RA News

I was the News Editor of Resident Advisor from April 2018 – October 2020, when I was made redundant due to the pandemic (deep sigh). There, I managed a team of staff and freelance writers based around the world for 24/7 news coverage. I wrote and edited thousands (I mean that very literally) of news posts ranging from quick-hit blogs to longer, in-depth news features.

The wide-range of topics I/we covered included: music releases and updates, local government policy news, venues/events, obituaries, streaming, and the culture at large. Of course, my last months at RA were filled with wall-to-wall pandemic coverage as it ravaged the industry and artists’ livelihoods while the future of venues hung on the government‘s every move.

I couldn’t possibly link to every story I wrote and edited, but please find a thorough yet incomplete outline of my work at RA after the jump.

RA’s Decade In Review: 2010-19

My contributions to Resident Advisor’s decade retrospective package for the 2010s, published throughout January 2020.

Top Mixes of the 2010s

Beautiful Swimmers – Untitled (The Trilogy Tapes, 2015)

We’re so lucky to have Beautiful Swimmers. One of the most consistently positive forces of the decade, whether through their labels (Andrew Field-Pickering’s Future Times, Ari Goldman’s World Building), their position at the center of DC’s expanding community of labels and artists (1432R, Peoples Potential Unlimited, Dreamcast, Soso Tharpa), or their contagious presence behind the decks, dancing and laughing as the other mixes in a tune. While being plenty busy solidifying their labels’ stamps on the ’10s, the Swimmers laid down their own legacy: their “joyride” of a debut album, a handful of quality singles, bonkers mixes official and unofficial. None left more of a mark than their mixtape for The Trilogy Tapes in 2015.

To say the limited-release two-sided mix, just under 90 minutes long, caused a stir would be an understatement. Heads tried their best to fill in the tracklist, though MixesDB still has a fair few question marks. Max D’s edit of the 1991 Watt Noize track “It’s My Life” inspired such a frenzy that it amassed a dedicated following and upwards of 70,000 streams on a YouTube rip before it finally got an official release by Warriors Dance in 2018. The Rebles’ soca twist on “Sweetest Taboo” by Sade is another one that inevitably got reissued by Soundway Records last year after resale prices crept well past $300. Yohan Square’s 1991 jam “Love Of Life (Genesis Mix)” is the peak, with an infectious wavy beat and lyrics that make you smile: “Two people, in love… how nice.” But adding to the exclusionary culture of overly expensive rarities is the opposite of their agenda. “What I like so much about DJs like Beautiful Swimmers is they play killer house records, but they’re often $2 house records,” Tako Reyenga told RA in 2015. With the right headspace, maybe you, too, could affordably crate-dig your way to a gem-filled tracklist worthy of a Swimmers set, though their sound, flow and vibe will always be one of a kind.

Conducta – Kiwi Krush (2019)

Conducta wants to take you on a ride through UK garage’s new wave. Truly, there are few better for the job. Often spotted with a massive grin behind the decks, the Bristol artist makes for an enthusiastic, plugged-in guide. Conducta only launched Kiwi Rekords in 2019, and already it’s racked up a number of garage hits and a growing circle of exciting DJs and producers (including Sharda, Prescribe Da Vibe and Sammy Virji), pitting Kiwi at the center. If The Kiwi Manifesto, Conducta’s introductory mix for label, was the low-down, Kiwi Krush is the thrown-down. Starting out the gate with AJ Tracey’s smash “Ladbroke Grove,” the first of seven of Conducta’s own productions, is not a move for the mild. Kiwi Krush is a “state of play,” as Andrew Ryce previously put it, for “NUKG,” mixed from all unreleased goodies in Conducta’s arsenal (some have since gotten an official release, the rest we must still patiently wait for). It’s nostalgic for UK garage’s heyday but far from retrograde, thick and heavy but not too serious, fresh and even sweet (check the label name) without being saccharine.

