batty kuduro, among other eclectic picks (Bright Eyes, argh). A big up must be directed to Noisey for maintaining one of the weirdest mix series on the web.

Bandcloud presents Missives (Mixed by Peach)
A deep voyage through cult mailout’s first compilation

Every Friday, Dublin’s Aidan Hanratty sends out an email containing the best new music he’s found that week. His innately good taste and endless passion for weird new finds makes it one of the only personal newsletters worth bothering with (sorry, people) and this week Bandcloud reached a new milestone with the release of its second compilation, Missives, featuring deep, deranged grooves and the odd bit of #spoopy ambient from Violet, CCL x Flora FM, Yamaneko and more. It’s eclectic stuff, so props to Peach for finding a compelling route through these tunes.

DJ Haram’s Rage Radio Cairo Concepts Takeover
Rowdy, belting mahraganat from Egypt

Philly’s DJ Haram gives over her Rinse slot to a cadre of Egyptian artists to mark the release of Cairo Concepts, a compilation featuring some of the rowdiest mahraganat-based club tunes you’ve ever heard, plus collaborations with Haram and Melbourne’s DJ Plead. Expect big, heavy, massive drums and vein-popping levels of MC energy from Cairo Concepts founder Phil Battiekh and local producers 3Phaz and tor5y.

Logos for DJ Mag
Immaculate darkness from the weightless guru

Following up his evocative second album Imperial Flood, which saw him move into more abstract, power-ambient territory, Different Circles boss Logos delivers a mix that places the album’s influences, including T++ and Terrence Dixon, alongside doomy belters from Forest Drive West, Shifted, Skudge and Autechre. With that sort of tracklist it was always going to ring FACT’s bell but the haunted (even hauntological) atmosphere he’s created makes it much more than the sum of its pitch-black parts.

Chal Ravens is a freelance journalist. Find her on Twitter.

Olivea Kelly is an independent artist and designer. Find her on Instagram or at opk.studio.