Throughout Kiwi Krush‘s 61 minutes, energies are through the roof but you never get worn out. Each track grabs you with a catchy melody (Yemi’s “Back To You”) or deep, wobbly bassline (Anz’s “Open The Curtains Sis”), switching gears before overstaying its welcome in either mood, with some spin-backs and fader chops for good measure. And since it opened with a pop tune, why not bookend the mix with another? You’d never know Jorja Smith’s “Goodbyes” was originally a heart-rending acoustic ballad from the optimistic spin Conducta puts on it, now standing in as a send-off. Maybe the mix’s lowest point is when it begins to fade out here, a wink by a track about unexpected endings. More fitting still, one of the last clear lyrics you can hear on Kiwi Krush is Smith singing, “How do we grow, if you’re not moving with us?” You’ll want to keep moving with NUKG.

Top Reissues of the 2010s

Alice Coltrane – World Spirituality Classics (2017)

The talent and impact of Alice Coltrane isn’t one that can be neatly packaged in one reissue (nor a two-paragraph blurb). That’s why this decade saw nearly every one of her albums repressed for a new generation of appreciators. The most striking of which came from Luaka Bop, the New York label founded by David Byrne. World Spirituality Classics 1: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda compiles four cassette albums she made in the ’80s and ’90s, primarily for the community at the Sai Anantam Ashram, which she founded in 1983 and lead until her death in 2007. It was released ten years after her passing, though members of her ashram would prefer to use the word ascension. (Soon after this reissue’s release, the ashram burned down in the 2018 California Woosley wildfire. It had closed the previous year.) One of those cassettes, Turiya Sings, marked the first time Coltrane recorded her voice and the first time the members of the ashram heard her voice—because God asked her to sing.

Alice Coltrane’s 1968 debut solo album, A Monastic Trio, made in the wake of her late husband John’s sudden passing, lays bare her grief as she begins her solo journey to spirituality, marrying the sound of the harp he inadvertently left for her with her jazz and Detroit hometown foundations. (She worked alongside fellow visionary Pharoah Sanders on the record.) The 1971 spiritual jazz masterpiece Journey In Satchidananda sees Coltrane still grappling with her husband’s death, though her genre-defying material, again featuring Sanders, reaches further past earthly limits. Over the next decade, her work became devotional as she evolved into Swamini A.C. Turiyasangitananda. At Sai Anantam Ashram, she made music for, and only for, her community and, finally, we hear joy. So much joy. That’s the person that World Spirituality Classics wants to properly introduce you to. There’s rhythmic call-and-response chanting by ashram members, radiant organ chords, stirring string orchestrations and that harp, now jubilant—all anchored by her commanding (in presence only) yet gentle and careful voice, as if she’s reassuring members that they can put their faith in her. It’s wonderful the rest of the world knows they can now, too.

Pauline Anna Strom – Trans-Millenia Music (2017)

I was in Commend, RVNG Intl.’s Lower East Side storefront and community space, when founder Matt Werth got a call from Pauline Anna Strom. She gave Werth the OK for RVNG to reissue her works, or at least that’s what my memory leads me to believe given the excitement with which Werth then told me about Strom and the project: her New Age ’70s roots (which she later abandoned as it devolved into “bullshit propaganda”); her minimally issued, difficult-to-locate records with bootleg rereleases; and her lifelong blindness and aversion to braille. It’s that enthusiastic sharing that makes each RVNG (and, in this case, ReRVNG, the label’s dedicated reissue series) release feel special, intentional and intimate: Hey, I’ve got this incredible record, and I can’t wait for you to hear it. I really hope you like it.

Released in 2017, Trans​-​Millenia Music collects six of Strom’s seven albums, sequencing the tracks without regard to chronological order. This is fitting for Strom’s music, which feels steeped in the past and future while also rejecting being pinned down to any era at all. That’s on purpose—the title of her first LP, Trans-Millenia Consort, means “crossing-time companion.” Through shimmering arpeggios, lush field-recordings and samples, and otherworldly synths that deserve more than the “cosmic” descriptor, Strom’s soundscapes transcend the San Francisco New Age scene that inspired her to buy her first electric organ. Trans​-​Millenia Music was far from RVNG’s first careful reissue and there were more still to come before the ’10s were out (sub-label Freedom To Spend’s 2019 reissue of Ernest Hood’s Neighborhoods was also notably warm and poignant), but the meeting of RVNG’s loving sharing and Pauline Anna Strom’s timeless, healing compositions was a moment to treasure.

Top Albums of the 2010s

Laurel Halo – Quarantine (2012)

Not quite pop, not quite ambient, this artfully unsettling debut album solidified Laurel Halo as one of the decade’s most forward-thinking and important artists.

Julia Holter – Have You In My Wilderness (2015)

Julia Holter is one of the most critical avant-garde composers and artists of her generation, and while her other albums exist in the mistier realm of pop experimentalism, this one is a special, bright moment in her catalogue—a crisp burst of light filled with life and longing.

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith – EARS (2016)

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith is a force with the Buchla, though her music feels free of any weight while she “combines modular texture, deft orchestration and alien vocals into one tidy package,” as Matt McDermott previously described her breakout album—”an impressive feat by any standard.”

Top Tracks of the 2010s

India Jordan – DN4 (2019)

This standout from India Jordan’s jaw-dropping debut EP captures their dual strengths—building a head-swirling atmosphere and ravey warped synths that burrow deep—in one urgent belter you’ll desperately need to listen to over and over again.

Find all of RA’s year-in-review coverage here.

RA’s Best of 2019

My contributions to Resident Advisor’s 2019 end-of-year package, published the week of December 9, 2019.

Top Tracks of 2019

Warm-Up

DJ Python – Lampara

Listening to DJ Python’s music feels like floating. It’s soothing and a little whimsical, plus there’s a depth of texture that gently hints at something more intense. On Derretirse, Brian Pineyro presents the dreamiest version of his characteristic deep reggaeton sound. Wavy opener “Lampara” is perfectly placed, welcoming you in pulses of glimmering synths and soft, slow drums. It eases into the more moving tracks on the record while also being a comforting moment to hang out in. “Lampara” puts the “warm” in warm up.

4 AM Rollers

CCL x Flora FM – Liquify Interference

One of two collaborations from the Seattle-based artists this year (the other being “Winding Plod,” which lives up to its name, off Bandcloud’s excellent charity compilation), “Liquidity Interference” lands directly on the dance floor. The drums are crisp, and there’s so much space you can almost hear each percussion hit. Then melodic synths soar overhead, bringing a lightness to those hours when the music has taken over control of your movement.

Music At The Cutting Edge

Amazondotcom – A Flower, Nocturnal And Permanent

For a quick track, “A Flower, Nocturnal And Permanent” feels surprisingly at ease. Amazondotcom paces manipulated samples of birds chirping, leaves rustling and crowds muttering with blunt, jangly percussion and soft wobbles to let the space between the elements set the tone. Still, the pulse is more than persuasive enough to make dance floors move.

The Sound Of Summer Festivals

Peggy Gou – Starry Night

Peggy Gou couldn’t have set the scene for this tune more clearly. “Starry Night,” a wavy piano house tune flecked with acid lines and vocals mulling the fleeting nature of popularity, is lush and inviting like a humid evening breeze. As slick as shimmery house comes (with a dazzling video to match), it funnels all of Gou’s strengths into one radiant package.

Top Mixes of 2019

Lena Willikens & Vladimir Ivkovic – Live: Nuits Sonores 2019

Headlining festival sets don’t always work outside the original setting—as with well-timed jokes, you kinda had to be there. But leave it to Lena Willikens and Vladimir Ivkovic to make their three-hour Nuits Sonores odyssey suit nearly any context. It’s meditative, weird and, lest we forget the main room dance floor it soundtracked, banging. Filled with the pair’s characteristic slower selections, this mix feels like swimming inside a crystal ball.

CCL – Unsound Podcast 56

CCL called this mix a “regurgitated memory” of their Honcho Campout set, reflecting on the “more twisted hours… before the light had come up.” That predawn unpredictability is what’s so exciting here. One highlight is their adept pulling back with Codek’s “Closer” before diving into a Metalheadz Wax Doctor rush. With these unreal transitions, and touches like the experimental Polish music that bookends the mix (a nod to Unsound) CCL shows the careful craft that sets them apart.

Find all of RA’s year-in-review coverage here.

RA’s Best of 2018

My contributions to Resident Advisor’s 2018 end-of-year package, published the week of December 10, 2018.

Top Tracks of 2018

object blue – Act Like It Then

Object Blue released two excellent EPs this year. “Act Like It Then,” from her debut release, is teasingly antagonistic, and samples Cardi B, one of the year’s most commanding personalities. Rattling percussion amps up the chaos until a vocal line, spoken in Mandarin, briefly slows everything down for a moment of introspection.

Marie Davidson – Work It

On “Work It,” Marie Davidson is your motivational speaker. “Now, I don’t wanna see any fake-ass workers / I need real builders.” Neither the assembly line rhythms nor Davidson’s charming voice will let you clock out now. A standout from Davidson’s Working Class Woman, “Work it” sounds like a health goth SoulCycle anthem for the late capitalism era—in the best possible way.

Schacke – Automated Lover

Last month we called Kulør 001—the first release on Courtesy’s new label—”an excellent primer on Copenhagen’s fast techno scene,” which nods to the city’s trance era three decades prior. The compilation’s highlight, “Automated Lover” by Schacke, is crunchy and dark, until labyrinthine synths wind through the atmosphere to create something as heavy as it is weightless.

Top Albums of 2018

Julia Holter – Aviary

It’s easy to get wrapped up in the intense, loud moments of Aviary, when atonal chords clash or Julia Holter’s voice soars over her orchestra playing at forte. But it’s the quiet moments in this 90-minute, cinematic masterwork that are most affecting and lasting, the meditative spaces between the overwhelming outbursts. The droning organ on “Another Dream,” the sweet strings of “Words I Heard,” and the gentle piano carrying “In Garden Muteness” are shelter when the rest of the world sounds like “Everyday Is An Emergency.”

Find all of RA’s year-in-review coverage here.

RA Podcast, Radio and Panel Features

A recap of the presenting work I’ve done for Resident Advisor on its own podcast, BBC Radio 6 Music, NTS Radio and at the Tate Modern in London.

Resident Advisor’s Exchange: EX.478 Critics Roundtable (October 2, 2019)

The Critics Roundtable gives Resident Advisor‘s editorial staff a chance to go in-depth on the year in electronic music thus far. This time around, RA‘s London and North American teams join forces with editor-in-chief Aaron Coultate, staff writer Kiana Mickles, news editor Marissa Cetin and North American editor Andrew Ryce comparing perspectives on what they’ve witnessed in the field this year.

As ever, the conversation covers each staff member’s favourite new releases, DJ sets, parties and emerging sonic trends. Standout EPs from India Jordan and Schacke stand beside key long-players from the likes of Coil and Barker while we also hear of first-hand experiences from crucial parties like Melting Point and Honcho Campout.

BBC Radio 6 Music: Electric Ladyland (now The 6 Mix) with Nemone (January 11, 2019)

Nemone returns with the usual eclectic mix of new and old skool dance, electronica, beats, breaks, funk and hip-hop. This week we’re joined by Marissa Cetin, news editor from Resident Advisor who’ll be guiding us through the artists and DJs to look out for in 2019. Nemone also looks back at Fever Ray’s seminal and spooky self-titled album, which was born 10 years ago tomorrow.

The program is currently unable to stream, but view the archived broadcast page here.

NTS Radio: Resident Advisor – 2018 Memories (December 13, 2018)

Resident Advisor staff call into the London studio to run through their favourite records and dance floor moments of 2018 with a special two hour show.

London Tate Modern’s Uniqlo Tate Lates: Resident Advisor Art Chat (August 31, 2018)

Resident Advisor’s news editor Marissa Cetin discusses challenges and opportunities emerging music collectives and venues face in London’s party scene with Eugene Wild, cofounder of The Cause, and Nadine Artois of Pxssy Palace.

The talk was not recorded, but find archived event information via the Tate Modern’s Facebook page and the RA Feed.

RA EP Review: Soso Tharpa – Decode/Sea Mojo

Published May 6, 2020 on Resident Advisor

The Washington, DC artist’s debut rings loud and clear.

There’s not much more to want from a track than for it to fill you with glee, itching to hear it anywhere and bursting to share it with anyone. That’s what Soso Tharpa’s debut 12-inch does. The A-side’s thick bassline rolls under a sharp sample of Floorfilla’s “Anthem #2,” that’s as tangy as the track’s acid lines. For all the heavy-hitting elements, it’s crisp and airy (chirping clusters of woodwinds doing the job), filled with that funky freshness signature to Future Times. B-side “Sea Mojo” serves as a complementary cooldown, washing over as it winds through retro-cosmic synth swells, preparing you to flip the record and as you crave to ride the wave all over again. But “Decode” is the record’s true weapon, a peak-time winner that’ll set the room off without feeling like a cheap trick.

Read the single review on RA.

RA EP Review: Finn & India – H.U.R.L / F.U.R.L

Published January 7, 2020 on Resident Advisor

Two on-form producers closed out 2019 with glistening club tracks.

Local Action’s final release of the ’10s united two artists, Finn and India Jordan, who spent most of them DJing together. The feeling of comfort that comes with working with someone so closely could be what makes this single so enjoyable. Finn’s finesse for chopped vocal samples meshes with Jordan’s warped, atmospheric synths for two crisp tracks that feel like a brisk winter morning breeze.

Neither “H.U.R.L” nor “F.U.R.L” are flat out raging, but they don’t need to be. Finn and Jordan have already conqueredthat this year. Weightless riffs intertwine with pulses of UK rave, and there’s a winding synth on the second track that gets as close to shining as you can with sound. (I imagine it’s the noise light might make when twisting and reflecting through a prism.) For two producers who spent 2019 on dance floors, H.U.R.L / F.U.R.L finds them floating in the air above them.

Read the single review on RA.

RA Album Review: Relaxer – Coconut Grove

Published October 25, 2019 on Resident Advisor

Dreamlike, techno-adjacent dance floor tracks with a reflective bent.

Daniel Martin-McCormick’s music has always left space—for movement, for emotion, for breath. Since fully taking on the Relaxer name in 2017, he’s let his art take up even more. He’s never abandoned the twisted depth of his dubby club music as Ital, but his output as Relaxer lets out a deep sigh. Coconut Grove could broadly be described as techno, though he rarely burrows into its harsher grounds. Of course, there are shades of exceptions—weaving together different genres is one of Martin-McCormick’s strengths. The only thing out and out ugly here is the alarming climax of “Cold Green.” The anxious melody gradually swells into blaring sirens—making you wonder if the track had been that unsetting the whole time—before disappearing into the distance as it ends. “Um” also revisits this urgency with a synth signal that flashes, distorts and fades before getting too stressful.

Martin-McCormick once compared his ideal music to an ecosystem. He told Will Lynch in 2016: “There’s a space that I kind of imagined at one point, as I was beginning to make music as an adult. It was like an ecosystem of sound. A hissing, very humid mental landscape. I could hear the music I was making not just as layers of parts or instruments, but as an interacting ecosystem of sounds, the sounds pushing each other to create a breathing environment.” He’s landed in that sweet spot, as Relaxer, in Coconut Grove, which carries many strains of life working with and against each other in order to thrive. There’s even “A Serpent In The Garden” in the form of the album’s slithering, stunning opener. Its hurrying pace feels like you’re trying to outrun something under the cover of bright moonlight.

This Relaxer LP follows the project’s only other full-length, the 2018 ambient and experimental cassette, A Family Disease. That record lives on in Coconut Grove‘s handful of soundscape interludes, which never feel too much like pacing tools. One such track, “Steeplechase,” builds to the point where you suddenly notice the beat hasn’t dropped and now need it to, but it doesn’t feel like Relaxer’s withholding. In another nod to past lives, Martin-McCormick puts his eerie yet smooth touch on vocal samples with “Born From The Beyond,” which sounds like it’s swirling inside a crystal ball. The appropriately titled “Breaking The Waves” hits on a similar soaring feel, sweeping you up in the gentle high-end breeze.

The introspective, dreamlike finale, “Finally Forgetting,” makes you wonder what Martin-McCormick’s actually hoping to let go of when he wakes up. “I had the uncanny sense of discovering something quite old,” he writes about the making of Coconut Grove. With a long history and body of work across genres and aliases, it’s understandable he’s been haunted by unrealized ideas—”Those visions never left me, and I’ve been dreaming of them in one way or another ever since,” he says, and this album “[let] me start again from the beginning.” It’s no surprise those beginnings involved linking up in Washington, D.C. with the future Future Times family, which you can especially hear on “Finally Forgetting,” from its flute-sounding melody to its rounded-yet-crisp percussion.

In making Coconut Grove, Martin-McCormick seems at peace with those visions, though his wording is more extreme: “an exorcism, or maybe a rebirth” (likely the “Agony” of the penultimate cut). Here, Relaxer is finally comfortable in his music’s ecosystem even when the landscape isn’t.

Read the LP review on RA.

RA Event Review: Nuits Sonores Festival 2019 – Five Key Performances

Published June 4, 2019 on Resident Advisor

Who shone at the 17th edition of the Lyon festival? Marissa Cetin finds out.

With five days and four nights of programming, the key to enjoying Nuits Sonores is accepting that you won’t be able to experience everything. The Lyon festival, which just wrapped its 17th edition, invited 115 local and international artists to perform at two main venues—La Sucrière in the day and Anciennes Usines Fagor-Brandt at night—as well as 13 other spaces spread across the charming French city.

This year’s daytime curators were Bonobo, Peggy Gou, Maceo Plex and Lena Willikens, all of whom topped lineups that gave each day a new direction to explore. Crowds were amped for the headliners—the energy in the main hall for Peggy Gou’s Thursday night set was captivating and contagious—but they also shared that enthusiasm for the other performers. At night in the airy warehouses, you could see anything from an 11-person techno marching band to James Blake hunched near a speaker bobbing along to Mala. The lights and production also lived up to the hype, with chic, understated designs that were incredibly effective and exciting.

Here are five key performances from across the week.

Nubya Garcia

Above La Sucrière’s main hall, up a few flights of stairs, past the rooftop bar and through two sets of doors, is Le Sucre, a small club often referred to as one of the world’s best. Each day at Nuits Sonores, the venue hosted live performances, with Nubya Garcia heading up a four-piece band on Wednesday evening. It was the perfect way to dive into a week of music.

The tension first broke after one of many impressive runs from the keys player Joe Armon-Jones elicited cheers and applause. Holding center stage armed with her sax, Garcia, part of jazz’s new generation, invited the crowd to fill in the “polite gap,” and we obliged. “Come closer, we’ve only got an hour,” she said. “We’re gonna squeeze in as much as we can.” They sure did. By the time the hour was up, the room had filled out and was swaying to Garcia’s exhilarating rhythms. As the four musicians exited the stage, I immediately looked up the next time she was playing in London.

James Blake

Late on Wednesday, I headed to Fagor-Brandt with some friends you might not call James Blake capital-S superfans, though he was definitely the prime reason for their attendance that first night. Personally, I’m more of a casual listener. His music has never clicked for more than a song or two, but I’ve been eager to be convinced otherwise after consistent praise from friends and colleagues. I think it’s happened.

Blake mostly performed cuts from his romantic new album, Assume Form, either sat to the right of his two bandmates or stood still behind a mic at the stage’s edge. The stage was otherwise empty, with simple lighting (appropriately red during the smitten “Can’t Believe The Way We Flow”) providing the only aesthetic embellishment. But there were a few unexpected moves—my friend was surprised he chose to play his cover of Feist’s “Limit To Your Love,” one of his more popular songs. Before “Retrograde,” he played another Overgrown track “Voyeur,” which morphs into a banger about halfway through. For the festival crowd, he let the ravey part roll on much longer than usual. At this point, I noticed that the front half of the crowd (dedicated fans) was a little less active than they had been previously, while the back section (fellow casual listeners) was pulsing. Blake has never released an extended cut of “Voyeur,” but here’s to hoping.

Yu Su

There’s something rewarding about seeing a dance floor fill up over the course of a set. Yu Su, one of the few artists billed for two and a half hours or more over the week, opened La Sucière’s outdoor stage, Esplanade, on Thursday, playing to early arrivals who gently took in the tunes from shady spots on the fringes. Her set would’ve been right at home at Mister Sunday in New York—there was even a family with preteens dancing together to my left. She moved smoothly between moments of heaviness and lightness, playing tracks as varied as those on her standout RA podcast. Two of many highlights were Priscilla Chan’s “Di Qiu Da Zhui Zong” and a Pussycat Doll-sampling track from fellow Vancouver producer D. Tiffany’s Planet Euphorique label. Yu Su’s own music, while calmer and deeper than the records she pulls from, has a warmth that’s wonderful to soak in, and she creates that same feeling when she DJs.

Camion Bazar

Fagor-Brandt’s third hall was already pretty eye-catching with its icicle-like lights, but on Friday night, the Parisian duo Camion Bazar decided to dress it up even more. Dancers surrounded (and even stood on) the DJ booth, decked out in all kinds of over-the-top garb. One was a pirate, another Superman—someone even found a head-to-toe leopard print suit complete with bow tie. They hoisted up a massive flag, a plush gorilla and an oversized folding fan, while carefully handing out heart balloons. From the back of the room it looked heart emojis were hovering above the crowd.

Camion Bazar’s performance sat somewhere between a live show and a DJ set, moving through energetic house and electro while a saxophonist and drummer riffed and looped over the top. This brought the music even more to life, but that apparently wasn’t ambitious enough for them. With 15 minutes to go, they pivoted to Pink Floyd’s “Sheep.” Some people on the outskirts took that as their cue to leave, which, given the sweatiness of the room, was honestly a welcome relief. Those who stayed were treated to another mind-bending left turn into drum & bass before a grand finale of Jocelyn Brown’s “Somebody Else’s Guy,” magnified with live sax and drumming. What a trip.

Willikens & Ivkovic

Unlike the other daytime curators, Lena Willikens chose to open La Sucrière’s impressive main hall on Friday, playing alongside her usual back-to-back partner Vladimir Ivkovic. The two looked relaxed behind the decks, swaying, smoking and sometimes smiling. The crowd, less dense than during the other headliners due to the early start, were also in a good mood, using the extra space to feel out each beat of the slower selections. Much of the two hours felt like existing in the lagging moment of a sci-fi movie, just before a spaceship launches into warp speed (in a good way, I promise).

Read the event review on RA.

RA Album Review: Beautiful Swimmers – The Sound Of Love International 002

Published May 29, 2019 on Resident Advisor

A summery, party-starting compilation of house, funk and Baltimore club.

Beautiful Swimmers know a thing or two about vibes. Andrew Field-Pickering’s Future Times label has released three compilations named after them. On his 2013 LP as Max D, House Of Woo, he admitted to being a “Slave To The Vibe.” Ari Goldman’s World Building label consistently channels the feeling, too. The word often appears in interviews with Field-Pickering and Goldman and elsewhere. If one thing is certain about their latest release, a compilation for Love International, it’s that “it’s a vibe.”

I said “Oooooooh” out loud to no one in particular when I learned that the Washington, D.C., duo were tapped for the second The Sound Of Love International. Beautiful Swimmers specialize in pulling records from underappreciated and overlooked corners, finding gems that suit their delightfully goofy yet instinctively cool tastes. But they’re not overly concerned with obscurities. By the time a particularly nostalgic transition arrives—a smooth update of Nature Love’s “You Turn Me Around” (this one went down especially well at RA HQ one recent sunny Friday) into KW Griff’s Baltimore club take on “Be Your Girl” by Teedra Moses—you’re ready to eat it up. It sets the mood for the next cut and my high point, The Horn’s twisting “Whiddon On Down.” On paper, it shouldn’t flow this well, but Field-Pickering and Goldman have a keen sense for the unexpected.

The nearly summer release date underlines the perfect occasion for this music. It’s the kind of compilation for an easygoing afternoon BBQ, but one you could also play when heads are hazier, spirits are lighter and the volume has crept above polite levels. The 12-inch sampler of The Sounds Of Love International 002 sums up the LP’s two moods. Harlem Gem’s “More Than You Can Wish” is a sweet, sunny love song, while the first of two subtle Beautiful Swimmers edits, Foe’s “Blow Up Girl (Beautiful Swimmers Big Head Self Mix),” another Baltimore track, is rowdy.

Many of the compilation’s sounds will feel familiar to Beautiful Swimmers fans. The psychedelic strumming and light synths of Alex Simons “Runnin’ Out Of Time” complement the duo’s 2009 track “Swimmers Groove.” “Aquilla Aquela”‘s woodwind riffs sound like those of frequent Future Times collaborator Sami Yenigun. The perturbed youngster on Mark Goddard’s 1992 breakbeat number “Tiny’s First Journey” could be one of the melodramatic kids from Field-Pickering’s non-music gig that often feature on his excellent Twitter. Not only have Beautiful Swimmers compiled an ideal summer collection for an ideal summer festival, but they’ve also managed to concisely capture their spirit—you might even say, their vibe.

Read the LP review on RA.